Web Caching

Copyright

Copyright laws give authors or creators certain rights regarding the copying and distribution of their original works. These laws are intended to encourage people to share their creative works without fear that they will not receive due credit or remuneration. Copyrights are recognized internationally through various treaties (e.g., the Berne Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention). This helps our discussion somewhat, because the Internet tends to ignore political boundaries.

Digital computers and the Internet challenge our traditional thinking about copyrights. Before computers, we only had to worry about making copies of physical objects such as books, paintings, and records. The U.S. copyright statute defines a copy thusly:

Copies are material objects…in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.^[15]

When you memorize a poem, thereby making a copy in your brain, you have not violated a copyright law. Tests for physicality are difficult to apply to computer systems where information exists only as electrostatic or magnetic charges representing ones and zeroes.

Copying is a fundamental characteristic of the Internet. An Internet without copying is like a pizza without cheese—what would be the point? People like the Internet because it lets them share information with each other. Email, newsgroups, web ...