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A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

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Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#111

Post by krschultz »

latch wrote: post #68

I'm going to have to go against the prevailing view and say that you guys are being way too harsh. She messed up. She apologized. Maybe it wan't sincere enough for you, fine. But in any case, what she did is less horrible than what has since been done to her. I have no doubt that "harass" is the right word, no doubt that her advertisers are being contacted, her voice mail stuffed, and her mailbox filled. Based on wha…

Copyright is not "silly shit" to a bunch of programmers (especially when many of them work on open source). Programmers make things that are copyrighted. A story about an individual having their work stolen by another invokes the same response among programmers as a story about a violent robbery would invoke in a storm owner. It gets personal. Right or wrong that explains the emotion behind the mob.

(Why this doesn't extend to violating copyright on music, movies, and games is beyond me.)

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#112

Post by scott_s »

adriennefriend wrote: post #76
aasarava wrote: post #15

The editor's response reveals a lot about her understanding (or lack thereof) of the business she's in. Normally I'm willing to overlook small typos in blog posts -- but when you are an editor, and you are writing an important response on an important issue, it's not wise to get the punctuation wrong on the very first word . (It should be "it's sad", not "its sad".) That she continues not to use apostrophes throughou…

Re: typos. Can we just do the "put yourself in their shoes" thing for a moment, and consider that she may be heart-broken by all of this, and typed that note through tears? Have you ever attempted to write a note (typed or hand-written), under extreme stress, pain, or frustration? I know I have. It wasn't pretty. Please, some compassion.

I've written emails during emotional turmoil before, usually related to relationships. I scour those, looking for any instance where what I said could be misinterpreted.

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#113

Post by timwiseman »

grellas wrote: post #57
aasarava wrote: post #15

The editor's response reveals a lot about her understanding (or lack thereof) of the business she's in. Normally I'm willing to overlook small typos in blog posts -- but when you are an editor, and you are writing an important response on an important issue, it's not wise to get the punctuation wrong on the very first word . (It should be "it's sad", not "its sad".) That she continues not to use apostrophes throughou…

I couldn't agree more that this editor's fate is deserved and that this is an "apology" only in the traditional meaning of that word (an attempted defense and not a mea culpa ), and a poor one at that. I also have been critical of her unbelievably tone-deaf approach to the subject of handling the complaint of an innocent person whom she had wronged (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1870300 ). Yet, at some leve…

You, as always, make good points. I have great sympathy for the editor on a human level, and I too have wound up in over my head in the past.

And yet, it is far better for a failing business to be forced to close and for someone that cannot handle the job to be removed from the position than for them to continue to be coddled by employers or society.

I must respectfully disagree with one statement you made though. You said, "she truly didn't have what it took ever to be good in this field". Clearly, I have not met this lady, but I am a great believer in people's ability to change. Perhaps success in the field would have required that she learn more, work harder, and perhaps even alter her personality, but I suspect all of those things would have been possible if she truly wanted it. Such drastic changes are likely rare, but they can be done.

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#114

Post by stcredzero »

zbyszek wrote: post #100
stcredzero wrote: post #91

From Techcrunch: If we let anonymous mobs have this much power, the world — the real, flesh-and-blood human one, not the virtual one of Tweets, blog posts, comments and LiveJournal feeds– is going to get worse, not better. http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/16/congrats-self-righteous-int... Already happened!

I imagine the Iranian government might express similar sentiments about anonymous internet mobs. The power they wield might be used to all sorts of ends, some of which we might admire, and some which we might find distasteful. Would a world where we forbid the anonymous mobs from having that much power be so much better?

I've never advocated banning anonymous mobs. However, I like pointing out when they do bad things. I find too many people seem to worship the activity of internet mobs as though they're inherently good, when they're no more inherently anything than any other sort of mob.

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#115

Post by owkaye »

skore wrote: post #106
ck2 wrote: post #74

Instead of picking up one of the multitude of books sent to me and typing it, I got lazy and went to the www and "found" something. Well there you go, and they didn't need to write the 2000 other words on that page which were all excuses - no one forced them to be a publisher. They copy and pasted and planned on begging for forgiveness later being easier than asking permission. Or maybe not even being noticed at all.…

An interesting point - after all, if this was really about creating a good magazine and not having enough time to write the content, going with public or CC licensed content would actually make a lot of sense. So the way she conducted her business was actually not THAT far off - she just happened to be completely ignorant about there being a way that she could avoid the obvious legal issues.

"she just happened to be completely ignorant about there being a way that she could avoid the obvious legal issues"

I think she has known all along that she's been running her business illegally by stealing other people's work without permission, and because she was never confronted about it until now she became emboldened to continue to expand her illegal practices.

I think she's acting ignorant, and it does not feel genuine to me at all. Anyone who claims to have been employed as an editor for 3 decades certainly knows what is legal and illegal. She just figured that she could get away with it -- and when confronted she decided that "the best defense is a strong offense" so she attacked the author verbally and tried to belittle her -- thinking perhaps that the author would simply back away and 'disappear' rather than assert her rights.

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#118

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

tesseract wrote: post #110
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly when if you paste the first paragraph (all three and a bit lines of it) into Word it points out the "Id/I'd" error and two other errors (traveling [sic] and hasnt [sic]). Zero skill, knowledge or emotional togetherness required.

> traveling [sic] I take it you're in the Commonwealth? A US copy of Word shouldn't flag that.

Fair point but the other two count.

You Americans should get that spell checker bug fixed though. ;-)

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#119

Post by senorprogrammer »

pyre wrote: post #94
senorprogrammer wrote: post #67

She's effectively written a long-winded excuse in the guide of an apology while making thinly-veiled attempts to blame the original author for her ensuing misfortune. At the same time she deftly manages to not mention the numerous other counts of plagiarism that were discovered. I'm sure she feels extremely sorry for herself right now but for all intents and purposes she is simply a thief.

She's not a thief, but she is a fraud. (i.e. copyright violate != theft)

Fair point. Agreed.

Re: A Follow-Up to "The Web is Public Domain"

#120

Post by chesser »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #103
chesser wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the so-called "mob justice" was a HUGE FAVOR. I'll explain. How would you feel if your start-up was ripped off? Would you want HN people to rally around you, or would that be "mob justice"? And what if it turned out the same people were also ripping off, say, Microsoft and Apple and several other large corporations? If everyone had been so civil and polite, they wouldn't have felt pressured to shut down. I d…

MP3s are different, they're covered by a specific law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) created at the behest of the record companies and it wouldn't apply here. While there may be some elements of criminal law that might apply, in all probability this would have been a straight civil case rather than a criminal matter with the writers claiming damages for the work published without permission. She could have ac…

Copyright law was originally instituted to cover written works. There is a ton of case law.

It would not have been kind to them.

Nobody "forced" them out of business, they voluntarily quit when they realized their sham was exposed.

In aggregate, their behavior easily qualified as multiple felonies; and damages alone would most likely have been ruinous.

I know I would not want to roll those dice.

So I think you're mistaken about essentially everything you said above.

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