Subject: Re: Use of Dilbert From: dwallach@CS.Princeton.EDU To: boulin@unitedmedia.com Cc: JParker@Baker-Hostetler.com, DWaren@Baker-Hostetler.com, jonathans@unitedmedia.com Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 17:53:20 -0400 In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 19 Jul 1996 15:35:19 -0400"
Thank you very much for your letter. I have actually been waiting for it for quite a while. I very carefully designed my Web page to avoid copyright problems. If you examine the HTML for my page, you will see it pulls images from the UnitedMedia server. I do not store any United Feature Syndicate intellectual property on my server.
At the current time, copyright protection does not extend to URL's (uniform resource locators - pointers to Web documents). Thus, I believe I am within my rights to present my Web page in its current form. Technically, I present a directory of pointers in much the same way as Yahoo, Lycos, or AltaVista. The legality of my page is directly related to the legality of search engines in general, and any legal action against me would set an important precedent for intellectual property on the Web.
Thank you very much for your time,
Dan Wallach
Department of Computer Science
Princeton University