The Sticky Business of Web Sites
The proliferation of personal Web sites or pages might be just a passing fad, but for now the Internet has become perhaps the world’s foremost symbol of unsolicited self-expression. There is a new “me generation” out there, and all that is required for membership is a little computer equipment.
At modest cost, or sometimes no cost, a user can set up his or her own page or site on the World Wide Web. It’s like owning your own billboard, one with a potentially global audience. The explosion of such sites has been as fascinating to casual observers as it has been annoying to those anxious to rein in the Net and turn it into a serious tool for international science and commerce, with full privacy and intellectual property protections.
Right now, individual Web pages include everything from family scrapbooks to sites that broadcast all manner of personal views. Some people keep their diaries on the Internet (usually a big mistake). Others use so-called “unauthorized” Web pages to chronicle their fascination with celebrities, television shows, movies, music and more.
There are dozens of redundant sites, secular little chapels dedicated to the same television star, using the same photographs and materials. It doesn’t seem to matter that few people are interested in anything these Web page authors want to say or share. For now, the illusion that thousands will flock to Johnny’s Web page is enough to fuel the phenomenon.
The result has been a legal nightmare for those concerned with protecting everything from royalty payments for music to the broadcast products of television networks. The debate has culminated in the recent meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva, which turned out some standards that might be adopted in the United States and around the world. As usual, however, several solutions and accommodations can already be found at local levels, and national governments would do well to take note.
For instance: Various computer online services are successfully urging customers to voluntarily remove copyright-protected photographs from their Web pages. University officials have become more observant and mindful of campus computer systems and the abuses thereon. Television networks are convincing fans (sometimes through legal threats) to remove professional-looking Web pages that mimic “official” network Web sites.
It’s important to note here that the direction of the Internet, and what drives it from year to year or even month to month, is almost impossible to predict, much less control. The great temptation, on the part of governments, has been to presume that new and sometimes overarching laws or standards are required. The lesson about Internet-based crime, for example, suggests otherwise: that existing laws are sufficiently elastic to do the job. Intellectual property standards and existing copyright and trademark law can also be applied effectively to deal with Johnny’s excesses.
