Re: [Lynx-dev] JS blocker

[David Woolley]

On 08/06/15 18:39, Philip Webb wrote:
> 150608 David Woolley wrote:
> > On 08/06/15 17:10, Philip Webb wrote:
> > > what I'd previously been doing to save a text version of such articles.
> > I'm surprised that is a permitted use of the web site.
>
> Whatever do you mean ? -- anyone can make a copy of an Internet article
> for their own personal use ; some may choose Lynx to do so.

That's certainly not the case in the UK.  I'm not familiar with the fine 
details of the US fair use doctrine, but normally these exemptions are 
based on there being no financial harm to the publisher, and everyone 
who grabs the text for offline reading is denying the advertisers a 
chance of a click through, and therefore reducing the amount they may be 
prepared to pay for the advertising space.

(UK fair dealing tends to limit use to those cases where there is 
specific public policy goal, e.g. to allow literary criticism or the 
operation of a free press.)

Looking at their T&Cs, I'd pay particular attention to the paragraph 
titled "Storing Science Daily Materials".  Whilst the first part refers 
to RSS feeds, the second part is more general, and I think you are 
storing material and creating what, in copyright terms, would be classed 
as a database.

The part that gives permission to download copies for personal use also 
specifically disallows creation of databases.

I'm pretty sure that the US has similar law to the UK with respect to 
what constitutes a database for copyright purposes.

I'd note that one common use of ECMAScript/DOMs is to effectively 
disable copying of web pages.  Whilst I suspect it isn't the real reason 
here, one could certainly envisage someone not serving a page to a 
browser that would not operate the copy protection scheme.

> If a publisher doesn't want to allow that,
> they have to erect a registration or pay wall, as many newspapers do ;
> there's no such restriction here.

Registration is often to get better profiling. Pay walling is normally 
an alternative to advertising.
>