Using the Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags to implement online copyright and a related amendment
| Pages | 94-106 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378831011026715 |
| Published date | 09 March 2010 |
| Date | 09 March 2010 |
| Author | Chyan Yang,Hsien‐Jyh Liao |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Using the Robots.txt and Robots
Meta tags to implement online
copyright and a related
amendment
Chyan Yang
Institute of Business and Management and Institute of Information
Management, National Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan,
Republic of China, and
Hsien-Jyh Liao
Taipei Prosecutor Office, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China
Abstract
Purpose – The Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags constitute a set of instruments that can be used to
instruct software robots. However, the current version of Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags are both too
simple and ambiguous in an internet world with many potential conflicts, especially in terms of
copyright and trespass to chattels. This paper seeks to propose an amendment to the Robots.txt and
Robots Meta tags to solve the problems.
Design/methodology/approach – Instead of following personal experience, this paper surveys
several predominant cases in an attempt to find general principles that can be used as guidelines to
amend the Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags.
Findings – According to several court cases, the Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags can not only be
used to simply allow or refuse the software robots, but also expressing the online copyright
authorization policies of webmasters. Any robot following the given policies can prevent possible
conflicts, and undoubtedly, any robot ignoring these may be in breach of the law. In terms of adapting
to their new roles successfully, the Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags need some supplements and
adoption; as a result, the webmasters can express their will more explicitly and avoid unnecessary
disputes in relation to copyright authorization scope and trespass to chattels as well.
Originality/value – This paper reveals the new function of the Robots.txt and Robots Meta tags.
Based on this new function, this paper points out the disadvantages of the current Robots.txt and
Robots Meta tags and proposes new a comprehensive amendment based on this new function.
Keywords Systems software,Tagging, Copyright law, Search engines
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The dramatic increase in web sites, to around 172,338,726 by June 2008 (Netcraft, 2008),
make searching and accessing specific materials harder and almost impossible without
any aid. The software robot is one of the most wide spread tools used for such data
searching services. For example, search engines like Google (Google, 2008a), Yahoo
(Yahoo, 2008a), MSN (MSN, 2008a), etc., all use software robots to collect data on the
internet and then provide that information to the public. Whilst having obvious
benefits, the software robots do have some underlying disadvantages: the unlimited
access from robots may overload the Web server and the re-use of the data collected by
the robots may result in copyright and other legal disputes. To diminish such possible
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
LHT
28,1
94
Received 14 October 2008
Revised 3 November 2008
Accepted 12 January 2009
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 28 No. 1, 2010
pp. 94-106
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378831011026715
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