Since The Dream Machine itself is a Web publisher (I am merely the Webmaster), the legal aspects of the situation are of more than passing interest to me. Hundreds of people have entrusted their original material to us for display to the entire world. Many are more than a little worried about how easy it is to copy (read: "steal") material from the Web. Some have eschewed Web publication entirely because of this fear. On the other hand, it is my firm position that the theoretical, technical and philosophical issues are of much greater importance to the Web community than the legal issues. A quick summary of what I have learned over the past year will show why I stick to this positon:

1. The many lawyers who wrote commenting about our dispute made it abundantly clear that UFS has a good case for exercising the type of control they wish to have. My best translation of the law into layman's (of which I am one) terms is that "If it looks like you copied it, then you DID!" That is, the law deals with appearances as much as with reality. Thus, if I "surround" a link to UFS's Dilbert graphic with text and graphics from elsewhere and then publish the page without express written permission from UFS, the copyright holders, then they have a case for copyright violation. It is of no consequence (to the law) that the only copying that actually takes place is done by UFS's server to the eventual viewer's computer (and by the browser to a disk based "cache").

2. On the other hand, this very same law is so broad that, if strictly interpreted, it would require that EACH and EVERY SERVER on the path from UFS to the viewer seek and request written permission from UFS to pass the information on to the next server! And, this must be done for EACH and EVERY PACKET! Furthermore, it leaves open the question of whether, by merely making the page described above (where Dilbert is surrounded by unrelated material) AVAILABLE for downloading (as opposed to simply downloading it directly from another link), the same violation has occurred. The many programmers who took the time to write also presented other even more esoteric scenarios wherein the copying becomes ever more remote from the direct "link and view" model. These scenarios depended upon JAVA, scripts and CGI programs on the server to programmatically construct Web pages either for download or in real time at the surfers machine and provide ever more complex and incomprehensible legal problems for the judges and legislators who must eventually untangle this morass.

3. Finally, there is the doctrine of "fair use," which exempts a lot of situations where the copyrighted material is copied (or referenced) to make some other kind of point than the creator intended, say a political argument, or to illustrate a book on cartooning. The definition of "use" is exactly where the UFS gets its broad powers to control access, but is also the weak point of the law. In order to define "use" broadly enough to include UFS's control fantasies, you must also include situations that would completely destroy the Web if enforced. "Fair use" further complicates it, because the definition of "fair" must be adjudicated afresh for almost every new situation.

The second and third observations, on the other hand, suggest that any attempt to enforce what I have called your control fantasies, will meet with some sticky problems. U.S. law wisely does not allow judges to interpret law any way they see fit (or, rather, they can but their decisions, with the sole exception of the Supreme Court, are always subject to review). Furthermore, laws that are so broad as to defy common sense (even though they may not have been at the time they were written) or prohibit all sorts of "normal" activity as well as that which they were designed to prohibit, can not and will not be enforced.

And then, what about all these esoteric programmatic "uses" of copyrighted material. When Lycos, as the result of a search for say "Dilbert" and "daily" comes up with a direct (and unauthorized) link directly to the daily "Dilbert" graphic (this will NOT happen today, so the question is purely hypothetical) and downloads the resulting search results HTML page, have they violated UFS's copyright? Do Netscape and Microsoft routinely violate Dilbert's copyrights by caching the material to the user's disk? Etc., etc.

What we have here is not so much a big corporation deliberately obscuring the law for their own nefarious purposes (they have NOT done so), but rather some stupid and/or greedy individuals (including Scott Adams himself) trying to use the law to compensate for what they can not handle intellectually any other way. In a justifiable effort to protect THEIR copyrighted material, these folks have run roughshod over everybody else's sensibilities and have threatened the very operation of the Web itself! I have in my possession letters, exchanged by Mr. Adams with one of his fans who happens to agree with us, that are absolutely astonishing in their insensitivity and callous disregard for anything BUT Scott Adams precious copy "rights." One would think from reading these letters that he wasn't really a world famous cartoonist, but rather a petulant teen age boy trying to come to grips with his testosterone flow. But, I guess it is hard to empathize with ones readers when one has (perhaps) a Ferrari in ones garage (parked along side ones limo). Scott seems to be becoming the pointy haired boss in his strips who habitually asks more from his lackeys than they can possibly produce. Not understanding what makes the World Wide Web function, he asks all of us to conform to HIS version of reality, HIS view of what is fair for copyright holders and to hell with anybody else's opinion.

The stance that Adams and UFS have taken, while legally proper, is shamefully deficient when applied to the Web and Internet as a whole. Just as movie companies were farting into a windstorm when they tried to forbid VCR's way back when (the 1978 Copyright Law was written in response to this turmoil), UFS is bucking strong trends when it tries to control links TO its site as well as those FROM. I do not believe that they can prevent determined technical people from circumventing this prohibition, leading to ever more sophisticated techniques for thwarting UFS and ever more tangled lawsuits. The net result of all this can only be yet another "War on..." with no winners except...guess who...the lawyers. Worse yet, as UFS and other Big Boys, in the name of protecting the intellectual property of their stable of gifted creators, may start a real electronic war where hackers and crackers around the world unleash some of the nasty tricks that so bedevil the Internet already. Who among you believes that UFS or any other publisher really gives a shit about the fortunes or rights of their creators except in that those creators bring in big bucks to UFS? I am not faulting UFS for this. This is, after all, their business and they do it well. I am just warning Scott Adams and people like him who are momentarily riding the waves of success, fame and fortune not to get too involved with their publishers in fighting (ultimately) unwinnable battles. If the publishers were to lose, Scott, or were your strip to, for some reason, pass out of favor with the people, then they would drop you like a hot potato and move on to greener pastures. I suspect that they, like the rest of us, are having great problems actually making money on the Web, for reasons that have nothing to do with your genius. They can not solve them by engaging in warfare with the community that produced and continues to develop the Internet.

Imagine for a moment that UFS actually knew what they were doing (except scaring the shit out of little people with lawsuits). Assume that they simply accept the inevitablility of loss of control of incoming links. Then they COULD, by imaginative programming, achieve what they wish by other means. For example, they could go back to publishing the daily Dilbert strip with a fixed name (they now use a random name, a pathetic attempt to thwart "evil" doers like myself). Instead of downloading just the strip however, they could make it a simple JAVA applet that downloaded the strip plus a revolving advertiser's banner (in an attached frame window) and make the strip a hot link to the home page of UFS and the advertisers' window a direct link to the advertisers' Web materials. They could further state that anyone, anywhere could make a link, with a Dilbert icon, to this applet. I would wager that this approach would garner UFS and its advertisers a LOT more traffic (since many, many people would want this gem on their home pages), would make UFS a paragon of Web virtue rather than the sleazy, whiney, control freak idiots they appear to be today. People who fight the inevitable, and I am convinced that UFS can NEVER achieve, technically, the level of control they desire, especially over "bad guys" who would "misuse" their material...people who fight the inevitable ALWAYS appear to be stupid and retro.

But, what about the down side, you ask? If anybody, anywhere can pick up this link (say, right from UFS's home page) and imbed it in their pages, what is to stop them from putting chicken porn or Nazi holocaust revisionist dogma on the same page? The answer is "Nothing." But who will be hurt and who will be helped by this? One can not seriously believe that the child pornographers (which is already illegal almost everywhere) or Nazi scumbags will be materially aided by this device, that more people will look at their pages because Dilbert appears there as well. But Dilbert (and his advertisers) will be open to the entire world from an emormous multiplicity of "TO" links from "regular people" who just also happen to be fans. As long as you do not install reciprocal links to the "offenders," they will remain as isolated as they were before they tried the "Dilbert" gambit. If, instead, you sue them or make other loud noises, the publicity can only help THEM! This is how the Web really works, guys. It is time for you to accept this and get past it.

The legal issues here are so complicated that I am sure it will take lawyers years to sort them all out. All I want, from UFS or anybody else coexisting on the Web with me in the mean while, is a modicum of sanity and common sense. So far, Scott Adams and UFS have utterly failed to provide it.

Cordially,
Willy Chaplin
Webmaster
The Dream Machine

You can reach me at
willy@dreamagic.com