Is Capturing Web Pages Electronically Similar to Microfilming?
When Eli commented on my post about archiving Web pages, she (You’re the Eli I think you are, right? If you’re not, let me know and I’ll correct your gender.) brought up the idea that capturing Web pages is like microfilming an original publication in its entirety, a practice publications, like newspapers, do to create a permanent official record of their publication and an archive of their work. (Microfilming is still considered the acceptable standard because of its universality, longevity, and the wideness of the practice. Yes, there are digital preservation methods, but nothing lasts as long as microfilm in such a reliable fashion yet.) I think capturing Web pages has at least one big difference, which is where the controversy arrises. Usually, when a publication is microfilmed, the copyright owner of the publication itself either owns the rights to the film or negotiates some kind of contract concerning copyright ownership. When Google caches pages or Brewster Kahle captures a screenshot of my blog, which I own the copyright to, it/he does not seek my consent, permission, or a license of my copyright to do so. They just take a screenshot. What gives them the right to do that? I don’t think it’s fair to say that when I post material on the Web, there’s a tacit understanding that these things are going to happen to my site without my consent and that I should just accept them. I don’t think The New York Times would go with that. If I just accept that Google and Kahle are going to cache my pages, then it seems like copyright on the Web might become a slippery slope.
Note: I’m using this blog as an example. I’m not personally taking issue with the work of Brewster Kahle or Google in this Web post. That doesn’t mean that I entirely approve of their actions, either, but honestly, I haven’t really made a decision about how I feel about it. If you violate my copyright right, I’ll be a bit miffed, but I think Google and Brewster Kahle are doing something much different from an average copyright violation on the Web and I’m interested in what they’re doing.
