NZ ISP Slammed For Republishing Web Pages Without Permission

by Mary Swire, for LawAndTax-News.com, Hong Kong

14 April 2003

A report from an Australasian technology news provider has accused New Zealand's largest ISP, Xtra, of republishing a customer's website content without permission.

According to the Daily Aardvark news service, several years ago Maggie Burnett agreed that Xtra could link to her website's content from their own pages. However, consulting her server logs and finding hardly any referrals from Xtra, Ms Burnett looked into the situation, and reportedly found evidence which suggested that the service provider was republishing her content as its own without her permission.

Although the ISP has since presented Ms Burnett with a content licensing agreement to sign, Aardvark reported that Xtra does not intend to compensate her for its unauthorised use of her intellectual property, and has merely offered to 'place the content provider's URL on the XtraMSN site'.

Furthermore, the Internet Service Provider has since suggested that it made use of Maggie Burnett's website content with her full permission, as evidenced by an e-mail received by Aardvark during the course of compiling the report:

'While it would be inappropriate to go into the detail of a commercial arrangement with one of our suppliers, I can assure you this has been with Maggie's permission and is supported by our email communications with her,' Anna Kermode, Xtra's Public Affairs Specialist explained.

However, as the author of the Aardvark report observed: 'why (if they claim to have permission) did Xtra suddenly pull all (Maggie Burnett's)...content from their website when the republication was noticed?'

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