More snippet bits from my posts in Recompense's thread over in Blizzard UI and Macros forum for those of you who aren't reading it because of the need for flame retardant...
In regards to the deep linking issue, I found this old (very old in internet terms ;) article which might be of interest -
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/deeplinking.html ("Deep Linking" in the World Wide Web). A summary of the article (in my own words) is that the w3c is not against the concept of deep linking, and argues that access to the content referred to via deep linking is up to the access control mechanisms of the site providing the content to which the deep link references.
I also very much liked the two real world analogies they used (from section 5, "Deep Linking by Analogy"):
Two analogies have been proposed to help illuminate the question of deep linking through parallels in the real world.
The first analogy is with buildings, which typically have a number of doors. A building might have a policy that the public may only enter via the main front door, and only during normal working hours. People employed in the building and in making deliveries to it might use other doors as appropriate. Such a policy would be enforced by a combination of security personnel and mechanical devices such as locks and pass-cards. One would not enforce this policy by hiding some of the building entrances, nor by requesting legislation requiring the use of the front door and forbidding anyone to reveal the fact that there are other doors to the building.
The second analogy is with a library, which has a well-known street address. Each book on the shelves of this library also has an identifier, composed of its title, author, call number, shelf location, and so on. The library certainly will exercise access control to the individual books; but it would be counterproductive to do so by forbidding the publication of their identities.
These analogies are compelling in the context of the deep linking issue. A provider of Web resources who does not make use of the built-in facilities of the Web to control access to a resource is unlikely to achieve either justice or a good business outcome by attempting to suppress information about the existence of the resource.
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I'll throw out my thoughts on what this means (to me) from an author's copyright point of view below, but it does seem (to me) to suggest that it is the responsibility of the hosting websites that provide the links to "protect" the access to that content if the require such protection for reasons of revenue, etc.
As an author, I have given WoWInterface the right to provide my addons to the public through their webserver (and the reasons I chose WoWInterface will be many and varied - see any of the arguments put forth by other authors). If another site chooses to deep-link to either the WoWInterface page on which my addon is described, or even direct to the zip file containing my addon, I can either accept this as a normal usage in the web, or request WoWInterface to limit access in some fashion (e.g., downloads only available via access first to the author or addon pages). I'm not sure that I can require another site to remove its link to my work, unless that link in and of itself violates my copyright (e.g., does not correctly attribute the works to me).
Hearkening back to my university years, my recollection of copyright "fair use" required us (as students or researchers) to -always- attribute referenced works - e.g., author name(s) and the source of your referenced content (e.g. page, book title, proceedings, publication information, etc.). I guess for the the latter, the equivalent today (and in the context of addons) would be a web link - and importantly this web link should reference the containing object (web-page), not just the object itself (because that could be considered taking a work out of context, or mis-attributing the source of the information).
In regards to this second point, if WoWMatrix parses pages from a site (such as WoWInterface) to extract from it the links to the actual addons, or even if it just gets this information from an RSS feed directly published by the site, fair use of copyright (both the author's and the hosting site) would arguably require WoWMatrix to properly attribute the source of the links - i.e., you could fairly argue that WoWMatrix -must- attribute the source of the content (i.e., the parent web-page or host site) for the links it provides. This is especially important if there is a commercial involvement (i.e., if they are getting paid, either by customers, advertising, or other means).
Of course I'm not a copyright lawyer/expert/etc., and I'm sure there are holes in all of this, but I can say that I'm (personally) quite happy for services such as the WoWMatrix client provides to exist in principle, -provided that- the the client or tool properly attributes the link to my addons both to me (as the author) and to the source (addon's web page) from which the link was obtained.
(In the case where I directly sent the link to the client or tool service provider, this source reference would not be required).
So far it sounds like we've got half-way there in that WoWMatrix now lists the author's name :)
Recompense wrote:
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The argument that WoWMatrix now attributes work doesn't change the fact that they are ignoring the author's intended method of distribution.
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I guess what I got from reading the W3C article and thinking about it after is that WoWMatrix -aren't- actually ignoring the author's intended method of distribution (which is via WoWInterface's webserver in my case) since they are indeed still using that distribution -source- (i.e., they still create a HTTP connection to the server to download the addon).
What they aren't doing (yet) is linking to the information that I also want associated with my addons (i.e., the web page itself), but I can't find a valid argument that says "since WoWInterface is allowed to serve my addons (as a zip file) directly via a URL without any access control, no one else is allowed to use that URL without my permission", since I don't have any rights over the URL itself.
And yes, this is where we stray into the (eek) quagmire of author's rights etc., which I'm definitely not able to give a qualified comment on, even as an interested author!
There is another analogy I can think of which will probably just muddy the waters even further - as far as i know, an author/owner of a work does not have the right to suppress/limit/etc., valid comment on their works (e.g., a newspaper can do an article on your works without so much as a "by your leave", and can even do so against your explicit wishes). And in that context, is a web link to the location of said author's work simply a form of "comment", or ?
Note I'm not saying there aren't potentially legal issues here (e.g., author and site provider copyrights, whether the download manager tools violate the site EULAs as others have noted, etc.), just that -I'm- not so sure now that "deep linking" alone is a violation of the author's copyright, provided the source has been properly attributed (which it isn't quite yet, IMO).
All food for thought...
-- Cirk