Stealing HTML

Post by **thibodeaux** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:43 pm

We were talking about this at work. I got annoyed because some rube put a javascript right-button-click handler in his web page so that people can't steal his images and markup. That led to the question: is markup protectable IP?

Take the DTMan front page, for instance. Sure, Gordon's paranoid ravings are copyrightable, but what about the "look and feel" of the page?

I suspect that since Amazon can patent the hyperlink or whatever, that some idiot court would enforce it, but what do I know.

Post by **GORDON** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 8:57 pm

We had something like this conversation back when Dharma or whatever his name was pretty much completely copied the then-look of the DTMan main page for his "how sad is that" webpage where he could bash.... well, everyone who wasn't him. I called him on it, he said it was a parody, I said it is only a parody when people know what page you are making a parody of, and no one knew dtman.com.... therefor it was plagiarism.

His was almost exactly duplicating the style, though.... if someone patents a "webpage divided into sections/tables with a main section for content and a smaller table for indexing similar links, with a header at the top" then we're all suable. Sue-able. Whatever.

Post by **TPRJones** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 10:40 pm

I don't get those blocks, they aren't very effective anyway. Just a quick View->Source and you can easily take whatever you want.

Post by **GORDON** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:25 pm

TPRJones wrote:I don't get those blocks, they aren't very effective anyway. Just a quick View->Source and you can easily take whatever you want.

It can be a pain when you're surfing for barnyard porn and the page is right-click disabled and you need to screen capure the entire page and then crop down the pic you want to save for later.

I've heard.

Post by **TPRJones** » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:31 pm

With View->Source you can get the direct link to the picture you want to keep and download it directly that way. Much easier. Just do a find in the source for a chunk of text near the picture and it should be easy to find.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:15 am

Is it idea theft? Yeah. Is it illegal? Doubt it.

Post by **thibodeaux** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:14 am

TPRJones wrote:I don't get those blocks, they aren't very effective anyway. Just a quick View->Source and you can easily take whatever you want.

I actually emailed the rube at the time and told him exactly that. His reply: OMG ONOEZ!!! Can you tell me how to disable View -> Source???

Clearly lots of people have no clue how http works.

Post by **TheCatt** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:58 am

Yes, it is illegal. Copyright law covers source code, and markup would be considered code, since it instructs a computer to do something.

That being said, without registration, punishment would be of a "cease and desist" nature. However, if someone registered the copyright of their code, and someone were to violate it, statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work can be claimed.

Copyrights last 70 years plus the life of the author/creator.

That being said, I think HTML theft would be difficult to prove due to independent creation defense.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:35 pm

thibodeaux wrote:
TPRJones wrote:I don't get those blocks, they aren't very effective anyway. Just a quick View->Source and you can easily take whatever you want.
I actually emailed the rube at the time and told him exactly that. His reply: OMG ONOEZ!!! Can you tell me how to disable View -> Source???

Clearly lots of people have no clue how http works.

My high school's website tried to intercept all right clicks, too. Course, they were all pretty much idiots.

Malcolm · Post by **Malcolm** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:37 pm

TheCatt wrote:Yes, it is illegal. Copyright law covers source code, and markup would be considered code, since it instructs a computer to do something.

That being said, without registration, punishment would be of a "cease and desist" nature. However, if someone registered the copyright of their code, and someone were to violate it, statutory damages of $750-$30,000 per work can be claimed.

Copyrights last 70 years plus the life of the author/creator.

That being said, I think HTML theft would be difficult to prove due to independent creation defense.

Code I could understand. The SHA-1 hash algorithm probably has such protection. But the HTML on a site? I'm less likely to believe that.

Post by **TheCatt** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:16 pm

Well, it's interpreted by the computer to do something, so could be considered code. And, since user interfaces can be copyrighted, I figured by extension that HTML could. If not, it could be considered an expression (like writing or drawing) and be covered anyway.