Copyright Infringement and Frames [OFF, possibly]

["Sokohl, Joe" <Joe -dot- Sokohl -at- USMAIL -dot- MPCT -dot- COM>]

Recently I found my Web site hijacked by a group called the Mining
Company. Within this group's Website is a page devoted to technical
writing. Cool idea, eh? Maybe, except they have links that are embedded
within their frameset. That is, when you click a link to an external
page, the external page loads subordinate to the frameset.

I'd written Gary Conroy, the head of the technical writing guide and
asked him simply to add "TARGET='_TOP'" to the HREF tag jumping to my
page. Instead, he responded that "a corporate/editorial decision has
been
made" to hijack other people's pages. Indeed, he admitted that "...the
aim is to give the newbie the impression that the whole Internet is
encompassed, in some way, by the Mining Company." Somewhat arrogant on
their (not Gary's) part, eh?

Does this bother anyone else? I'm reminded of the recent lawsuit that
several major news organizations filed against a firm called TotalNews
(http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,11272,00.html). TotalNews had a
Website whose frame structure implied that it was the owner/author of
pages actually copyrighted and hosted by the Washington Post, Time,
Reuters, and others.

I don't mind other people linking to my site--but I do object to my
intellectual property being coopted like this. It's as if I created a
documentation site and placed an in-frame reference to Adobe's
docuemntation, making it look like it were my company's doc. It's akin
to replacing the Word user manual's cover with a proprietary cover....

joe
joe -dot- sokohl -at- mpct -dot- solutions
Personal Home Page: http://homepage.interaccess.com/~jsokohl/
PS: This e-mail reflects my thoughts & opinions only, not mpct
Solutions'