Emma Sanderson is quoted as saying;
Quote:
"To confirm our position on copyright, we consider that as a general proposition, by placing a webpage on the internet, the website owner is granting an implied licence to reproduce/copy.
We believe that the taking of a temporary copy for the purposes of Webwise will fall within that implied licence and also believe in any event that the proposed operation of Webwise is permitted under s.28A of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. So, there is no breach of copyright. "
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Principal counter arguments being, Phorm don't obtain a licence to copy or use (because they don't make a separate identifiable request for the document which the author can accept or reject), and the use of the copy without licence is not fair or reasonable (because it damages the author).
s.28A won't help them. It specifically excludes computer programs, and databases, and applies to the sole purpose of onward transmission and lawful use without economic significance.
Whereas an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) +Javascript web page is effectively a computer program for a browser, it may contain data from an ecommerce system or content management system to which 'database rights' would apply, no onward transmission between third parties occurs (the web site is not aware of and does not send the web page to Phorm), and the results of processing the copy are sold (so there is evidence of economic significance).