I think the question of what legal force, if any, is given to robots.txt needs answering first.

and ridiculous as this stuff seems, I don’t see how to avoid having to figure it out given the current copyright laws and cases like MAI Systems (RAM copies count).

Ridiculous. If you post the material and you want bots to stay away you include robots.txt. To argue whether or not they have the “right” to duplicate the content is simply ridiculous – it’s inherent to the nature of digital communications. It’s like arguing whether or not the swimming pool is at fault for getting swimmers wet.

Dude… it was a joke. Come on… aibos roaming the streets?

Sheesh.

Apparently, Mr. Fields set up his site precisely to trap Google and collect statuatory damages. He knew about, and consciously chose not to, incorporate the robots.txt and metadata to prevent indexing and caching.

There may be a broader issue of implied licence here. The fact that Fields did know the Google robot would search and cache his site is probably evidence of such a licence. But would the situation be any different if a site was not geared in this respect.

It may be arguable that the mere act of communicating copyright material to the public across a technological medium would induce a court to consider that copying (or caching) is authorised as it is the consequence of viewing the site.

The difficulty in that argument is whether a robot or spider has the same rights to cache without authorisation. THis is all tied up in the definition of communication to the public pursuant to the Copyright legislation. IE – Does an exercise of the right to communicate copyright material to the public include a composite right to collect communicated material from the author by technological means??

Is the licence implied because the site owner communicates the material to the public or because it is a technological consequence of reading a site?

Please comment.

Poptones-

do we “discriminate” against robots just because of what they do?

Oh, I’ve seen YOUR kind before… you’re one of those weirdo cybernetics rights activists, huh? Like those freaks that broke into the Sony factory

These people may seem like freaks to you but there is a very interesting question regarding the ownership of copyright material produced by artificial intelligence systems brewing. One of the conclusions drawn by some lawyers is that AI produced material cannot belong to the owner of the AI because it is not his/her original creation. Therefore the material is treated as unowned or not copyright. In order to set this right some advocates argue that AI is an employee and therefore the property of the AI owner – perhaps robots and AI will be given limited human rights in order to protect the property that they create??

That’s not what I mean. Those sites actually block you out; what I was getting at was if they merely requested that you not view thier sites, but left you technologically able to.

Again, I don’t see the “tyrany” there – we should have the right of free association. If there ever came to be a “people.txt” standard I would imagine it would be encumbent upon the tools used to verify themselves against it and “illegal” only for the user to directly circumvent it or for software makers to supply tools to the public that did so. It’s still a regulatory nightmare, and much easier I think for site operators to simply erect “members” pages… as we have now.

I didn’t suggest tyranny… I’m trying to work through ideas on how the law would work in the case that robots.txt is or is not given legal force. I’m not intending to make value judgments. It is a hard problem to balance personal rights with the inhernet openness of the web. I agree, freedom of association is important. It seems only that you are advocating that people have their wishes and rights respected with respect to how their works are used. That’s not unreasonable at all. That’s what copyright law provides, for the most part.

Suppose someone ran a website where there was no robots file or any other indication restricting use of any kind, and this person does not know anything about robots, metatags, or anything else relevant (UNLIKE Fields). Suppose this person sued you for viewing (and therefore copying) his site. Crazy right? What would your defense be? I (and probably most would) agree that you shouldn’t lose this case – but I think that given the way the court in this Google/Fields case interpreted implied license, it would be a stretch to use that as a defense.

Like Peter points out, this guy seemed like he was shooting for cash here, and admitted he knew the ways to control robot behavior and didn’t use them – and therefore lost on the implied license defense. The implication is that the implied license would only be granted where the site owner knew (or maybe should have known, unclear) of those mechanisms. So based on this, it looks like absent any robots.txt/metatgs, the court STILL needs more to find an implied license. Why would the law operate differently on robots and people in this example, especially if the site owner has no clue what a robot is?

do we “discriminate” against robots just because of what they do? Oh, I’ve seen YOUR kind before… you’re one of those weirdo cybernetics rights activists, huh? Like those freaks that broke into the Sony factory and set all those Aibos “free” upon the world only to have them die, cold and miserable, within hours as their batteries expired?

That’s pretty funny, did that really happen? You read negative connotation into “discriminate” – I didn’t intend any. Discrimination is fine against robots if it’s justified.