Thursday, July 15, 2004
Necessity is the mother of invention: Re-publishing the web
Many web sites, despite their good intentions, remain difficult to use, and are sometimes even completely inaccessible, especially if you happen to be using a non-Microsoft browser, or if you don't like to have cookies turned on, or whatever.
I'm impressed to see that some people out there have taken it upon themselves to address the problems with some of these sites by re-publishing them in more accessible forms. Matthew Somerville is one such person, offering accessible versions of the Odeon and National Rail sites. note that National Rail have promised that their own site will soon be updated to address the problems that Matthew has fixed, whilst Odeon have taken legal action. is this kind of re-publishing really breaking copyright, or is it simply an advanced version of linking to a site? I'd argue for the latter, and encourage any company that finds enhanced versions of its website not to take legal action, but to take note, and update its own site accordingly.
Many web sites, despite their good intentions, remain difficult to use, and are sometimes even completely inaccessible, especially if you happen to be using a non-Microsoft browser, or if you don't like to have cookies turned on, or whatever.
I'm impressed to see that some people out there have taken it upon themselves to address the problems with some of these sites by re-publishing them in more accessible forms. Matthew Somerville is one such person, offering accessible versions of the Odeon and National Rail sites. note that National Rail have promised that their own site will soon be updated to address the problems that Matthew has fixed, whilst Odeon have taken legal action. is this kind of re-publishing really breaking copyright, or is it simply an advanced version of linking to a site? I'd argue for the latter, and encourage any company that finds enhanced versions of its website not to take legal action, but to take note, and update its own site accordingly.
Comments:
I have been following this case with interest. Odeon's stance seems to be perverse, particularly given the anti-discriminatory legislation recently introduced in the UK to enhance the rights of disabled people. It's also pretty poor business sense and bad customer relation practice, although I guess you can't expect a old-fashioned multi-national capitalist enterprise to get its head around something as complex as equality or the ability of net users to circumvent their archaic practices.
http://www.commonman.org.uk/blogmt
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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