PIU report and human rights: e-commerce Bill

[John R T Brazier]

At 06:15 PM 6/21/1999 +0100, Ian Miller wrote:
>David Swarbrick wrote:
>>It does appear hat hey try to
>>assert copyright control. Someone complained in uk.legal hat he had been
>>asked for ten pounds for leave to set his former virgin site up
>>elsewhere.
>
>The relevant T&Cs are at
>http://www.virgin.net/vnet/subscriber/terms/virginnet.htm which states:-
>"All information and material submitted to and accepted by Virgin Net via
>the Service or that you publish on any public area via the Service shall be
>deemed and remain the property of Virgin Net. Virgin Net shall be free to
>use, edit, copy, republish and distribute (for any purpose) any such
>information and material and any ideas, concepts, know-how or techniques
>contained in such information or materials. Virgin Net shall not be subject
>to any obligations of confidence regarding such information or materials
>except as required by law."
>
>However there is nothing, that I can see, in T&Cs that requires that the
>subscriber only post material that they own the copyright of.  It may be
>quite legal to post someone else's material.  (e.g. For anything released
>under the GPL there is general permission to copy.)  I fail to see how the
>subscriber can assign Virgin a third party's copyright.  Do Virgin imagine
>that if one of their subscribers mirrors another web-site they are suddenly
>copyright holder of the material?

In my view this does not assign existing or future copyright.  It is not
expressed as an assignment or as an agreement to assign, and does not
mention copyright.  A provision that "information and material shall be
deemed the property of Virgin Net" is not an assignment.  At most it
precludes the subscriber from objecting to what Virgin Net does with the
information or material.  And on the principle that doubtful terms are
interpreted against the interests of the party who proposes them (or
construed contra proferentem, in the jargon), any attempt to extend the
terms from their obvious purpose of liberating Virgin Net from contstraints
to the wider purpose of imposing restraints on the subscriber would be
bound to fail.  Any attempt to charge a subscriber for republishing a web
page is misconceived, and not a little arrogant.  Even if Virgin Net in
some (obscure) sense owns the page in its possession, there is nothing to
give it ownership of the copy in the subscriber's possession.

In the end I doubt if it would be regarded as going further than the IBM
text so elegantly construed by Peter Gutman.

Regards,

Nicholas Bohm


On the other hand, has Virgin now in some way become responsible for
everything that appears on their Service, as they have now laid a claim to
ownership of it? This could have unforeseen consequences from their point of
view!

Regards,

John B