Funferal

Copyright and ‘essay databases’ online

As you may have noticed, my weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons license – the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license to be precise. Some time ago I noticed links in my logs from some of those ‘essay databases’ you find online. Following them back, I noticed that their links were hidden behind a ‘subscriber only’ wall. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I was concerned about some of the links.
Being in search engines is obviously useful – I’ve added my site to many listings over the years. However, the other day I decided to take action against one of the essay sites. The problem was that the wording in their site implied that they were not a search engine service, but were selling rights to my essays. I list, below, my correspondence with edlibrary.com – note that they imply themselves that other sites are involved – and welcome any comments readers may have.

To: info@edlibrary.com
Hi,
I noticed links, in my logs at funferal.org, from your site. Upon investigation, I found that one of the essays on my site is listed in your database, through the link:
http://www.edlibrary.com/essays/gt.cgi?q=gtogds%60m/nsf.drr%60x.qnmdbno/iul
However, there are a number of things that concern me about this:
– the link can only be followed if one is a paid subscriber of EdLibrary.
– the link is to a further EdLibrary page, rather than to the actual location of my essay
– on your front page you call EdLibrary a “library” and a “research database”, and talk of “_our_ 750,000 examples” (my emphasis). Further you state that “Students who use our services are responsible … for citing EdLibrary as a source when doing so.”
All of these are indicative of someone who is republishing the material, rather than providing a link to the material (as a search engine does). Indeed your FAQ includes a question “How many essays am I allowed to download from EdLibrary.com?” Subscribers are led to believe that they are purchasing the right to _download and use_ essays, rather than a paying for a service that _locates_ essays on the internet.
I have, of course, no knowledge of the status of other essays in your database. However, in relation to my own I can say the following:
– The material on my site is copyright, and licensed under a Creative Commons licence, the Attribution – NonCommercial – ShareAlike licence, the terms of which are listed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
– I consider the manner in which you are using my material to be a breach of this license, including, but not necessarily limited to the following:
— 4a …you must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy … of the work you distribute, publicly display, …. You may not distribute, publicly display, … the Work with any technological measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent with the terms of this License Agreement.
— 4c You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation….
Following from this, section 7 includes the following:
— 7a This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically upon any breach by You of the terms of this License.
EdLibrary has made no application for a license to make commercial use of my material.
While I welcome having my material used and cited by others, including by search engines, I believe that the manner in which you represent your relationship with my essay is misleading and not something I wish to support. Further, by representing yourself as you do, you give subscribers the impression that you are licensing my work to them, something you have no authority to do. Consequently, I must request that you take one of the following steps:
– Include information, displayed with reasonably prominence, on your site, that explains your relationship with papers such as mine. That is, that the papers are publicly available on the internet, and that subscribers are gaining the use of your specialised search engine, rather than buying any rights to the works concerned. In addition, to note that materials may be copyrighted, and to include a link to the Creative Commons license when linking to my work.
– Make an application for a commercial license for my material by 5pm, Central Savings Time on Tuesday 22 July, 2003.
– Remove my material from your website by 1pm, Central Savings Time, on Tuesday 22 July, 2003.
I await confirmation that you have taken one of the above steps. Finally, since you have to date, without permission, made use of my material, I await your offer of reasonable compensation for this infringement of my rights.
Yours,
Andrew
* * * * * * * * * * * *
and the response:
Mr. Ó Baoill,
We have made a preliminary investigation on why the copyrighted material from Funferal has appeared on EdLibrary.com and other sites of our network.
First of all, please let me acknowledge that NO SINGLE document from your site is being hosted on our servers and all the database links that you see containing Funferal material, lead directly to your site. As you know, sites like www.antistudy.com and www.screwstudy.com utilize the same form of content outsourcing and forward visitors directly to the sites with the copyrighted material (bookrags.com, sparknotes.com and pinkmonkey.com). Even search engines, like Google, have the name of FunFeral in the body of their database links and lead traffic directly to your site – there is nothing illegal in this action.
We value good relations with our content providers and in all ways support the copyright laws. We will ask our content providers not to supply us with “external links” to your site any more, and we will REMOVE all the mentions of Funferal from our site. Our technical department will seep away the links before the deadline you have specified.
Sincerely,
Kelly Wright
Cyber Breeze Networks LLC