[Taylor514ce]

I know I said I wouldn't post again, but felt I owed Harry a reply.

My background is such that I'm extremely familiar with "how the web works". I know the HTTP protocol in and out. I think most people see a browser as a sort of "window", viewing a finished site. We know, however, that isn't the case. The browser is really a code interpreter, it downloads source code from a web site, then interprets it, presenting it to the user.

It's a beautiful system, actually. The way the web was supposed to work was as a distributed, cooperative, organic system. It was created by scientists and researchers who felt that information should be free. Emails are store-and-forward. DNS servers work by "sharing what they know" with each other. We could cite many other examples. Copyright was never a consideration when the web architecture was designed. Neither was commercialism. It's a share-and-share alike utopian free-for-all.

Yes, I understand caching, and no-cache directives, and robots.txt. Those are relatively NEW additions to "how the web works", in direct response to the belated realization that hey, the web is cool and all but, gosh, what about copyright?

What Google has done is to EXPLOIT the way the web works, for commercial gain. Well, what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that while information wants to be free, we still have copyright laws. Caching my website in your browser so that you can view my website faster is one thing. Caching my website so you can sell it off piecemeal to advertisers is something else. Isn't it?

Google has set itself up as the gateway to all internet content as if they own it. The entire web is theirs, to monetize, to influence (entire sites spring up based on what "keywords" are selling for the most), and to cache. Why? Because the architecture of the web allows it.

And we're willing to give up copyright laws and label this all as "fair use" because 1) that's how the web works and 2) Google is just so damned useful.

I'm not anti-search engines. Yes, the way the web has grown, word of mouth and hyperlinking alone just don't work. I also realize that nothing I say will change a thing, which is why this is a discussion, folks, not whining and complaining.

But it's wrong to take something I write, or code, or script, and use it for your own commercial gain, or to take it and share it in ways I don't authorize. If I construct a site to share my artwork and poetry in a holistic manner, it's wrong to strip away the images and serve them up individually on your own site, with "related" ads alongside. It's wrong to take a poem I've posted as part of a portfolio site, and monetize it for your advertising system.

Whatever the web becomes (and I feel the current state of affairs cannot continue, this entire culture of content-specific advertising and AdWords and AdSense and IntelliTXT and spam cannot be sustained) it will have to come to grips with copyright and the rights of content authors to have basic artistic and intellectual control of their work.