Lawyers. Can’t kill ’em cause they’d sue you from the grave and bill you for their time.
Law Firm Uses Copyright Claim To Say You Can’t View Its Website’s HTML Source
Greg Beck writes in to let us know that the law firm that was recently challenged for claiming that it was a copyright violation to post its cease-and-desist letter also has some other interesting ideas about copyright, including banning people from looking at the firm’s source code. You can view the entire user agreement, but the amusing part is:
“We also own all of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know, you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not authorized to do so.”
As Beck says, “That’s kind of like a puppet show invoking copyright to prohibit the audience from looking at the strings. The user agreements of the law firm and one of its clients also contain a bunch of terrible terms that have become all too common: a prohibition on linking to the site, copying anything from the site (even if its fair use), and even referring to the website owner by name. The law firm doesn’t even allow its own clients to say they’re represented by the firm without permission.” He also notes that the law firm in question is demanding that another website remove criticism of one of their clients because it did not receive permission to use the client’s name or link to the website — two things that the laws and the courts have been pretty clear in saying is perfectly legal over the years.
So. A courtroom Judge sitting on a case couldn’t read any html of the presentation of the Defendant or Litigator because of the forbidden copyright as laid down by the lawyers?
I would pay heavily to be in court the day that one was tried on.
Strongly suspect all male lawyers would become sopranos (the singers, not the Mafia lot) on attempting that move.
Go on, go on, try it PLEASE (I might be wrong you know)
I am waiting for the lawsuit, now that I have read the source code. They can send all the paperwork to my lawyers. But I refuse to name them.
The real reason they don’t want you looking is embarassment – it’s table based layout with no CSS… 😉
…we consider it to be our intellectual property…
What intellect?
this comment is and its respective creator, any unlicensed observation is a direct violation of federal copyright law.
words disapeared from my previous post, they must have been somebody’s intellectual property……..
I’m really not familiar with that copyright thing but, a copyrighted webpage? do they use some XML? or plain HTML?
Seems like another patent troll =/
should W3C look over that? its really annoying reading this kind of news. It makes US the place to never go. =/
Is it also illegal to use a software program to interpret the code and display it to a monitor? Is there a fundamental difference there?
Maybe I like to read the raw code. Page sure loads faster. =P
I bet each page start with something along the lines of:
Damn…. I can see why they don’t want people looking at their markup…. they forgot to put a closing quote on the meta description tag…. and the whole layout is all done using tables… not really css compliant is it….
One day a lawyer is going to copyright the human DNA sequence and place humanity into bondage for violation of being man. The only sure way of freedom will be to turn into robots.
#11: Too late — http://dnapatent.com/
Well they don’t have to worry about China knocking off their stuff as their web site doesn’t make it past the Great (Fire) Wall of China – at least in Shanghai. Perhaps the Shanghai Censor office thought it was too dumb.
Cheers
… of course this is just a great publicity stunt for a firm specialized in tailor maid user agreements.
Look at all the attention they have managed to get so far -well done to however come up with that idea . An good example of guerrilla marketing .
More signs of an out of control legal system in this country.
I just sent a copy of the HTML code to jwd at cybertrial…
I wonder how many American laws I just broke, 1 count of unauthorised duplication, 1 count of viewing content that I do not have permission to view,….
I am open to suggestions of how many more laws I just broke
I stole the following code from their site. Now I’m devising an evil plot to include it in all web pages and thus destroy the uniqueness of their web design. HAHAHAHAHAHA! *
td align=”right”
* Evil laugh © Jim R, alias JimR
AND,
If they read the EULA of the program they USED to create this HTML, they have NO RIGHTS to begin with…
Whats the EULA on the USE of HTML??
#13, all they have to do is use Firefox and register for an account at addons.mozilla.org…
Email me to know the rest. I’ll take any messenger screen name you have.
#12 – There it is: Each of us by our very existence is violating a patent. We must each pay up or kill ourselves (by a method that hasn’t been copyrighted).
Someone should sue them for not being Accessibility Compliant with that crappy code!
bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
html renders text and pictures on the screen and javascript does stupid browser tricks and css makes things pretty — as programming languages, their entire existence is confined to a trivial problem domain
nothing written in HTML/CSS/JavaScript is worth keeping secret, not that you could even hide it anyway
and anybody who thinks otherwise is a total idiot
So if i click the botton just here on my browser i become a criminal??
OOOOO maby my first broken law could be a fun one. I mean why bother with murder or any of those other silly things when i could just click a botton and read some code. That in all honesty i would fail to understand in my present state of elation at this wonderfull news..
Seen the website? Vitriol and angst and just a hint of sadistic pleasure over prosecuting endless amounts of defamation.
But the design of a website can be copyrighted right?
Now they can sue Google… Google has it in their cache…
#26: As I understand it, yes! A website “look” can be copyrighted.
Also notice the fourth from the bottom paragraph in their online “user agreement”. The claim that if you “… are not a legitimate, bona fide prospective client, your access to any page of our website is unauthorized.”
In other words, Mr Dvorak is now liable for allowing all of us access without permission. (And no doubt we’ll all be prosecuted in turn.)
Who’s the lowest, the lawyers or the judges who allow this kind of $hit to go on?
Maybe they’re related to the bridezilla lawyer
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=14139