Tiptoeing Through the Internet

When I first got connected with the Internet a few years ago, I was simultaneously in awe about the scope of this transformative innovation as well as painfully aware of its limitations. I used to perform searches on Alta Vista and would come up with results that usually numbered well into the thousands (sometimes millions). Of course, as I scrolled through them, I’d find that there just wasn’t a whole lot of stuff pertaining to what I was looking for. And too often, I would get links to obscene websites and what I term “scamsites” from perfectly innocent searches.

Nowadays, I’m more savvy about how I phrase my searches. And the available material to choose from search results is often staggering! The future regarding the amount and quality of available Internet material out there just keeps looking better and better.

But speaking of the future, there is another side to the Internet. Along with the enhanced ability to view and copy material from the Web is the enhanced ability of others to detect viewing and copying, and then using the information to persecute and prosecute users. And, with other areas of our legal system, although it may take being a lawyer to figure out what the law is (and even they can’t seem to agree with one another on it), the justice system still places the burden of compliance with the law on the ordinary, legally-untrained lay user.

If I were to truly take advantage of what is available on the Internet, I could have access to music, television, movies, pictures, and literature that I could copy. Then, I could either transform what I copied to a more portable form for personal use away from my computer and the Net or I could load up my blog with all sorts of flashy features making it attractive and attention-holding. Regarding the latter, I’ve browsed through many blogs, and I can’t help but wonder whether some of them haven’t overstepped copyright statutes and similar legal provisions restricting use of others’ creative products. Naturally, I don’t want to commit a violation against someone else’s intellectual or artistic property. But realistically speaking, the pervasive nature of this technology is such that putting such material on the Internet automatically makes it susceptible for copying. There’s probably a line drawn in the “ethereal” sand that separates reasonable use of material from “going too far”. But I don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s an infringement.

Let’s take the embedding of videos as an example. I haven’t embedded videos on this blog largely because this is primarily a writing blog. But sometimes I’ll run across something in the news or arts that I want to write about. And then wonder about the legal ramifications of letting the blog viewer access the material directly from my blog. Better safe than sorry, I say, and thus I’ve been reticent about video embedding so far, even with the news services like MSNBC, Fox, and CBS, who put out gobs of material for embedding. With YouTube, I’m especially concerned about this. But if an artist or their recording company deliberately puts out a video on You Tube with their blessings, I don’t see any problem with at least putting out a link to it. But even with that, I’m not sure if there might not be some trouble down the road.

As Nirvana’s late Kurt Cobain once sang in a song of his, “Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.” Oops, did I violate someone’s precious rights by printing that, too? And will Tiny Tim’s estate give me a hard time for this article’s title?