This is getting very non-HPC/Beowulf-ish. My last public post on this. Email me offline if you want to continue the discussion.
On 04/14/2013 01:53 PM, Ellis H. Wilson III wrote: > On 04/14/2013 12:23 PM, Joe Landman wrote: >> On 04/14/2013 10:31 AM, Ellis H. Wilson III wrote: >>> I think this is strongly dependent upon whether or not the audience of >>> the list is already exposed to the media outlet the article is from. >> Hmmm ... a natural extension of this argument, not requiring any reach >> at all, is that posting other published digital copyrighted work online >> in any forum that may not have exposure to that work is ok. Literally, >> all we have to do is substitute "published digital copyrighted work" for >> the word "article" and we arrive at the same point. >> >> And that argument has been fairly well litigated, and the results are >> fairly well known. > You will note that I separated my points into three separate veins: > 1. Conjecturing on the impact of reposting full articles in an email > list on the aggregate traffic for a site > 2. The legal implications doing so are likely to have, and how snippets > deviate from full re-posts > 3. How all of this fits into the "etiquette" and policies of a list. > > I /never/ correlated my argument that increasing traffic with making > doing so "ok" from a legal standpoint as you suggest, or at the very > least, that was definitely not my intent. This was Eugen's intent from his post. > I continue to believe reposts will lead to, on the whole, larger amounts > of traffic reaching that site. I don't believe this makes it legal. > It's an orthogonal consideration. This presumes that you are in fact increasing traffic to the site, when by the very act of reproducing the content, you *reduce* the likely traffic to the site *because* you reproduced the article. That is, the theory behind "hey, reposting generates more business" is exactly identical to "hey, piracy increases software revenues." Both are at best fallacious arguments, and more empirically, not supported by the evidence. In fact the evidence from other industries runs entirely counter to this. I'd post a specific link, but it might be banned by various filters. Email me offline if you want it. What it comes down to is, whether you pay for it out of your pocket or via advertising, or not, the "or not" wins, and causes hardship for the content producers/distributors. Empirical evidence vs a WAG based upon an argument that is built on incorrect assumptions. > >>> any form or by any means..." So I think the case that snippets are ok >>> but full reproductions are not is a difficult case to make. Perhaps >>> there are laws that preempt this that discuss what percentage of a work >>> can be reproduced without it infringing on copyright that I'm not aware of. >> In the US there is a concept of "fair use" which allows some snipping. >> The courts have been arguing over what fraction constitutes fair use. >> Pretty much all of them are in agreement that 100% does not fair use >> make. That has gone over rather poorly for those replicating 100% of >> others work. > Agreed, and thanks for the note about "fair use." That is indeed the > part of law I was referring to but had managed to forget exactly what it > was called. Interestingly, a quick google search gets me to: > http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html > > This page has four factors that are considered, and since two of them > would be in favor of how Eugen shares full posts, whereas two of them > would be against him, I continue to be on the fence about what I suspect > would actually happen. I'm sure there's some case law that would > clarify that. Whatever the legal decision in the US, I doubt this has Heh ... so you've not been paying attention to what the music/movie companies have been doing here in the US to people who want to redistribute content without being troubled to pay for it to others happily consuming it without paying for it? How is this not identical to redistribution of an entire article, without the benefit of providing the consumer of the article an option to pay for their consumption via advertising? Really, there is no gray area on this. I know people might like to believe this, but its pretty cut and dry. In fact its so cut and dry that some folks have started suing over "deep linking", even though its precisely that which generates traffic to their sites, and allows them to collect that revenue. I'll classify such people doing that as ... not entirely understanding of the way the internet works. But its those links that give companies the chance to generate revenue. They made the decision to package these with their content, and it is not up to us as external actors to strip this out for everyone else. We can decide to do this for ourselves (the analogue is the "mute" button on your TV remote, which allows you to avoid listening to commercials which pay for the TV programs you might watch, if you watch). But there is no neighborhood-wide mute button, nor should there be. > any practical ramifications for him (besides possible removal from the > list if this is against policy). It's not going to be worth it for any > of the people Eugen reposts to try and sue him, particularly across > national boundaries. Both Eugen and the folks he is copying from are in the EU. They won't go after him, his pockets are not deep enough (no offence to Eugen on this). > > Moving on from considering this from an academic perspective, I'm > personally for snippets in terms of raw words in the email, but > definitely more selected and/or larger snippets than the one small part > of the first paragraph I get in my RSS feed from scalability.org :D. I don't advertise on that site. And Wordpress' RSS features are borked. > Some of those are utterly useless in conveying what the article is > really about. I suspect this is my RSS reader or your RSS server > though; no doing of your own. I just mention it as an example of where > a larger piece of text makes all the difference in the world in terms of > my going to the site to read it or not. Actually most of the traffic we are getting there comes from the Twitter reposts which provide a shortened URL back to the site. Its hard to write meaningful posts in 140 characters or less. > >>> On etiquette -- I absolutely abhor advertisements, which is why I use >>> AdBlock and FlashBlock on Firefox. This is a HIGHLY ideological >> Etiquette is not about advertising. Etiquette is about not abusing a >> resource, not blasting large messages which may be better read online >> via pointers. > I disagree. If we can agree that this type of reproduction falls into a > legal gray zone because it is for non-commercial and educational use, or So ... reproducing a commercial work, which has a specific set of linkage options, but no reproduction options is legally gray because it is "for non-commercial and educational use " ? By that logic, I can rent DVDs from Blockbuster, make copes for "non-commercial and educational use". I can borrow books from my library, and make copies for "non-commercial and educational use". Ad nausem. Seriously? That isn't a viable argument. There is nothing even remotely gray about this. If its a commercial work, in current circulation, how is distributing it, gratis, without compensation, permission, or the possibility of compensation, to hundreds or thousands of people "for non-commercial and educational use " ? I've made copies of books from the library, when the source was out of print, I could not find another copy anywhere, and it was, indeed, for educational use (for my thesis research, where I needed to have a copy close to me to so that I didn't get delayed in my work). I used that very sparingly, as the "non-commercial and educational use" is not absolute, and it would be unfair, be bad form, be unethical for me to make copies of "Feynman's lectures on Physics" and distribute them gratis to many students, "for non-commercial and educational use" versus pointing to the site where people could procure their own. The only time I've used this is when the market no longer provided a copy, and I could not find one anywhere else, inclusive of the publisher refusing to look for or print a single copy. Which in a different sense is why I like (sort of) e-books. Production costs don't include printing, so reproduction costs for works can be far lower, reducing that issue. > at least can agree that the likelihood of Eugen being sued over it is > very low, then all that is left is whether or not full reposts like his > are respectful to the authors or not. Since the only reason why people It has nothing to do with respect. > would be upset about the repost happening in full that I can think of is > loss of advertisement and thereby revenue, this boils down to how full Yes ... which happens when you reproduce things gratis without the advertisements or permission to reproduce them. > posts impact the traffic. Ergo, etiquette is *only* about > advertising/money. As an example, I have NO problem with people Um ... no. Etiquette is about respect for others in a social context. C.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette Its about behaviour and actions. My argument is that it is a breach of etiquette for someone to force me to read something by sending it out in its entirety, versus sending me a link and a cogent reason to read it. This is the case with huge articles in emails, or autoplaying flash sections on websites, etc. Its a breach of etiquette to the community as a whole to impose your specific will (reading, playing, etc.) upon them without their consent. > reposting my academic papers or posters. The ACM or IEEE might, > however. I make no money from my works (at least directly). They do. Au contraire! Are you not paid for *producing* your works? Would you not be at least mildly upset if you were asked to produce those works for less money? Or no money at all? I am talking about your salary here, not any additional money you might make from authorship. You are paid for research and related work, correct? If you were paid less for this work, would you not be understandably upset? That is the core of the argument as to why it is wrong to reproduce the work, as it lowers the effective income potential for the producers of the work. There really is no gray area here. It is quite cut and dry. > So all that matters is the $s in terms of respecting or disrespecting > somebody. Again, no. What matters is that someone who should not have the power to make decisions about whether another group has the right and ability to make money off of their work, has arbitrarily decided that they should be paid less. The breach of etiquette is a separate but also important issue. My argument is simply that there is strong empirical evidence from other ... er ... industries (think San Bernardino area, but there are many others as well, think Malibu and Studio City area) ... that what is postulated (free content drives more traffic) is most assuredly not the case. >> If you don't like advertisement, thats fine. You don't have to. You >> don't have to click on it. The media that covers us, and pays Nicole's, >> Doug E's, Rich B's and many other good folks salaries, are paid by >> advertising. So, does depriving them the chance at getting revenue for >> their hard work (writing articles) by replicating their postings in >> their entirety bereft of adverts here for all to see ... help them >> continue to cover and write about this market? That is, by doing so, >> you have effectively deprived them of their ability to obtain >> compensation for their work, in the form of advertising revenue. Is >> this right for *you* to decide to do this to them? Would you feel >> unhappy of *they* decided that you have to have your salary reduced by >> some random amount, though you did the same work that usually results in >> more salary for you? > I'll continue your analogy here to demonstrate my point that this is in > more of a gray area than you suggest: > > How would I feel, if somebody decided to increase my salary by some > random amount, but in the process used some of my work in a way I didn't > agree to? I'd probably be inclined to agree to that use, even if that > use wasn't fully optimal for myself. It's a net-gain for me, so unless > I felt I could get that optimal gain myself, without their help, I fail > to see how this would truly upset them. See above. This isn't a gray area at all, and the assumption of increased traffic to the site is, in fact, well known not to be correct. This is seen in pirated movies, books, etc. Microsoft doesn't get more money from pirated copies of its OS/apps. The film studios don't earn more money from bittorrent users. NYTimes and others were not making any money from people reproducing their articles in whole. So what makes you think that the site in question would buck the trend over the last few decades and start making more money from redistribution of its content? Lets stick with the reduction in salary argument, as this is what the evidence supports. So lets randomly reduce your take home pay, by doing something you do not explicitly permit. This decision is not made by you, but by a third party, outside of your employment, who simply decides you need to earn less money. This is exactly what is going on here. There is nothing gray at all. Arguing that full reproduction increases traffic goes against the empirical evidence that it does precisely the opposite. With that in mind, are you ok with some third party arbitrarily reducing your take home pay for reasons that are, well, laughable at best. > > Again, sure, if Eugen decides to post in the future just smaller > snippets, he'll increase their "salaries" by larger random amounts, but > ultimately I'll argue he is not beholden to do so (from a purely > practical, non-legal perspective) if he doesn't wish to, nor is doing so > truly disrespectful if we can agree he is increasing their traffic (and ... but he is decreasing their traffic by posting the *WHOLE* article. He *could* increase their traffic by posting a snip and a link. It has nothing whatsoever to do with respect. It has everything to do with rights of the content producer to make a living from their content. It has everything to do with bad form by forcing content down list readers email clients without their consent to read it. > thereby ad-serves). This is particularly true because Eugen isn't > taking some part of that ad-serve revenue for his own. If that were the ... no, but he is reducing their advertising revenue by posting it in whole, as he is reducing their traffic. There is no empirical evidence that his posts generate more traffic, there's a great deal of evidence across many content publication industries that it reduces traffic. And again, as these are the folks that depend upon their content to generate revenue and continue to cover this area, would it not seem that a sensible approach would be to, I dunno, help them? > case, it would be a far harder decision for the author. > > I agree that it's disrespectful if the link isn't along with the full > text, or if the authorship is removed or buried. That's clearly just > stealing work and pretending it's yours, which is disrespectful for > obviously plagiarism reasons. Eugen didn't do that at all. Uhhh ... so you are ok with ripping a DVD and distributing it, as long as you are not claiming it as your own work of authorship? Seriously, this is a flawed argument, at its most profound and fundamental level. The injury occurs the moment a decision is made by someone whom doesn't have ownership or decision making authority to make the decision to distribute without support for advertising. Everything beyond that is moot. Once that decision is made, game over. The injury has occurred. Arguing that he isn't plagiarizing it is superfluous. The damage isn't there, its in the redistribution without any hope of compensation due to a decision made by the redistributor to consciously remove the means for that compensation. > >> There really isn't any gray area here. Its pretty much black and white. >> The Inquirer, The Register, HPCWire, InsideHPC, ClusterMonkey all >> depend upon people clicking those links for them to make money. Is it >> your right to decide that they cannot make as much money by full >> reproduction to a wide group of people? Or would you in fact do them a >> favor by "driving traffic to them" which, once you start processing >> this, you realize is silly. You've consumed an advert supported product >> delivered to you without adverts, and now you are going to go to the >> site to see adverts? Um ... no. > You're failing to see that many of us aren't actively RSS'd to many of > those sites. So the potential to get those of us who aren't served ads Doesn't matter if you RSS to those sites. > to, was 0%. Now it is somewhat larger than that. Even if it is 1%, Did you read the article in whole on the email, or did you immediately visit the site when the article showed up? Most folks would do the former. Very few, if any, the latter. Some might have done this after I raised the point. I clicked the link and read it there. > that's a net-gain. I went to the site because my email is on my left No ... it is a net loss. Again, content industry after content industry has struggled hard to deal with this problem. And it is a problem for them (for their business models). > screen in my triple-monitor setup, so reading the whole article in > Thunderbird was not an attractive proposition. I much preferred to read > it, and see any graphics along with it, in Firefox, which was on my main > larger screen. Though I didn't see them, I'm sure they served me some ads. > >> The issue is if the Inquirer folks call up Penguin and say "guys, stop >> this person from posting our articles without permission, and remove all >> the old ones he's posted", what do you think is going to happen? > I continue to agree with everybody that some policy should be shared > with the list regarding how much is acceptable to snippet or copy from a > copyrighted site. I don't think any of us want to get Penguin in hot > water, whom we all appreciate providing this service. Penguin are good people. No more long articles. A snip and a link. Please, it is better for everyone, and you might actually generate more traffic to the site in question. If you make it so that people cannot make money in an industry, they'll go do something else. This is not what we want for HPC journalism. Especially since we have quite good journalists in this space. Its a choice to make, and you get to choose by your actions. My point being that what James Cuff did a few hours ago with a link was exactly what should have happened. What Eugen did is what content producers are fighting against, as it directly threatens their business models. -- Joseph Landman, Ph.D Founder and CEO Scalable Informatics, Inc. email: land...@scalableinformatics.com web : http://scalableinformatics.com http://scalableinformatics.com/siflash phone: +1 734 786 8423 x121 fax : +1 866 888 3112 cell : +1 734 612 4615 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
