Slashdot Mirror
Deja Linking Ads Within Usenet Posts?
---begin deja's reponse-----
Greetings,
Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.
We are sorry that you are offended by this feature. We do not believe that users of Deja.com will view the hyperlinks as being part of your message. Rather, we believe users will understand that the content of the original Usenet posting has not changed, and will appreciate that these hyperlinks are simply part of our continued efforts to make Deja.com a compelling way for users to discuss and learn about products
We know that users love to discuss and debate their favorite products and services on Usenet, and our new links provide seamless, one-click access to additional information about the exact product being discussed - from specifications and features to user ratings and reviews.
*Please bear with us during our roll-out of this feature. We are working to refine the process by which we generate these context-sensitive links in order to maximize their relevance to the products and services being discussed.
We are providing these links to help users make the most of Deja.com's content offerings, and we hope that you will come to find them helpful. However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages. Deja.com also currently observes the "x-no-archive: yes" header, which prevents postings from being available on Deja.com. More information about using headers when posting through Deja.com is available at http://www.deja.com/help/help_pn.epl For help on including headers when posting through other software or services, please refer to the help documentation for the software or service you are using to post Usenet messages. In addition, you may refer to the "self nuke" feature of Deja.com described at http://www.deja.com/help/faq_abuse.epl #nuke, which allows users to delete their messages which appear on Deja.com.
If you wish to remove older posts:
Deja.com has a form for users that allows you to remove (nuke) articles that you authored from a verifiable account.
This form can be found at
http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml
Please visit this page. Be careful to follow the instructions given both on that page and on the email that follows, or your messages will not be nuked.
Note that if the message was posted to a Usenet newsgroup, this will not eliminate your posts from the Usenet at large, only from our archives.
If the post is on an old or defunct email address please contact me for further instructions.
*Should you wish to prevent your articles from being archived in the future, when posting you will need to place the x-header:
x-no-archive: yes
in the x-header field of your posting form, or if your browser or newsgroup reader does not support x-headers, then you will need to type
x-no-archive: yes
as the FIRST line of the body. Note, it must be the ONLY text on that first line. Also, for your information, the x-no-archive will prevent your post from making their way to our archives, but in no way does this prevent an replied article from being archived.
In other words, if you post an article with the x-no-archive: yes header, and then someone reads your article and decides to reply by clicking the REPLY button, it will quote the body text of your article. The x-no-archive: yes within your original article WILL NOT prevent the replying author's article from being archived. In order for that to occur, the replying author would have to place the x-no-archive header within their x-header field or first line of the body text.
Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions, and thanks for using Deja.com!
************************************************************** Please include all previous threads in replies.
Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For updates and FAQ, check out our Deja.com Customer Support Community at:
http://www.deja.com/~customersupport
***************************************************************
-------end deja's response--------
Because (arguably) the content is being modified ... that's a violation of Copyright. With the Ebay situation, the presentation may have changed (just like viewing a message in different news readers) but the content was not.
If they wanted to make a sidebar with hyperlinks to objects you reference in your message, that's fine by me.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
2) Deja is not modifying the text of anyone's articles in any way. All they are doing is putting hypertext links on text that would not otherwise be linked. They are not taking away, they are only adding. Everyone understands that Usenet is originally a plain text forum, and any HTML markup in and around messages is clearly understood (by someone who has more than 3 brain cells) to be part of Deja, and not the original author. (For instance, a link to reply to the author via email.) Anyway, the links are clearly marked with the little triangle.
It seems to have the potential to be quite helpful to me ...though the algorithm isn't perfect ... in the example in this story, a generic post about 'modems' went directly to a particular IBM modem. Why? Why not "Top 25" modems?
This isn't about advertising, this is about changing the meaning of someone's writings. Simply using another service doesn't change the fact that Deja is putting words into my mouth when they mark up my post without my permission. I don't even use Deja but I'm concerned enough to look into it.
A Banner ad to the side of an article is clearly an advertisement and not part of the usenet posting.
Hyperlinks in the text of the article, can be confused for the author's own hyperlinks.
Adding hypercontent to an article is as bad as adding another paragraph. How would you like it if Deja automatically added text advertisements at the end of you posting, say in your .sig file area. It would look like you were making a personal endorsement.
Hypertext is the same, its extra content that appears to be coming from the original author, and I dare say this is a violation of the original author's copyright on the article or libel.
Whipped up a quickie dejafilter patch to kill this stuff.. thought I'd share.
= ========================== = ========================== g if\"(.*?)>(.*)/$3/g; a t_a_glance\/glance.xp(.*?)\">
note I'm no perl God, so the regexp probably is flawed, but wtf...
(if this paste fails snag the diff from http://euler.ewi.org/~rroberts/dejafilter.patch )
I take no blame, backup files first, save the children, blah blah blah...
---
*** dejafilter.pl Wed Jun 14 15:45:32 2000
--- dejafilter2.pl Wed Jul 19 09:54:19 2000
***************
*** 59,64 ****
--- 59,68 ----
# Version 0.07 - 12/04/1999 - P. Wehr, Industrial Softworks
#
#================================================
+ #
+ # Version 0.07b - 19/Jul/2000 - rossr mod; strip embedded ad links
+ #
+ #================================================
use CGI qw( escape param header );
use CGI::Carp 'fatalsToBrowser';
***************
*** 110,115 ****
--- 114,126 ----
my $script_name = $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'};
+ # what embedded link images? (rossr)
+ $trimmed_down_content =~ s/<img src=\"http:\/\/(\w)\.deja\.com\/gifs\/arrow_link.
+
+
+ # what embedded ad links? (rossr)
+ $trimmed_down_content =~ s/<a href=\"http:\/\/(\w+)\.deja\.com(.*?)\/products\/
(.*?)<\/a>/$4/g;
+
#Redirect form actions to dejafilter
$trimmed_down_content =~ s/<form action="[\w\[\]\.\/:=]*\/(.*)"(.*)>/
<form action="$script_name" \2>
-'fester
'Hmmm... Lets see. I have a brain, and I don't see a tiny orange triangle as "clearly discernable"'
Try to pick up a new brain.
Ranessin
Granted, good sites like Deja won't exist if they can't find a way to pay for themselves. But playing devil's advocate: There was a recent ruling that E-Bay has the right to prevent competitors from meta-browsing its site and re-presenting the content. Deja is doing a similar thing, but with a public resource with no single owner. Should the "public" in some way be granted a say as to whether this is legit? I guess this isn't so much an argument against Deja as an argument against meta-browsing restriction. I don't think anybody objects to Deja as a browser allowing people to search their usenet posts, and we would get into a slippery slope trying to define which functionalities are conveniences and which are manglings of the post. (stopping before the train of thought gets too long and off topic)
I agree that its a useful feature, and that it may not be advertising per se. I just think there are better ways to do this. (See my previous post).
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
If you want to be really pedantic about it, that's what they're doing. They are not changing what you're saying. They're adding something that,
due to the nature of a Usenet posting (a non-MIME-fubared one anyway), you couldn't have put in there yourself, and is thus, quite obviously, something added after the fact
With the massive ingress of Usenet newbies, "quite obviously" is (IMO) a gross overestimation. Deja is newbie-friendly, and I can easily see these newbies thinking that the original author put these links in the message. The last thing I need/want is some newbie asking me questions about the IBM Modem I referenced.
I also run an on-line store, and answer a LOT of questions in a particular newsgroup or two, I also don't like the idea of Deja picking up on product keywords in MY posts and linking them to THEIR sales engine. I've taken the time to compose a helpful message with references to individual products or product types and now Deja is going to sponge off of that to make links to THEIR store.
Bottom line, I think it sucks...
-This sig intentionally left blank
Just something for thought.
I hate to say it, but Deja is one of the very, very few web-based "services" I'd pay money to subscribe to. More than once the ability to do power searches of old USENET articles has saved my ass, both personally and professionally. I think I'd like it even better if I could pay to subscribe to it -- better searches, no fsck'n banner ads. Kind of a NEXIS for the USENET.
I'm a little put off by the electronic media's ability to almost subliminally insert additional content like Deja is doing, but at the same time I think a USENET search engine adds so much value that I'm willing to overlook it in this case.
What they're doing would be objectionable if they were modifying the actual text of the postings. The net effect of what they're doing is that some words have a blue underline, and only Deja can add that. They will turn http://www.slashdot.org into a hyperlink, but I don't think they will translate embedded HTML into links, so you know that hyperlinked text == Deja-included links.
Deja.com, Inc. -- Share what know- Learn what you don't
For a company that makes its living off of the English language, they don't seem to be able to wield it themselves.
gitm
- The pen is mightier than the sword, the court is mightier than the pen, and the sword is mightier than the court.
Actually, this is an idea - everybody has one vote, except ones who is working for corporations - they have one vote for all the corporate body. I wonder how the laws were with this setup :)
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I think there is a big difference. Mainly, the users of Hotmail are informed about the tagline at the bottom of the message when they sign up for the service. With the deja service, the posters aren't informed. So, if I post from news.isp.net, my post will show up with the deja links, on the deja site. Therefore, deja users will be viewing my post in an altered form, without my permisions to make the alterations.
"I don't use their newsfeed, but anyone who does sees MY words altered."
<p>
Charlie, did you actually read the article? Because had you bothered so to do then you would realise that, and I know you will have difficulty understanding this, <strong>they do not alter any of your words whatsoever</strong>
<p>
That is quite a key point (blows your entire complaint away), so important that I suggest you reread it again and again until you understand it.
<p>
What they DO do is add hyperlinks (remember them? 's what the web is all about, hyperlinks) which are, and again you will have difficulty understanding this, <strong>clearly marked</strong> and obviously not part of your original text.
<p>
Deal with it.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Please refrain from further metaphors equating urine (or any other form of excrement) with food (or drink) in your future postings to Slashdot.
It's a good thing you don't drink american beer then. (judging by your dietary preference, I'd wager a guess that you aren't a fan of the american be... err, rancid cow urine.)
This is precisely the point. I don't use Deja to post. So why should they be able to insert advertising links into my words as if I endorsed the products? This is exactly like someone taking something I wrote and inserting it in a magazine ad without my permission.
While I wouldn't approve of the policy, I suppose Deja could work it into their user's agreement that posts made with Deja could be altered in this way. But I don't see that they have a right to turn my independent posts into ads. (IANAL)
I just searched my posts made since yesterday and found no such links inserted (a few of the posts even mentioned "modems.") I'll be watching for it now.
"Almost every article"? What a laugh! Deja's been a joke ever since they started playing the Let's-Pretend-We're-Yet-Another-Portal game, and it was only adding insult to injury when messages older than a year or two were removed from their archive. They say they're going to reinstate the missing chunks Real Soon Now, but then they start pulling this crap instead? I reiterate, what a laugh. Deja is a pathetic joke nowadays, no two ways about it.
Go to http://www.dejanews.com/home_ps.shtml. Do a search for "Addtron switching hubs". The 3rd entry is the one by Earle Robinson that had the "ad" link embedded in it in the original Slashdot article.
Apparently the link isn't there when you do a power search?
"That's like I'd now create a webpage that is titled "some slashdot comments by swerdloff, uid #16397" and put all kinds of crap there, as if you said it indeed."
No, that's like you creating the webpage, putting in swerdloff's posts, and hyperlinking from the posts to pages you feel are relevent with clearly marked links. There is a *huge* difference.
Ranessin
It's NOT I don't want to see the silly hyperlinks, it that they are, effectively, misquoting me!
Deja has given you the perfect remedy: go to their link and nuke your articles. Get them out of Deja's hands. Unfortunately, your words die forever, but that's the price you pay. If they should be timeless, create a web page of your own to preserve them.
Nice little service? To get to news only, not to the article you need, you have to skip past some 3-4 screens of advertisement. And they don't insert ads in their posts - they insert ads in my posts. Links to things that make me look like I endorse it - even if I never did.
And yes, I'm turning around. Did that long ago. I'd better look on something like Geocrawler.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Wow! HDTV in the car? Neat! I can't wait!
Well, they mentioned the 'x-no-productlinks: yes', but I like your choice far better...
how 'bouts: x-leave-my-freaking-post-alone-you-dirty-whores: yes
A little dramatic, but it might be effective 8^)
Maybe it's just time to default every news reader to x-no-archive: yes... that would be interesting...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Can you say "Innovate"?
-----
Even if they just reply to it nicely in this manner, they're being far more intrusive than Deja is. Just because it's done automagically instead of by a person doesn't make a difference as far as the law is concerned. If they stop Deja on copyright enfringement charges, everybody who uses Usenet will be stuck trying to figure out how much they can quote with fair use or else risk getting sued for their reply. Given the nature of some of the flames I've seen, that's a fairly sure bet before too long.
Regardless, as one poster noted, the links are marked with an orange triangle to distinguish them from real links. What's the problem here?
Borogrove
"Thank you,
Dot
Customer Support "
Is their customer support agent really named "Dot"?!?!
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't dejanews a free service they provide to people? In which case aren't they entitled to do do what they want with it? If you don't like it, use a different news feed. Blane.
Absolutely - It being the case that probably the most relevant battle being fought in the US (and perhaps the World) right now is that for the rights of Corporations vs Individuals, it's rather disheartening to see a post on /. which so grievously misses the differentiation between the two moderated up so high. Ouch.
How can you say they aren't changing the post. The person VIEWING it thru their service is looking at a modified version of what you have read. Seems to me they are in some how violating the implied copyright you have on ANYTHING you write by modifying it without your permission and without letting you know it's occuring. Don't forget - Deja.com ISN'T usenet, it's JUST a portal. Not everyone on USENET uses Deja.com...they'll have NO idea this is happening. I think it sucks!
For the first couple years of Deja's life they were doing cool stuff and became a MAJOR resource on the web for research. Then they dump years of archives, now they're putting adds into the stuff.
It's time to write them off.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
"I've taken the time to compose a helpful message with references to individual products or product types and now Deja is going to sponge off of that to make links to THEIR store."
And Deja has taken the time, *and*money* to make your post accessible to more people.
Ranessin
Articles archived before the news header should be exempt from advertisements since there was no way for their authors to opt out.
*A*ffected, not *e*ffected... please use the correct word...
[/pedantic]
I doubt that this header will be noticed by 99% of the world (everyone who doesn't specifically look for it on Deja), and so it won't really matter...
They could put a little box on the side, top or bottom - Related Links... hmmm... sounds like a good idea...
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I can't help but notice that, here on Slashdot, the second anyone does anything that violates some insanely strict, unwritten code, people are suddenly up in arms.
This is one of those occasions. This is deja's service, they clearly mark the links with an orange "deja triangle", and, if you don't want to see the links, find another way to browse Usenet. This is a free service on their part; I don't see what right any of you have to sit around and bitch about it. There could even be people who find this feature useful, and I really don't see how you can justify taking this away from them.
Use it or don't, but don't complain and whine about how this is violating your basic natural rights or how it's a sign of creeping corporatism that's going to take over your brain and steal your children.
It's just a website trying to make a little money. Deal with it.
----
1984? To be so lucky. The image of the future isn't a picture of a face being stomped on by a boot, forever. Instead, it'll be something...like...this;
The ceiling brightens, and an image of a sun dances across it...with the GM logo embossed on it...the shadow of a car eclipses it for a moment.
You: Damn, I thought I opted out of that.
Rub your eyes. Push 3M-Lumisheets aside, get out of bed. The sheets have little company logos that shimmer and ripple across the surface
You: Got to make the breakfast...got to make the breakfast...
As you walk to the light switch, the sounds of waves lapping ... lapping and sand shifting are projected from the carpet. Then a soothing voice "Get away, take a Royal Caribbean vacation.
You [mumble]: fuch you...not going on another one of those damn trips...floating hotels.
There are two light switches both in illuminated green; One says YES the other says, slightly brighter, YESS. The fine print under YESS says 'yess...send me back to the Bahamas on the cruse of a lifetime'.
You pound the YES button...now mildly angered. The YESS button was on the left last time.
The rest of the morning is uneventful. You get dressed in your clothes, shower, all sponsored by the conglomerate TPGE (aka Toyota-Pepsi-GE). Little ditties and logos are everywhere, shimmering, whispering; 'did you know you can get a tune-up for your Nissan at any Toyota-Ultra-Care Autoparks?' Now, you know.
Presentable, you get in your Nissan Phantom (watch some hdtv on the view screen while in traffic), and get to work.
Your day is boring. Any epaper you touch flashes a logo across it for a moment before it's readable ... but it does have a search engine built in.
Your lunch comes..but you change your mind before it arrives and the delivery guy gets angry;
You eat the tuna sandwich.
Throughout the day, your coworkers occasionally drop by for chit-chat. Talking about what they just bought, places they're going. Oddly enough, you rember most of those things from adds in the company bathroom.
Feeling proud, you are glad that you -- at a minimum -- are doing something useful. The new Microsoft On-Target targeted marketing engine is almost complete...it should make things much better. You smile, showing sharp teeth.
*BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT* Smacking your clock radio...you pant, thinking 'It's not true, OH!' You relax in bed to some music, and in a moment a soothing voice comes on and asks if you 'want a break today?'
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I am probably wrong here but.... Don't people who post to Usenet own the copyright of their message? If deja is changing the text ( by adding html tags ) of the body does this not break the copyright? Just a thought.
"What deja does, even in their normal use, probably exceeds that implicit license, and fair use.
Anyway, I have just sent them a digitally signed formal takedown notice under DMCA asking them to take down all my posts from their site, and preventing their site to include my further postings."
Could you pleasy state your reason for doing so? It seems your Usenet posts would be a loss for lots of people looking for help on deja.com, and the number of people knowing about your web site that archives most articles is limited in comparison.
Probably I'm a bit naive here, but don't you think the general use people can make of your articles on deja.com exceeds the nuisance of deja.com making money of your IP?
--
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind.
Its teaching, therefore, should be
Ah, the wonders of advertising. This does make an interesting point, though. Is this just blatant comercialism or is it just informative? IMHO, Deja needs to post a warning on it's pages letting people know that the links are not from the original poster.
The Geek shall inherit the Earth
I find this hilarious.
Just yesterday everyone thought it was the fairest thing in the world for someone to take eBay's content, which was posted to a public forum, and manipulate it for display on their own site.
Now everyone is up in arms about Deja taking their comments, which were posted to a public forum, and manipulating them by linking in ads.
This is just free advertising for your posts!
Geez...
Well,
first let me say I don't like this too much either. But on the other hand it is quite easy to bypass this with a little Perl at hand... simply parse the response and get the text only article, which is a better idea anyway (Used to be called "original Usenet format", includes headers and all, and is in nice fixed widht font, like it should be).
My problem with this is that it seems there is no other Usenet archive out there that can compare to deja.com regarding completeness and historical data... I'd have no problem to pay a monthly fee for having access to such a service, but it seems I can't find one.
Meanwhile, I don't have too great a problem with these ads, ignoring them is not too hard, and deja has to pay all those hard drives in some way, no?
--
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind.
Its teaching, therefore, should be
Adding hyperlinks _IS_ adding words.
Copyright, sigh.
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Well, the parody sites make you ask for a particular page to be parodied. If deja had a button on each message that said "linkify post" and another that said "unlinkify post" then that would be fine.
Deja, however, make it very hard to see the original post.
Johan
Hmm...very true. I did not think of this. Can "hyperlinking" a word be considered a "derived work"? I would say so. Up to the courts.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You must still be in Advertising 101. I shouldn't be telling you this, but they don't let you in on the secret that the purpose of advertising is in fact to deceive until Advertising 302.
--
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
If you post to Usenet, your material that you post is copyrighted. You and you alone own the rights unless you specify otherwise. Deja is thus bound to YOUR terms and conditions, it's not the other way around. The only choice you have to keep Deja from using your work to advertise products without compensating you is have is to add a no-archive tag in your message header. Deja is putting the burden on you. They are effectually turning that no-archive tag to mean no-turn-my-post-into-an-ad. Maybe I want my material to be archived (perhaps by other archivers besides Deja), but I don't want specific content in my posts to be used to endorse products without my permission. I guess I no longer have a choice because Deja is forcing people who don't want their messages to become advertisements to give up their rights to let it be archived ANYWHERE.
I'd say it's you. If you don't like what deja is doing then don't use their service. That's YOUR choice.
And from the above URL:
Besides which, wouldn't a UDP, assuming it were enforced, rather spoil the other point of Deja, which is being a useful Usenet archive?
Not my problem. It's the nature of capitalism that some businesses will fail. If your local corner store needs $500 to survive, is it okay for them to steal it from your house?
Last time I was in the land of usenet, it was a vast wasteland of Live Goat Porn and Make Money Fast spam. No sentient life was detected. I suppose Deja might insert ads into the Live Goat Porn and Make Money Fast ads and they might piss off a few spammers in the process (Especially if they link the ads to other sites) and wouldn't THAT be ironic?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The fact that any slashdotter would be against this is just another point in the long list of the techno-rebel's hypocritical stance on copyright. The techno-rebels believe that all software should be free, and anybody should be able to modify it and distribute it. The same people who think they have the right to use recorded music and recorded video in any form, including what the producers do not want to use it as, think they have the right to control their own Usenet posts. Clearly, what Deja is doing is compatible with this. Furthermore, any type of service which does interprets your post falls under this category. What Deja is really doing is interpreting your keywords, perhaps incorrectly (i.e. it may make your words into an endorsement). Is this any different than a wrongly translated output from Babelfish? So is Babelfish violating copyright because it makes a derived work from yours without permission?
First off, thanks to the moderator who gave my post the +1 Insightful.
I don't understand the -1 Overrated moderation, though. It's not like I recieved +4 for Insighful, so how does a single +1 make the whole thing overrated?
I complained once, and now it seems like more of my posts get a -1 ... out of spite? I can't tell, since I don't know who moderated me down. Either way, it does look like a reverse-troll. If so, very bad form. If not, give me a clue, eh?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
This was discussed at some length at
rec.arts.sf.fandom, and one thing we noticed is that Deja is using a *different* special X-header than Remarq offered when people wanted them not to insert ads in our Usenet postings.
We all know that X-headers are, by definition, not standardized: nonetheless, it would have simplified things for Deja to use the same X-no-markup header Remarq used before they backed down from the whole thing (in part because people figured out ways to mess up their displays by inserting HTML in posts).
Here's an idle thought: if Deja can change the rules without notifying people (even those who have accounts at Deja found out about this only by accident), why can't we? What happens if I include, in my Usenet posts, something like the
following:
"This post copyright 2000 by Vicki Rosenzweig. Permission to insert hyperlinks for advertising purposes is available for $100 per post. Insertion of such links constitutes acceptance of these terms."
It would be interesting to see their response when the bill showed up.
Weblog: http://www.redbird.org/yawl.html
Slashdot: Why do you post articles whose URLs have been wordwrapped, and are therefore broken?
Corrected link
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
trashed? no, they're sitting in storage. They litarally have all those machines stased in a storage room in their offices.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
>And if you're too stupid to recognize deja's links you're probably too stupid for Usenet and the Internet in general.
Unfortunately, there are several companies out there making sure that all the stupid people get a fair shake, too... Maybe the Internet should be limited use to those who have IQ ratings over a certain point... let all the people below that cobble together their *own* worldwide network! [/stupid idea]
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I am no lawyer, too, but I know a bit of copyright law because I am teaching web design, and I know pretty well that you need a license for other peoples intellectual property to use it. By posting material to USENET, you give an implicit license to use this material in the context of USENET, and use of my message in answers is even covered by fair use provisions.
At the very most, you are giving an implicit licence to use the material in unaltered form. Just because slashdot puts up a website, this doesn't give an ISP, say MSN, the right to add advertisements in the middle of it. That would certainly hold up in court, and if you could afford the lawyers, so would your argument here.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Wouldn't that be counted as meta-browsing? See the recent Slashdot story for details...
If you had a browser that automatically created links to products or sites of interest as you browsed, maybe based on your preferences, maybe not (a Yahoo-cum-Office Assistant...), would there be copyright issues? The person browsing knows that red (whatever) links are added in by the browser, and weren't part of the original text. No-one who wants the unalloyed text (or to avoid advert links) need to use the browser. And the text itself isn't changed in any meaningful sense (more than changing graphic preferences, surely). Isn't this pretty much what Deja are doing? The links are plainly part of the text. You don't need to use Deja. And the original text can be read "as" originally intended by not following (or seeing the URL of) the links.
No, they are linking not TMs (which I could bear with, though I don't need it too) but general terms, and link not to TM owners, but to advertisers. I do not want every "modem" word in my post to advertise some IBM product. I never heard any good (as well as bad) about IBM modem and they nnever paid me for advertising their product. So please Deja advertise these modem outside the text of my post.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
My previous post said that "at the very least it is wrong not to identify" deja.com's inserted links. I didn't mean to suggest that this practice would be acceptable to everyone.
You have perfectly valid arguments against the practice... some of the same ones that I have, although I wasn't trying to argue my point of view here.
The original point of the thread was to discuss the legality of inserting these links into posts made to a semi-public board (public in the sense that anyone can read them, but a site that is hosted by a privately owned company). Legality and moral veritude are two different issues. There are many perfectly legal actions that I find reprehensible, but as long as it is legal, there will be people or companies out there that will ignore any ethical issues and practice these actions.
Eric
The little deja triange clearly shows that it's not a link placed by the original author, so they certainly aren't attributing it to them.
Ranessin
I usually don't post but I had to this time. I use Deja allot and personally I don't think I want my post filled with links to ads. I really don't care about how deja will make another buck.
Can you spell m0dem?
The fact is unless people complain VERY loudly, nothing will change. Corporations will just keep taking more and more. They don't stop because they don't have to. To fight crap like this you have to use the system.. simply don't use them anymore. I know it sucks, but it's the price you have to pay.
-e2d2
they don't distribute any posts except thos made by my-deja users. The "altered" posts?? Look at them in the "original usenet format". I'm betting you won't see any links there. the add the links when they render the pages. Man, if only you know a whit about running a usenet server and how much traffic they get.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
No. He is not trying to single out specific readers, he wants to prevent them from altering and then broadcasting that modified message. Specifically, what Deja is doing is something not allowed by the implicit 'agreement' posters & Usenet news system have (like n+1 people have already pointed out, do read their posts). By same token, your posting does constitute an agreement for Slashdot to distribute your post unaltered. Also, quoting your post is allowable under fair use provided, provided your text is not altered.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The real issue is less of copyright and more of advertising practices and compensation in general. My analogy:
Jingle writers are paid to create music that encourages people to purchase a product. The marketer associates their tune with an advert and they are happy. The work is for hire, so the copyright belongs to the hiring company, but the jingle writer is still content, because they negotiated their contract this way.
Musicians, on the other hand, write music creatively. The marketer approaches the musician and asks for permission to use their tune in an advert. The musician considers, and either declines (and many do, not wanting their music to be associated with given product) or is paid a grand sum of money.
Why is the musician paid? Not to create the music - that's already done. The musician is paid to associate their music with a product. The marketer makes money, because the consumer sees the advert and thinks 'hey, that's my favorite band playing. wow, they must like and support this product. i'd better go buy some.' The marketer has paid the musician, and still must pay for the venue in which the ad will be run. The musician still owns (or the record company, but that's another issue altogether) the copyright. The advert's use of the tune has not violated the copyright. The music has not been altered in any way. But the musician still must be compensated, for the use and association of the music.
There are two elements in this scenario; the musician gives permission, and the musician gets paid.
Now, how does this apply to Deja?
Your original Usenet post is your creation, just as the musician's original tune belongs to them. Other people can read your post elsewhere, unaffected. IBM, however, is like the marketer in our analogy. IBM pays Deja for the existence of its aid on their platform. To this point, all is good and fine.
At the point where Deja associates your post with IBM's advert, all stops being good and fine. IBM has paid the venue, but theoretically should also be paying you, the creator of the content that is being associated with the advert. IBM pays Deja more for the text association. Is Deja passing on that reimbursement to you?
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, you should have been given the option to decline to have your content associated with the advertiser. Interestingly enough, the adverstiser should have also had the option to decline to have their product associated with your post. I'd bet there are just as many advertisers who would be unhappy that their product was associated with your flame-bait or drivel or contradictary views.
Copyright and violation thereof is a less relevant issue than that of simple licensing for use of created content. Who should be making money off your specific words, with or without your permission? That's the objection, and I think it a valid one.
---
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
I was all ready to tear Deja a new . . . well, anyway, unfortunately the original link isn't working so that I can actually see what Deja is doing, and I don't wish to spend the rest of my morning trying to find another post like the original. Does someone know of an article that has the "Deja link" virus that they can post, so that I (and others who haven't seen it yet) can see what the deal is?
I post using Deja and Already I have a footer on the message saying that this message was posted using (AD ALERT! AD ALERT!) Deja.com. This is an ad? This is an infringement of my inailiable right to litigate and obsfucate any issue under the American Constitution! No. Not an AD, not anything more than a piece of Viral Marketing and a clever trick that made Hotmail the biggest E-mail Provider on the internet. Mail.yahoo.com also lets you send mail and posts a little footer saying (use Yahoo, I do!) and the like. Now this is also an evil evil thing, why? because they let me use a free service and I should be able to screw them over. Litigation ultimately only benefits the lawers involved as they swap venom between each other and later on after the ruling go out to the yacht club and have a party at your expense. What you create and willingly distribute you have no control over. By using a public network and posting your message on a server that provides a free service (there is a bit of legalese that covers this.. anyone dig it up?) you implicity allow Deja.com or the server you post through to do whatever it says it can. yeah, it stinks that you can't copyright every post, utterance and flatulent air you produce--but information cannot be owned, only controlled. is deja bad for skewing posts? maybe not the smartest thing.
-----
(Insert my reply here)
But look! I reposted without permission of the author!
Happens hundreds of times a second, I suspect. Am I going to be sued?
- It was possible to search through posts as far back as 1984.
1984?? They had archives back to april 1995.- Then it was bought by some money hungry dotcom wannabe marketing assholes, who proceeded to gut all the best parts of the site.
It has never been sold. The founder still works there.- First they eliminated all the oldest posts, just to focus on more recent content.
They dropped the older servers that cost the most to support until they could come up with a better way to serve that content- Read some of the doom and gloom sites for details on the withdrawn IPO and laying off 20% or more of their workforce.
wow, nice sites there, but they say deja layed off 10% or it's workforce. And my personal connections tell me much of it was in marketing in their new york office. Looks like this AC 1) has no facts, 2) is spreading FUD, and 3) is an ass"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
...I made it perfectly clear what I thought of it by linking it via "crap"? This is all going to be off-topic, but I consider ALL American cars total and utter shit. American car makers can't even begin to approach world-class manufacturing tolerances (by their own admissions), and they certainly couldn't tell a desirable automobile if it bit them in the ass--unless it's a truck, of course, if one considers a truck an automobile, and if a truck could be considered desirable. They can't even start with a good car and keep it that way: consider the Lincoln LS, based on the Jaguar Type S, yet not even a pale shadow of that car. Or the Saturn LS: based on the Opel Vectra, minus all the enjoyable things about it.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
It seems to me that the primary issue with Deja's actions is whether or not adding markup to a document changes it. If you look at the sample message, what Deja has done is hyperlink a word in the message, and prefix it with an orange triangle. The WORDS in the message are exactly what the poster had originally written. There's no copyright issue with Deja taking messages off USENET, the issue seems to be whether or not Deja is improperly modifying messages and attributing them to the author.
I'm inclined to think that they're not. If you write:
I don't like them commies.
And I want to quote you for my story on McCarthyism, I am perfectly justified in writing:
"I don't like them [sic] commies."
I've changed your quote to indicate that the grammatical error was yours, and not a mistake in the quotation. I've done so by using a recognized editorial comment, which is distinguishable from your text by the brackets. Deja's hyperlinks are identified by the little triangle, and as such are distinguishable from the author's original text.
Deja already converts USENET posts to HTML, already changes markup to make links clickable, etc., and is in no way changing the author's message. Their added links are clearly marked as NOT being from the original author, and as such they are simply adding a different "formatting", if you will, to the message.
This is completely wrong. It's not so easy to give up copyright. When you post, e.g., to a usenet newsgroup, you are giving people an implicit license to do the things that are normally done with usenet postings--like to copy your posting as necesary to propogate it around usenet. You aren't giving permission to do anything else, and you definitely aren't giving up your copyright.
If you really want to put something in the public domain, you need to say so, explicitely, in writing.---Bruce Fields
So it's perfectly ok and legal to change someones post as long as you provide them an opt-out that they know nothing about unless they happen to use deja?
Incidentally, it would be a slightly different issue with Slashdot, if only for the specific reason that it is possible for slashdotters to include html links ourselves, and we regularly do so. In this forum, adding (or deleting) links would be altering the original content, since the original content's text did include html tags. With Deja, we couldn't have linked to ads ourselves from our Usenet postings, even if we wanted to. This will not be abundantly clear to all Deja users, though, and that is relevant.
---
"Life. Don't talk to me about life."
They go ahead and modify the contents of *your* post (sent from wherever by whatever means, not necessarily through deja) without asking first and present the modified version as yours, you have to actively prohibit them from doing so by using the (not-yet-implemented) header stuff. If there's such a thing as copyright, I'd see this as a clear violation.
They haven't actually changed the content of the post (as it is displayed). They have added extra references. You might not agree with them doing so, but I think you'd have a tough time claiming this was copyright infringement. If it is, the whole concept of usenet is flawed!
They are clearly marking the link with a deja triange and are not attributing the link to you in any way, shape, or form.
Ranessin
Not so. There isn't even a legal gray area here.
Under current copyright law, essentially anything that you write is copyrighted. That you have copyright to your Usenet posts is about as certain as anything in the law.
However, copyright law explicitly allows copying for "fair use", and quoting for a reply is unquestionably a fair use - it's like quoting a passage froma book in a book review.
- The text itself remains unchanged, you can copy/paste it to a text editor to check:
- The word "modem" only appeared once while the word "hub" appeared much more often... Either there's a bug or this is a clumsy attempt to sell modems to cable users.
According to the first point, I understand this could be pissing someone of but rather than removing what actually makes deja live, I'd suggest to just warn the writer about this when he submits a message, and to ensure that the link will be opened (target="_blah") in a new window.Well, it is not quite that either.
Many 5 port hubs use indeed 5 ports.
I have an intel 5 port hub, a 6th port is for connecting to another hub.
The modem is NOT called a 6 port hub.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I think this is a perfectly OK thing for Deja to do. I will simply never ever recommend them to anybody as a way to read news anymore. It isn't a copyright issue, it's a 'spam' issue. I define 'spam' as all advertisement that attempts to invade my 'signal' space without me asking it to.
As for the corporation vs. people argument. Likening anti-corporatism to racism is a bit of an interesting idea. I'm beginning to think it was a mistake in the first place to give corporations any legal standing as individuals of any kind.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"Besides which, wouldn't a UDP, assuming it were enforced, rather spoil the other point of Deja, which is being a useful Usenet archive?"
No, it wouldn't. Read "1. What is a UDP?", and what I said in the comment you replied to.
It would only disallow people to use Deja's web interface to post to Usenet.
--
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind.
Its teaching, therefore, should be
If they were my words, I would certainly be upset, but I would never claim you didn't have the right to do so unless you didn't make it clear that those links were added by you (as Deja is doing with the triangle).
Ranessin
I'm ready to give whatever IP is in my posts to everybody. I'm ready to accept that somebody will compile this IP and revenue from this. But I'm not ready that someone will modify my words to make profits from it. If they wanted to do it, they should do it in a way that it was clear to the user that link is not mine (e.g., taking those words out of the post - like slashdot does for linked words in articles). I do not want to be advertising carrier for Deja - at least, not without my consent. If they would add below the post "this posts talks on modems, do you like to read more? this post also talks on kings & cabbages, do you want to read more about that?" it would be completely OK. But they didn't do this.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
If I spilled coffee (even on purpose) on a library book, and then returned it to the shelf would I be:
a) altering the contents to promote coffee without the authors consent
b) misrepresenting the author
c) breaking copyright law
d) adding to the value of the book for coffee-lovers?
e) shaking from the caffeine and a little too worked up about this whole issue? (Kahuna)
Yeah that's really funny if you have 6000 posts in the archives.
Have you even looked at how that nuke page works?
I don't understand your point: there are thousands of competitors to the corner store, but none that come close to Deja. If Deja goes, I'll be back to wasting countless hours scouring newsgroups in a news reader. There are supposed to be other Usenet databases out there, but I don't think any of them come close to Deja.
Mind you, not that I think Deja is perfect. There are many things I hate about it. But that is like faulting a hammer for being heavy and flammable--true, but it does the job.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
jxxx wrote:
> However, calling a poster's relation to a post
> a copyright is going a bit far.
Why do you feel that it does?
> Doing so brings
> into question the legality of quoting for a
> reply.
In the many lengthy discussions on this subject
which have been routinely held in USENET for
years, it has generally been felt that proper
USENET quoting falls within fair use, a provision
in copyright law whereby it's permissible to
quote portions of another's writing (attributed)
for such purposes as review or response.
> Do you have to name the person you are
> quoting?
Absolutely. This has _always_ been considered
good and proper USENET style. That hordes of
users descended on USENET completely uneducated
about the norms and practices does not mean the
norms and practices aren't good, solid ones. It
has always, always, always been considered
highly important to not only include attributions
in a followup, but make sure you get them right.
This is a major complaint USENET veterans have
with USENET newbies, and with a large amount of
software now used to read news.
> I know Ive quoted several people in a
> reply, nested at times. Naming each of them
> every time sucks.
Then you're guilty of poor USENET postership. It
may not be entirely your fault -- you may not have
a real newsreader, for instance, which makes it
easy to get attributions right, or which would
encourage you to reply at the top. Or you may
frequent newsgroups populated with newer USENET
posters who never became familiar with what we
all used to consider basic style and courtesy,
and those posters may create a morass of lost
attributions, replies at the top, excessively
quoted text, and so forth. Or you may use
software which doesn't preserve linebreaks and
causes properly posted articles to show up all
out of whack, or you may post to newsgroups
where nobody even knows what a line length is.
Things like that have certainly cut down on my
USENET postership, and I used to be as staunch a
USENET defender as there was.
In any case, yes, attributing quoted text and
making sure that you've got the attributions right
is inarguably a core part of being a good USENET
poster according to all the newbie docs that
today's newbies obviously never bother to read.
--Abby Franquemont
Deja doesn't render HTML in usenet posts. < is converted to < etc.
Now, if they started inserting text into your UseNet posts that did not reflect your opinion about a product (like an ad saying that Micro$oft is great,) then that would be a problem.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
In which case, it wouldn't stop other people's posts showing up on Deja with product linkage... I was assuming some form of UDP which would stop that from happening, which seems to be the major problem.
Sure, the page that ends up being linked to contains a product, but it's also linking to the other part of deja, the consumer reviews section. One of the things you can do from that learn more about a product. This seems strikingly familiar to when the slashdot guys decide to plug everything (everything2? i've lost track of the site) and link words in slashdot articles to nodes at everything. On that example page, I didn't even see a way to buy the modem, only to read a little bit about it, and to provide information about it to others. Sounds like an improvement to the service in my book. Maybe not in terms of useability for me, but for the general browsing public.
There is GPL'd technology available for text indexing and compression: MG (for Managing Gigabytes).
;-(
No idea on how to get the free web-based Usenet server running, though
Rather than just sticking the links within the body of the post, couldn't they just append a list of links at the end? It seems like both Deja and remarq.com (IMHO, a much better service)append messages saying 'Sent from Blahblahblah.com - We're great!' or somesuch at the end of the messages anyway, so why not a "If you're interested in x, y, or z, click on them." message? That would make it pretty obvious that the poster didn't include the links and would make deja look helpful, not intrusive.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
To be honest, I couldn't care - as long as they haven't altered my words, the links are of little interest. I don't like HTML mail or news anyway, what's wrong with plain text. If everyone used plain text, then it would be obvious that any links were NOT the authors.
Also, they are not doing what they want with a 3rd party's copyright - you have given usenet servers the right to reproduce and distribute your work and dejanews has the right to do that. As long as they are not altering the content or meaning it's trivial. As I said, if people don't like it, they will leave dejanews. No people reading dejanews means no revenue from that form of advertising.
If I were you, I'd see about getting my money back from that college you went to.
They don't change the posts, they are still around everywhere on Usenet in their original form.
All they should do IMO is add a little notice saying "|> links were added by deja.com" on the page to make things _really_ clear.
And even if they don't, they just change the markup, the deja.com links are clearly visible as not added by the author because the text/plain format of Usenet messages doesn't allow adding links, you can only type URLs, and those are still displayed by deja.com as they should be.
--
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind.
Its teaching, therefore, should be
Fact: All posts to Usenet are by default copyrighted material and not in the public domain unless explicitly stated. Read this for more info. The Copyright FAQ states that many believe it is implied, though, that by posting to Usenet you agree to let your material be redistributed through that medium. Copyright FAQ is here.
Fact: Most posts to Usenet are made independent of Deja, so whether or not their browsing service is free or their terms of service or whatever conditions they make up is irrelevant when determining if they have violated your intellectual property rights.
Opinion: I don't think allowing your copyrighted material to be reproduced immediately grants others a license use it to promote their commercial interests. I think this whole debate on the legality of Deja's move to use words from your post is a question of fair use.
Opinion/Analogy: Copyrighted music is played on the radio. It is free to whoever tunes in. However, it is illegal for me to record that music off of the radio and then use it in a television commercial without permission/paying royalties to the original copyright owner. I may not be altering the original content of the copyrighted work (the song). I may put a BIG ORANGE TRIANGLE on the screen with my company's logo in it, but does that make it legal? Deja made a business decision to use the content of your copyrighted work to endorse products without your permission. I don't see how this issue is much different.
Final opinion: This forum needs more lawyers and less speculation (including that of my own).
I said a gig of text postings a day. They get about 70G (or they used to) including binaries every day. The filters on one of the servers drop that down to about a GIG. I used to work there. I know.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
Could you pleasy state your reason for doing so?
/., but ok for a private homepage, I think.
I own my works and I do not want them put in a context I cannot control by another entity - I want them to be shown as original as feasible. Current US and German copyright laws give me the power to control the use of my works, and so I do exercise my rights.
It seems your Usenet posts would be a loss for lots of people looking for help on deja.com
You are not missing anything: All my works I consider worthy to be preserved are available on my own website, including my printed articles and my USENET posts. I make them available unedited, without banner ads and without ad links overlayed. Also, I refuse to sign author contracts which will prohibit me from publishing my works on my own website - I do accept a 6 month delay clause, though.
This results in a 60 meg website with 2.5 GB traffic/mo. Not much compared to
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Definitely a way better idea. They probably thought of that but figured this would give me them better click-through and not use as much screen real estate.
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
No. Remember that the messages are copyrigthed by the users, so Deja cant just alter them (by embeding links) without consent. And if they really want to do it at least they should post a warning saying that the links were inserted by deja. Fax Christ
What kind of ads would they put in alt.sex.hello-kitty? This I gotta see :)
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
A few other people have made comments along the lines of 'if a user is too (stupid, lame, pathetic, etc..) to understand that the link is added they deserve what they get.' The problem with this line of thinking is two-fold. Deja does not appear to explain anywhere on the article page that links marked with an orange triangle are added by Deja, so why would someone make that connection? Second, it's not the Deja user that is harmed by this, it's the Usenet users at large. Why do they 'deserve' to have their posts changed?
Deja defends their action by stating that and Why should I have to pro-actively protect my postings? I've never had to before? Does the 'x-no-archive: yes' header prevent my message from being archived at sites other than Deja? If so, that's not really a solution. Also, most people that post to Usenet don't know that Deja is doing this, so they won't have any idea that to protect their posts they have to add headers to their messages.
It seems to me that Deja should have addressed some of these issues before going live with this. Maybe they'll re-consider now that the issues have been brought up.
Ok, I didn't really think so either.
-km
If we support the "x-no-productlinks: yes" header, that just opens the door for other providers to incorporate similar services which can be turned off with these x headers. Before you know it, to send a simple 10 line usenet message, you'll have to include 20 lines of x headers to keep every deja type company from mucking it up. If anything, Dejah should have an option for the reader to turn on this hyperlinking (knowing the author didn't put it there) and Dejah could provide a disclaimer at the bottom of the message stating the hyperlinks were not by the origianl author. -Iota
God is Real Unless Declared Integer
At the very most, you are giving an implicit licence to use the material in unaltered form.
/. made from the postings in the Hellmouth thread? They had to get permissions from all authors of posts they used, because posting on /. does give /. implicit permission to use this posting on their site, but not in a book. Similar logic applies to Deja.COM.
I do not think that I even give that much permission implicitly. Remember the book
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 20:04:44 -0700 (PDT)
l
From: kkeller@sirius.com
Subject: Advertising links in USENET posts
To: comments@deja.com
Dear Deja.com comments,
I recently read your response to a slashdot.org reader's
comments concerning embedding advertising links in USENET
posts that you host at deja.com. I feel I must voice my
concerns that your suggested measures for people who do
not wish their posts marked up are far from sufficient.
I hope that you can clarify your position on this matter,
so that I may continue to recommend people to your site,
rather than recommend people *not* visit your site.
You suggest that USENET posters who do not wish their
posts to be modified by deja.com use a new x header
(x-no-productlinks) in their posts to USENET. I find this
suggestion irresponsible. You are assuming, without any
information to support your assumption, that all USENET
posters would not mind if their material is modified by
deja.com, and that people who do object to this practice
should implement extra steps to do so.
Your current policy assumes that if there is no "x-no-productlinks"
header, then it is okay to modify the post to include product
links. This produces an ''opt-out'' policy which, while
technically feasible, assumes that the default behavior for
deja.com to modify USENET posts is acceptable. This default
policy is clearly unacceptable, as many USENET posters
are probably not even aware that their post will be modified
by deja.com.
As a first suggestion, you can alter your policy to be an
''opt-in'', rather than an ''opt-out'', policy. You can
ask posters to use an "x-productlinks: yes" header to allow
people to give explicit permission for deja.com to modify
their USENET posts. If a posting does not contain this header,
or contains an "x-productlinks: no" header, then deja.com
would not insert product links into that particular post.
Please note that this differs greatly from your "x-no-archive"
policy. It is reasonable to assume that most USENET posters
are aware that their articles may be copied verbatim by others
for archival purposes, since otherwise USENET would not be
able to function in the way it does. Therefore, it is acceptable
for deja.com to default to archiving USENET posts, and to force
people to ''opt-out'' rather than ''opt-in''.
I sincerely hope that deja.com will reconsider its current
policy concerning modifying USENET posts without explicit
permission to do so. Thank you for your time.
-- Keith Keller
kkeller@sirius.com
alt.os.linux.slackware FAQ:
http://www.sirius.com/~oryx/linux/aols-faq.shtm
I certainly agree with you on the importance of discerning between fact and opinion, which is why I said I believe it to be true instead of asserting it as fact. I'm more interested in discovering factual truths than promoting my opinion, which is why I'm posting here.
After I read your first response, I pasted it to a group of friends on IRC and asked whether or not your assertions were correct. A friend of mine who went to Temple Univ. told me he was taught in a class that you can be charged with copyright violation regardless of the commercial value and that commercial value was used for determining damages. He learned all of this in the context of film as intellectual property. So, yes, you may be correct, it may not directly apply to electronic media on the Internet. It is indeed a multi-faceted issue. There are of course some exceptions to when you can claim intellectual property as your own. To take a film example for instance, universities may own the rights to a student's film as was the case of Spike Lee's first movie.
I wish I had better sources, but that's all I have. I'd look around more but my brain is fried since I've been up for 26 hours and I've spent the past few hours reading the 450k Emmanuel Goldstein deposition on 2600.com. Now on to the trial transcripts...
Aha. Why not use Freenet or something like that?
/as they store it/ and then you just put some gnutellanet-like structure on top for searching the archives.
You do a big distributed storage network of slashdot users who have large hard drives and fast connections, and have some sort of gnutellanet-like search network.
i.e. the nodes decide who stores what, with some redundancy hopefully, and they index the data
The archives would all be read-only, and the indexing is done when the article is first stored, so then you can BZIP2 chunks of 30 articles together and keep a table of messageIDs pointing to where everything's held...
-don
-- tree, n: lump of wood with green things
Hi. Read this: http://www.kuro5h in.org/?op=displaystory&sid=2000/7/18/122257/231. Please don't b-slap me; this is important!
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
They aren't changing the content, they're changing the presentation of the comment (and just by the format of whatever they've linked, too.)
Deja also takes URLs in messages and makes an actual link out of them. Should they stop that, too?
In all these cases you have agreed to some T&C that say "we can add stuff to all your posts/mails and everything else". You have the choice not to use it. If you read an email from a normal user on yahoo, do you get a modified mail? Does it have "I dont use Yahoo, tell me I should"? No. You have opted in to this editing of your emails. When I post a work on USENET, I dont give permission for deja to take my work and edit it for their own gains. By adding implied product recomendation to my posts, they are slandering my name. I can probably sue them in the same way demon was sued because they refused to remove a slanderous message from there server. What would happen if, for example, microsoft's website had been hacked to redirect you to a porn site, or file://C:|CON|CON or whatever. I might post a message saying: "Warning, dont go to Microsoft's web site as it will crash your browser" And a deja reader will see "Warning, dont go to Microsoft's web site as it will crash your browser. Visit http://www.microsoft.com" Some inane user might go there, and belive I had told them to go there. I might even get sued for causing them to lose there work, I definatly wont be liked. If Deja just had a seperate "dejalinks" section that had links to websites of things I had mentioned, then that would be ok. Editing a post directly however is not.
So if I send a letter to the editor, or the "Confidential Chat" my local paper runs, it can be altered without notice and still published under my name? Do you understand what Public Domain is?...You cannot alter that content and republish it under the author's name, unless the orrignal is so well known and the alterations so severe that the entire thing is clearly satire.
I'm afraid you aren't making the point you think you are. Letters to the editor can be edited without your permission. I will take an example from one of my favorite magazines, MaximumPC:
Editorial policy: MaximumPC invites letters to the editor. Just send them to commport@maximumpc.com. Please include your full name, home town, and telephone. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the vast amount of email we receive, we cannot personally respond to each letter
This is just one example, I've seen many other publications say similar things. When you send in a letter, you don't have control over it, sorry.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
What good is free speech if just any old person can change what you said before it arrives to a listener?
Why don't you start signing (e.g. using PGP/GnuPG) all your posts? This will not solve the problem, but this way, people will at least know, that they do not read something you posted.
That assumes that you post through Deja. If you post via any other means that is not true.
Let's say I post something about word processing on Usenet. Deja then posts it on deja.com altered to contain a link to an ad for Micro$haft Word with my name still on. The ad is not clearly Deja's work as far as I can see. In effect I, a selfconfessed M$-hater, am endorsing the greatness of Micro$haft Word.
The poster owns copyright with the implicit permission to redisplay unaltered or quoted in whole or part in a reply on Usenet.
Basically, they are saying that they think that people will be able to browse through these posts on Deja.com and discern what URLs have been automagically embedded in the text.
These URLs (as far as I can see) have no disclaimer saying that they are added by Deja and not the poster.
What happens when I post a post (HA!) that says that I know a friend that uses Packard Bell machines and the shredder/reader inserts a link to a deal from Packard Bell.
The meaning of my post is tainted by having the advertisment in it. It is almost saying that I recommend PacBells (which I certainly do not) just because I have linked to this special deal.
A not-so-informed user may take this as a recommendation and buy the machine.
Good advertising, bad ethics.
Rami
Guy with no time for stupid ads
--
rJames.org - illustration
A lot of people think that " Deja can do whatever it wants on its excellent service," but that's the result of a skewed outlook. The fact is that Deja is a very important and powerful business that controls the window through which its users look on the world, a power which they can easily abuse to trick users into making horrible mistakes. While adding a word or two to a post might seem to be a reasonable way to draw users towards companies that want to serve them, it also controls how those users comprehend the very fabric of the world wide web. I'm certainly glad that no such awful lies and manipulations are being visited on me by my MSN!
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
Sorry, but I don't really see how this is going to be a major problem for people. So they link to adverts in the posts they get. It's not like they're inserting great big bandwidth eating banner adds into them is it? A few A HREF="" isn't going to hurt download times.
And besides if you're using a free service then you have to expect this kind of thing. If they're not charging you then they have to have some way of making money, and advertisement is the usual model. And Deja seem to be doing it in a way that is a lot less intrusive than most sites. Hell, you might even find the links useful sometimes!
And anyone who has been using the web for any amount of time should be used to checking where a link leads anyway. If you read /. you should be used to it, otherwise you'll end up at some pretty grim sites :)
...those who have used Usenet using newsreaders, and those who have used it using Dejanews.
The Deja-groupies are, of course, in support of anything Deja does that keeps the site running, because they'd otherwise lose access to Usenet.
The newsreader folk are against the hijinx that Deja does, because they are independent of Deja. Indeed, having Dejanews go belly-up would be A Good Thing, in our view. It'd cut down on the number of crap postings.
IMO, the links Deja wants to insert imply that I have endorsed the link. This offends me: if I wanted my message to contain a link, I'd have put the URL there myself.
I've got no problem with Deja putting contextual links in its presentation -- but the damn things had better be off to the side of my message, not part of my message.
In the end, though, I'm pretty sure this is a tempest in a teacup: Deja will be sued, and they'll rethink their new gimmick.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
For christs sake, do a little research before you start firing off terms that actually mean something. If you were to download a barney song and remaster it as a parody, then that would fall under the Parody caselaw, NOT the fair use provision. Fair Use is about copying. And yes, it matters - this isn't parody, it's a commercial use making derivative copies that violate copyright. (IANALBIAAJD)
Whereas what you do with napster is pure copyright infringment, what Deja does is too, just of a different right.
17 USC 107 is the Fair Use provision:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Deja's merely copying what Remarq tried (and removed, due to the ensuing outcry). There's nothing "innovative" about this, any more than there is about Deja's tactic of spamming people who register at its site. Deja *could* have been a premier source for Usenet archives and provided a valuable service to the Internet community. But instead, they are clearly attempting to co-opt a long-standing community resource and profit from it -- without returning value to the community, and, as in this case, by corrupting the article and falsely attributing statements to their authors that they did not make. This is unethical behavior and deserves the contempt of the entire Usenet community.
Illegal? but the links I've seen are downright helpful! They said, "help this little lady conform to community standards! Buy her some panties!
I'm just looking at it from a purely legal standpoint. By law, corporations are treated as humans for purposes of virtually everything except voting and the criminal code, because it's impossible to lock up a corporation.
If you don't like the rules, vote.
I'd buy.
Not sure exactly where you're going here; are you agreeing or disagreeing w/me? I specifically said "Web" (as opposed to "Internet") on purpose. Sure, people pay for their Internet access. Those who don't want to pay use an ad-supported service like NetZero or FreeInternet or whatever, and supply their customer profile info to the ISP, presumably under an explicit, specific, enforceable privacy contract.
I don't think that has anything to do w/my admonishment to those who think everything on the Web should be free of charge to the end consumer (there, I said it again -- proof through repetition) and then complain when the content-providers try to make a buck or two.
for me to totally despise and hate deja.com.
First the god-awful redesign into a portal and now this.
Who knows what else there was that I didn't see.
Fuck 'em with a big spiny pole.
-m
A tiny triangle does not constitute clearly.
Putting the link right beside the post would or a link text like Deja recommends this product would constitute clearly...
Fortunately, the open-source community will likely have a fast implementation of these x-headers in most newsreaders that are out there. Netscape Messenger will probably never support it, and Outlook Express...who knows?
I'm hoping there's a copyright issue at play here. Does the author get to keep the copyright on Usenet posts? If so, does this linking violate that copyright?
I hate to point this out, but it's really hard to take you seriously when there are at least 10 grammatical errors in your 3 sentences of text. There is this thing called a dictionary...
yahoo does the same thing
icq:=22921393;
Personally I think the only things people buy when they are pissed of are weapons.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
All you cheap weenies (if you don't know who you are, you should) think everything on the Web should be free of charge to the end consumer, supported by ad revenue. Yet, when a site tries to get some ad revenue, you bitch.
*dope slap*
Coming down off my soapbox, I guess what we really need is digital cash (preferably "double-blind" (I think that's the term)). Most folks might not feel comfortable handing out a CC# for a couple of bucks a month (or less) but I'd just love to be able to zap a digital nickel to Deja to pay for a query.
John.
I agree that Deja's service has deteriorated since they became a products site. They even removed news from their address. Dejanews.com takes you to deja.com so they still own that address. I have written to them complaining that the service has fallen, but they don't seem to care. I asked them to point dejanews.com to the new usenet archive portion, but they don't want to. That should be easy shouldn't it?
"Services" like deja and remarq are also corrupting newbies' idea of the Internet. This is an old lament, but a lot of people think Internet = Web. I have been lurking in alt.tv.survivor and Big Brother posts started showing up there until they got their own newsgroup. One person told the Big Brother people to stop posting in our "Message Board."
Deja is still good for solutions to technical problems, but I hate having to wade through the other crap. Bring back dejanews.com!
Of coures, hypocritical /.ers complain about overly restrictive copyright laws, and how evil IP laws are, and then Deja does something like this, which is almost definitely (although IANAL) and then they piss vinegar about something like this? We don't want strong IP laws for Napster or DeCSS, but damn, don't touch my usenet post
Ok, I have had it up to here with comments like these
Please show me one user who posts pro-DeCSS comments and then posts anti-Deja comments. I want to see ONE. Maybe you aren't too lazy and can find one. Well guess what, you still haven't proved anything Slashdot is made up of many diverse readers/posters. There will be all kinds of opinions when an issue comes up. Just because there are opposing views does not make everyone a hypocrite. Stop lumping everyone together.
--------
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
(or the uninitiated, that's the Usenet Death Penalty; cutting Deja's Usenet feed. I don't like giving companies free advertising, so I definitely don't want Deja inserting links to products from the text of my articles.
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
The first thing that their lawyer is going to say is that you already spewed this to a vaguely infinite number of computers and therefore have lost nearly all control over it. Deja is not removing the header, so you still have full credit for your work.
Also, it's arguable that they are not really modifying the content. Let's all remember that what USENET is for is not HTML, but ASCII. They are not modifying the ASCII, they're modifying how the ASCII is displayed under HTML. (arguably)
Do I think this is sleazy? Yes. Do I think this would be better handled with a sidebar? Yes. Do I think that it's bad and evil? Nope. Deja provides a wonderful free service to the internet at large, which is just an interface (really) to another free service provided BY the internet (again, at large.) Of course, USENET isn't really free any more, but how much do YOU pay for your news? Except for those with a big fat feed (and even some of them) the answer should be "I'm not aware of any specific charge for USENET news at my site/from my ISP." ISPs are getting cheaper and cheaper and offering the same or additional functionality.
I guess you can get all pissed off at Deja if you want to, but what you're missing here is that this is what the web is for - Easy access to information. They are not changing your text; They are however causing some of your text to be underlined and turn a different color and have it link to some other page of theirs.
In exchange, what we get from DejaNews is a free, fairly fast, searchable news reading and posting service accessible from anywhere via the WWW. They do provide a mechanism to block such things, though I really would have preferred it were an actual standard rather than something they just cooked up. I dislike when companies create standards when it's something that could be better handled by others.
In summary: Deja is sleazy, but provides us a really spiffy service. Deja should have had some standards-making body come up with the specs for the new header items, but at least there are some. If your Pnews won't let you add new headers, then your Pnews sucks. I am not an atomic playboy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From today's fortune, an appropriate quote: Carson's Consolation: Nothing is ever a complete failure. It can always be used as a bad example. I nominate deja.
/. It's clear their management is ignoring all user feedback, but thats not news. They fired all their customer support and research people at the beginning of June.
Dejanews used to be one of the best sites on the internet. It was possible to search through posts as far back as 1984.
Then it was bought by some money hungry dotcom wannabe marketing assholes, who proceeded to gut all the best parts of the site. First they eliminated all the oldest posts, just to focus on more recent content. Then they changed the interface to be all marketing oriented, but backed off when hits dropped to less than 10% of the pre-change interface. They now hide the "classic deja" interface as much as they can, and prevent any direct linking into the interface. They tried to become a portal, but nobody ever used the site as a portal.
More recently, hits have dropped to an all time low, so the idiots in charge decided to alienate even more users by dropping all posts more than 1 year old from the search engines. They claimed that no more than 25% of searchers were looking for articles going back more than 1 year. Since then deja hits are even lower.
Now they are desperate to generate a few more clicks by throwing links all over other peoples posts. Look at all the complaints it is generating on
Read some of the doom and gloom sites for details on the withdrawn IPO and laying off 20% or more of their workforce. The layoffs were mostly in the technical and support groups, as management focuses on re-inventing marketing on the site.
Soon, deja will be completely forgotten as a resource on the internet. I've almost stopped using it, but I haven't found any good replacement.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Well, if I just took you post and linked word "webpage" to my company's webpage, and words "clearly marked links" to my friend's company webpage, would you be happy?
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
However, because we realize that some users would rather not have Deja display links to our Precision Buying Service content from product names mentioned in Usenet postings, we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes" header which will suppress the generation of these hyperlinks on those messages.
What I am unclear on is whether they are only placing these links in posts that originated from Deja, or, as some parts of the post and response imply, into everything you can read on Deja.
The former would be bad enough, but if the latter, how do they expect to be able to communicate the "opt out"* option to everyone whose messages will be corrupted** by their new "service".
*It will of course be an opt out rather than opt in, and will probably be set up so you need to type it into every single message. Corporate jerks.
** Just for the record, I do consider this a serious corruption of a person's orriginal message. Maybe its just the /.er in me, but when I see a link in the body of a post, I see that as an intentional part of the message, and linking to something the poster was not talking about is as bad as re-editing a letter to the editor so that the word "copier" was followed by "of which xerox is the first and best".
An honest way to do this would be to stick in a little icon off to the side of the sentance in question that said "Deja content" or something. Make it very clearly a part of your Deja veiwing and not part of the intended message. But who expects web businesses to be honest?
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
What happens if I post marked up text ? Will they change my text ?
That would be changing what I say. While my work is placed and published into the public domain, it does not mean they can change what I say - if they change my hyperlinks - they are changing what I say! Is that allowable ?
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
Like the link will interfer with your reading of a post, and if it does, perhaps its time to pay for a news server?
Discriminating freeloaders.
DejaNews used to be a great Usenet reference site when you wanted to do a search - I can think of a great number of times when that was where I found the answer to a problem that I had. Then it became Deja.com and forced you to weed through a bunch of junk just to find the search form for Usenet. Fortunately, bookmarking the "advanced search" page (http://www.deja.com/home_ps.shtml) got you past all that crap, but now they've decided to sabotage themselves further by adding these rediculous hyperlinks. Time to remove that bookmark I guess. What the hell went wrong with DejaNews over the past years that they became such a net whore? Anyone recommend a site that provides a more straightforward Usenet search?
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
And if they add links to HTML posts, they could potentially screw it up if they don't pay attention - 3Com USR PCI Voice modem link could end up being malformed to 3Com USR PCI Voice modem link.
--
Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.
if (ismoderator(reader)) hidemessage(this);
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
Happy? No. Would I dispute your right to do so? Not if you made some sort of attempt to mark those links as your own and not mine (as Deja is doing).
Ranessin
I suspect when you say "don't bother defending it with...", you really mean "I don't have a counter-argument for...".
I, and I suspect all but the most rabid "/.ers" have absolutely no problem with Metallica defending their copyright against their fans; they may be being a bit short-sighted, but they're completely within their rights. They, however, are not a corporation with a bevy of lawyers and billions of dollars to spend.
Corporations, on the other hand, have far greater access to litigious, economic, and legislative power than any one citizen on her own, and so should not be accorded the same protections as she is. Copyright laws exist to promote sharing of information, not to encourage corporate hegemonies that exist by stifling progress and litigating everyone with a competitive idea into bankruptcy.
Most of the arguments (the well-informed ones, at least) I've heard against IP here have railed against the misuse of copyright, not copyright itself. The RIAA's and MPAA's complaints are thinly-veiled reactions to the loss of control, cloaked in "we're for the artist" rhetoric, and nothing more. If they were truely concerned about how the "artist" is being treated, they'd have been among the first people to embrace a technology that is capable of expanding their market and enabling more people to access their work. As it is, the new technologies represent a loss of control to them, so naturally they trot out copyright as a trojan horse for their own agenda, and it's that hypocrisy that people object to.
>Expiring news was always up to the control of the local news admin. It
>was assumed that many newsgroups would never be expired, at least on
>some sites.
This is why the simple archival is not over the line. If they simply ran a universally accessible nntp server with no expiration dates, there would be no issue (though some would be annoyed ). The web interface is pushing it, as is the combining of the unmodified work with the banner adds--a close call, but I think they're withing bounds (though it is possible for reasanble lawyers to disagree; it's not clear-cut).
>For example, consider the comp.sources.* groups,
>rec.humor.funny, and other moderated groups. Things like the expire:
>line were hints to the local news admin, never a requirement.
Err, if you want to talk about day one, you really need to leave the newer distribution hierchies out of this
>Likewise, public access news sites have always been common, deja.com
>is just continuing that tradition.
No, not always. If you worked hard enough, public access was often *possible*, but it certainly wasn't easy twenty years ago. I do recall a gopher server (umich?) in the mid 90's.
>Well, I have also created a derived work from your posting by
>including your quotes. This has been accepted since day one also.
Yes. This *particular type* of derived work has been accepted since the beginning of usenet, and is accepted here as well.
>So, it comes down to, "by posting, the user has given implied concent
>to do all sorts of things to the work,
Here is where you make the wrong turn. Consent is not general; it is specific and in context. If you proposed to publish a book of the recipes from rec.craft.brewing, you would be informed by many of the authors that you had better negotiate royalties first. [this actually happens every few months. Not one has been willing to pay the royalties so far, although a magazien did ask me to write a regular column--but was shocked when I wanted market rates rather than a few bucks plus my name in print.]
The implied consent includes redistribution of the unmodified (save for routing headers) original by nntp, and quoting with attribution for distribution of a new work (the reply) by nntp. That's all.
>including copying,
Only within the context above.
>making permanent public displays of the work
Absolutely not, save in the context above.
>and making some derived works."
Only the very narrow class above.
>You are going to have to argue that this particular type of derived
>work was *not* implied.
Nope, not even close. The onus is on the republisher to show permission or right to use. They just can't do this.
>good luck. IANAL, so I have no idea how you would do that.
Since I don't have to, I won't worry about it
hawk
As for adding hyperlinks to my messages, I don't care. I don't see it as being much different than what AskJesus does to websites.
As for opting out, well, I'm not opting out of hundreds of messages one by one. That's not an opt-out policy, that just an excuse of an opt-out policy.
Agreed. Deja should give you the ability to remove all of your messages in one fell swoop.
I can see the value added, but yeah... altering the actual body text isn't cool.
Why not have a sidebar called "Context related links", or a footer, or similar? No need to monkey with the original text.
User can already do this kind of on the fly hyperlinking in a web page. Flyswatter is a piece of software that comes with neoplanet and does this to every page you visit (if you have it turned on, personally I found it quite annoying).). So, anyone who really wanted this "service" could get it on their own without Deja having a hand in it. this is more a bother to me than evil, unless they are linking to people that *pay* to be on the list of linked sites.
"Talking about video cards? Check out BrandEX site!"
"What about BrandB?"
"Oh, they didnt pay to be on the list so we arent interested in helping them."
that is the only danger I see.
-- Hail Eris
My answer is that technology can always fail. Somebody might hack my computer and get my key, or actually successfully guess it at some point (it's not impossible, after all) by some new algorithmic development.
While the tech can certainly help us out, we'll always need to be able to fall back on human laws for human resolutions to our human problems.
One of these days, I need to figure all this stuff out.
Hal Duston
hald@sound.net
Boring is good.
A conformist in a nonconformist world.
rhaig wrote:
> As for dumping the archives? I think it sucks
> too, but they were having to support more than
> 100 servers to hold all that news.
If that's a factual statement, then I withdraw
every positive comment I've ever made about
Dejanews (excuse me, Deja). And I certainly hope
no one is really paying them any money for
services, or investing in them as an organization,
as it's plain that they've neglected to spend any
money hiring or retaining skilled technical staff.
> the old news was on of course the older machines
> that tended to break, and all those machines
> were being supported for the benefit of less
> than 5% of the searches being performed, 0% of
> people who didn't use power-search (as it's the
> only search on their site that goes all the way
> back) and 0% of the people who read day to day
> news.
There is some merit to what you're saying here,
though I still think there are likely some
inaccuracies to it. The full dejanews archive
was always used by people who read day-to-day
news, though not necessarily through deja.com
exclusively.
However, the major point you skirt around slightly
is this: the focus of the organization has gone
through a radical shift since its inception, when
it was dejanews, a searchable archive of USENET.
And today, it is "Deja.com -- before you buy."
In other words, being a searchable archive of
USENET is now an afterthought for Deja. And since
it's not where they're expecting to make any
money, maintenance and scaling of that aspect of
their service is no longer a priority -- whether
the old USENET community, such as it is anymore,
likes that or not.
> Does it suck that 4 years is off the net
> until they can come up with a better way to
> support it? Yes. Do I blame them? No.
Well, I personally can find plenty of fault with
the decision and their strategic direction, even
though I understand their business decision, and
even though I suspect the real story behind that
stuff being offline is a little more like, "Crap,
we can't seem to get those machines back up --
okay, quick, damage control: we decided to do
this!"
> You don't like it? offer to pay for co-locate
> space for those 80+ servers that hold those 4
> years of news and maybe they'll listen.
Here, I think, is the real ironic tragedy: were
Deja willing to say to the USENET technical
community at large, "Okay folks, we're going to
lose this archive and have to take it down if we
can't come up with something to do with it -- we
aren't capable of maintaining it any longer," it
is not at all implausible that a large number of
USENET veterans, true believers, and computer
professionals would indeed have come up with a
technical solution that would have allowed the
archive to remain functional. After all, USENET
itself (which is really nothing but a money sink
in practical terms) remains operational -- why?
Because of the freely-donated time and other
resources of those who believe it's important.
--Abby Franquemont
So what if I created a website which was a front end to Deja? It rerouted searches and displays to Deja, but filtered out the ads? Would this be illegal? How would it be different from them adding the advertisements?
And you're qualified to make that assumption...how? Do you personally know any of their technical staff? In actuality, the staff, at large, are not that instrumental in the business direction. I've been in Business Management and Finance for 17+ years and most corporations (deja being one of them) the board of directors dictate the course of action or inaction, not the technical staff. Board=Investors, and investors are looking for return on their investment.
However, the major point you skirt around slightly is this: the focus of the organization has gone through a radical shift since its inception, when it was dejanews, a searchable archive of USENET. And today, it is "Deja.com -- before you buy."
Somewhere in the world, on a daily basis, companies are changing their business plan. Inevitably there are going to pros and cons for their users. Fact is Deja is entitled to change their product every day if they want. It's really no different than say... changing jobs. Something I'm sure you have done or will do in your lifetime.
In other words, being a searchable archive of USENET is now an afterthought for Deja. And since it's not where they're expecting to make any money, maintenance and scaling of that aspect of their service is no longer a priority -- whether the old USENET community, such as it is anymore, likes that or not.
Yep, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. Would you work for free? I'd try it for a while, but eventually living in a cardboard box and eating from dumpsters would grow old. The USENET community, such as it is anymore, isn't paying Deja's bills. Why do YOU have such an issue with their need to make money?
Well, I personally can find plenty of fault with the decision and their strategic direction, even though I understand their business decision, and even though I suspect the real story behind that stuff being offline is a little more like, "Crap, we can't seem to get those machines back up -- okay, quick, damage control: we decided to do this!"
I worked for a company that took down archive machines during a move and it just wasn't cost effective to bring them back up at that time. I would imagine that Deja is pumping this money into their new buying service. Something else for which I won't fault them.
Here, I think, is the real ironic tragedy: were Deja willing to say to the USENET technical community at large, "Okay folks, we're going to lose this archive and have to take it down if we can't come up with something to do with it -- we aren't capable of maintaining it any longer," it is not at all implausible that a large number of USENET veterans, true believers, and computer professionals would indeed have come up with a technical solution that would have allowed the archive to remain functional.
I don't see the irony, but that's beside the point.
After all, USENET itself (which is really nothing but a money sink in practical terms) remains operational -- why? Because of the freely-donated time and other resources of those who believe it's important.
Yes, and Deja continues to provide this free service. Albeit in reduced proportions, at least for now. It's obvious that you believe USENET is important, so I ask you this... what have YOU done to insure the continued operation of USENET?
Who really cares if your post got hacked up and some links were added in. It's not like you wrote a novel that you are going to sell and someone is distibuting a pirated modified version of it.
:) But then you wouldn't have your access to binary pics of pr0n and hamsters with duct tape either. :)
Also if you have a real ISP and pay money, they probably have a news server. use it and read usenet with a real client and forget about it. It's good for you, and contains vitamin C.
Or everyone could let go of usenet like the majority of the world is. It's dying a painful death and it's time to go out with old and in with the new! Whatever the new may be. some nice pretty flash based web forums.
VA Linux inserts links to Freshmeat on Slashdot.org!
Honestly, i don't see what the big deal is. People will most probably find these links helpful. Add that to the fact that linking is a fundemental fact of the Internet, and you get a complete non-event.
Deja is a free service: are people going to complain next that Deja is using their Usenet posts to make money, because the Deja site has banner ads? I know i won't.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
A much better way to do something like this, which
I think few people would object to, would be to
add links to products mentioned in the text of a
message in a pannel next to the message. That way
a clear seperation would be made between what the
original author was saying and the products
themselves. Surely this would be just as easy for
Deja to set up?
Simon Hibbs
Take the Deja content, serve it up, but add YOUR OWN ads all over the place, linking text from articles, from their own content, but DON'T change any of their content itself, just re-package it.
Then when their lawyers come knocking, tell them they're free to start using this new tag you've come up with or some new HTTP header on each of their pages, which will cause your system to happily ignore that content.
Some might say the difference lies in the fact that by posting to USENET, you're giving implied consent to redistribute and archive. I don't believe web pages are awarded that, except insofar as pages may be cached and proxied.
The point is still the same. I don't want people taking stuff I've written and marking up the content with advertisements. It's one thing to offer up a free archive paid for by on-page advertisements. I can accept that, but don't muck up the content of my message with links I don't want there.
And that X-No-Adverts header or whatever it is sounds an awful lot like, "If you don't want to be on our spam list anymore, just click Reply and say 'Remove!'". Why should I have to opt-out of a service I never opted-in to?
Redistribution and archiving is implied on USENET posts. Modifying content for the purpose of inserting advertisements and then redistributing that modified content is not.
As one who has spent many a time working his way in and out and in and out of cavernous newsgroups before turning to Deja News. In my experience, Deja is nice little service that loosens up those messy newsgroups and makes my entry a lot less painful.
You should remember that Deja is a free service, not a company that only shells out its service for those with money. Deja does need to make some money, and by inserting ads into their posts, theyre trying get deeper and deeper into the market and ensure maximum penetration. And besides, its not like Deja is trying to rape its customers with heavy ads, the links are just displayed to give you the option of entry. Moreover, as I recall, Slashdot does not have a problem forcing large throbbing banner ads through the pipes of readers.
This is a simple case, not the messy, sticky situation it is drawn out to be here. If you do not like Deja's approach, turn around and look for another point of entry into the newsgroup scene.
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
- Marquis De Sade
And Deja has taken the time, *and*money* to make your post accessible to more people.
This argument holds about as much water as me handing out pirated copies of Win2K on CD (printed with *my* money) and saying that I am helping M$.
If Deja is providing links that would lure shoppers *away* from my store, then they are using *my* content to line *their* pockets.
This is not (IMO) a Good Thing for me.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Inserting ads, topically or not, is creating a derived work. There is no argument of which I'm aware that extends the implied permission to display to do this, which leaves them only with what is allowed by copyright law--bringing them back to "derived work."
:-)
Now, the funny part: if they do insert enough new content (hyperlinks etc.) that would fall under "fair use" clause, wouldn't it ?
www.dejanews.com was a usable site. Once they made the transition to www.deja.com it's been spiraling downward, out of control.
The site is one of the most difficult to navigate that I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of difficult sites). Just the activity of looking up a topic to see what other's are talking about is a total mess. Once upon a time you could search for, say, sound cards and actually find a discussion about what others are doing with sound cards. Nowadays, you perform that same search and you'll be very lucky to find a real discussion but you'll quickly be taken to product ratings complete with links to sites where you can buy sound cards. Not very useful when you're trying to solve a problem with a sound card.
Sending any complaints to Deja is like talking to a brick wall. They'll thank you for your input and then tell you that no one else seems to have the same complaint as you.
I plan on finding a means of getting an honest-to-God newsfeed as soon as I can.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I don't wish to get into a flame war, but your concept of copyright infringement is flawed - you seem to be claiming that copyright is somehow different depending on whether or not the infringer is making a profit. Just try copying and giving away Microsoft's software on CD. You'll find copyright is just as strong even if you are not profiting from breaking it.
Also, I still contend that hyperlinks are not altering the content of the message. They are adding references. Possibly irrelevant references, but references just the same.
Finally, I would presume most of the people complaining use DejaNews on occasion (correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to be fair to assume people are complaining because they too are DejaNews users). If this is the case then it is a little hypocritical. "We want the service, but we don't want to pay for it, and don't you dare try and raise revenue indirectly".
1984?? They had archives back to april 1995.
Dejanews used to keep archives as far back as they could. It started when some university students restored a bunch of backup tapes containing usenet directories. There were posts going all the way back to 1984 for some low volume newsgroups such as comp.risks. Most of the posts only went back to 1989 for higher volume groups. The original research project was on mass-indexing the same way web search engines such as altavista work. The web didn't really exist when dejanews got started in 1991 or 1992, they were looking to the largest body of information to work on at the time, and usenet was it.
I remember posts going around at some point looking for copies of old backup tapes. I stopped sysadmining a usenet server in 1992, so that dates the project. The first interfaces were gopher and archie.
It has never been sold. The founder still works there.
I wouldn't know about this, but the original student project was launched as dejanews.com. In 1995, deja.com bought the dejanews.com site, and I presume kept the original founders. But that was the beginning of the slide towards the lowest common denominator at the expense of their largest user base.
1) has no facts
After the layoffs last month, I had several technical types shopping around for work. That is what alerted me to a shakeup.
3) is an ass
No argument there. But I'd still love to see deja wake up to the fact they have a large number of niche audiences rather than pander to the single largest one. The site is still somewhat useful, even if we can no longer access all the great old usenet posts.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Could this new feature of Deja be seen as a copyright violation via unauthorized creation of a derived work? Deja still can provide context sensitive links but they should put it into a separate frame or page section (e.g. below the message list of keywords with links)
Deja is already culling messages not sent through their services for archival and when they archive them they insert hyperlinks to their product reviews and catalogue. Well, if it's well done, i.e. they don't insert an add for a totally unrelated(to the topic of the message) product which happened to be mentioned in a post, then I don't really have a problem with it. They are changing some of the content of _their_ archives to provide people who read the NG through their service to look up consumer information about a product mentioned there. No big deal to me, hyperlinks aren't too offensive as long as I know this isn't one of the authors, I won't click it.
But, always a but, what happens if they go further with this? What if they start putting these hyperlinks into the original messages if these messages are posted through their service? Or worse, small banner ads. With more and more people reading the NG through a web-based front-end, this seems to be the next logical step.
That would bother me. I use Deja because I don't have a newsreader configured at work, but I'm not real thrilled with the spamsig they force on me, and I'd be even less likely to use them if they're randomly going to insert hyperlinks to thier catalogue in my posts.
As for what they're doing now? If they only link on general product categories, like the "modem" example we've seen, which lead to decent information about a wide variety of products and customer reviews about them, then this seems like a good idea. An educated consumer can't be a bad thing.
The problem with the web, and especially with the NG's is simply one of mis-information. Sure, the anonymous nature of the web makes it easier to write about sensitive issues or let your opinion out when you wouldn't if you had to put your name on it, but it also makes it _tons_ easier to spread FUD. If Deja becomes a major source for pre-purchase research, I forsee a new brand of spam. Spammers will post false reviews on the NG and these will be included in Deja's information about a product. With so many new users ignorant of how Deja comes by it's information, they'll take it at face value. I've been apprehensive ever since Deja changed their front page from the Usenet index to a product catalog front page.
Beware Deja, you can either be made or broken by how you approach this issue. Play it more conservative and you can become a new Consumer Reports. Do this badly? You'll be blacklisted as a spam haven.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney licensed in your jurisdiction.
/etc/news . . .
As an attorney, I'm just plain stunned by this.
The archiving of posts that they've been doing for years is at the border, but (I think) somewhat within. When posting to usenet, there is an implied consent for usenet distribution. Putting it on a universally readable website pushes this (arguably over the line), but is still at least vaguely consistent with the implied consent. [Note that the disclaimers banning particular organizations (typically msn) from posting the message have no effect, as the act of posting to usenet overrides that--because the msn server complies with usenet distribution.]
Inserting ads, topically or not, is creating a derived work. There is no argument of which I'm aware that extends the implied permission to display to do this, which leaves them only with what is allowed by copyright law--bringing them back to "derived work."
I haven't usually bothered with the x-no-archive header, as I haven't been particularly annoyed. Now, however, they're stealing from me, which I *do* mind.
Unfortunately, the nearest federal courthouse is a couple of hours from here, and I don't have time to deal with this over a few bucks. Nor does being a professor leave me the time to do this as a class action (which would be complicated by my membership in the class, anyway). However, *expect* this to happen.
A person has no more obligation to opt out by putting every header required by every news site in his postings than I have an obligation to inform every newspaper in the country that they may not use my oped pieces without paying me. I wrote it, it's mine, and theyt cannot create a derived work from it without my consent.
hawk, esq.
p.s. anywone know where to make "x-no-archive: yes" part of my default headers? I can't seem to find anything relevant in
If i write a post i don't want advertisements popped in and yes, i regard this as altering of content! The altered message makes me look like i wrote that to advertise, and the colored link is probably giving emphasis to subjects i didn't mean to. Also, i drop in links if i think a site is worth mentioning. For this place i don't need to, since noone will follow any links there anyway.
It would be even worse (and it's just a small step now) if someone got it into their heads to distribute altered messages further along the usenet. Imagine your newly advertisement enhanced messages spreading over a good part of usenet. What next, banners in usenet messages?
I don't think it's a good idea to alter content of posts (even if it's 'only' dropping in links) and i think other usenetservers should think about barring dejanews usenetaccess for some days to stop this scheme becoming too popular.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I think it's pretty obvious that they have no intention of putting up a billboard on every highway telling the world about the opt-out. And they'll probably make it somewhat difficult to find the opt-out, and still more difficult to actually sign up. After all, that would work against their best interests (making money). Future posts you can stop from getting ad-linked, but again, you have to know the secret password and they'll not make it easy to find out.
Have a look at the source of your favorite newsreader (assuming it's open in the first place) and patch it to insert the header for you. Then submit that patch back to the maintainer. Your future posts, the problem is solved.
If you have zillions of posts, you can ask Deja to remove them en masse, assuming they're identifiable and you can establish that they're yours. I've known people who did that by email negotiations with Deja, so presumably it would be an option for you as well.
You're arguing legality. I'm arguing ethics. Ethically there is a huge difference between the napster problem and the dejanews problem. The napster problem is about stealing work from the creator, while the dejanews problem is exactly the opposite. The dejanews problem is a matter of giving credit to people for things they never said, and don't want to have their name attached to. I don't give a rat's ass whether the law treats them as the same problem or not - ethically they are different problems, and therefore someone who supports one and opposes the other is not necessarily being a hyppocrite.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Just as a sidenote, all Barney songs I've encountered are actually public domain songs with new words anyways...
--Arcum
Actually, the courts have already determined (if memory serves) that hyperlinking is not a derivative work, it's a pointer. Deep linking on the other hand (where someone snags an image or a text fragment via RDF or a simple img pointer) is most likely infringment of one sort or another.
I have to admit, I'm surprised how many people think this is dandy.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Then, the poster says:
Except, of course, that they are inseting hyperlinks and making connections never intended by the author. But other than changing the messages, they're not changing the messages. Huh? Makes me want to ask Couldn't have said that part better myself.The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
That should get Deja. They have to either take it down or sue to keep it up. Let us know what happens.
Two Words: Copyright infringement.
/.ers complain about overly restrictive copyright laws, and how evil IP laws are, and then Deja does something like this, which is almost definitely (although IANAL) and then they piss vinegar about something like this?
Don't they have lawyers over there? Something about 17 USC 106(2)?
Subject to sections 107 through 121, the owner of a copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
Of coures, hypocritical
We don't want strong IP laws for Napster or DeCSS, but damn, don't touch my usenet post.
Go ahead and moderate me down for pointing out the hypocrisy, and don't bother defending it with "but they're corporations and we're people" that's as valid as a racial, ethnic or gender based discrimination.
Flame away and moderate away.
ok, they aren't changing your post, because the software is only going to put the links in when the post is rendered. can you imagine going through billions of posts and inserting links?
Do you have any idea how much news they accept each day? Or how much crap they turn away?
And you say the people not using Deja won't konw this is happening? you're right. because they won't see a thing. for two reasons. 1) Deja isn't modifying the contents of the post, they're just changing the way it's displayed, and 2) they don't redistribute anything except posts made by my-deja users.
As for dumping the archives? I think it sucks too, but they were having to support more than 100 servers to hold all that news. the old news was on of course the older machines that tended to break, and all those machines were being supported for the benefit of less than 5% of the searches being performed, 0% of people who didn't use power-search (as it's the only search on their site that goes all the way back) and 0% of the people who read day to day news. Does it suck that 4 years is off the net until they can come up with a better way to support it? Yes. Do I blame them? No. You don't like it? offer to pay for co-locate space for those 80+ servers that hold those 4 years of news and maybe they'll listen.
You want to write them off? Your choice. But find another usenet search engine out there that works half as well.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
- The web didn't really exist when dejanews got started in 1991 or 1992
they were founded in 1995 as dejanews.com, changed their name in may 1999 to deja.com when they became a sales portal. they were never sold and deja didn't "buy" dejanews. so you're off on the dates, but I agree with you on the slide of the site. However, it's awfully hard to make any money as a usenet server."We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
What information really wants is to be tied up and spanked.
I thangyew very much.
that's why aol is still ad free!
Do you like the statement that they own your messages and can do as they please with them?
As for opting out, well, I'm not opting out of hundreds of messages one by one. That's not an opt-out policy, that just an excuse of an opt-out policy.
What's wrong with this then?
:-) I never have ...
Deja has clearly marked out that it's not a normal hyperlink, by the use of their little arrow icon before the link.
They obviously have to make money, and exposing their sales department to the portion of the site that gets the most page hits makes a lot of sense. After all, they arent changing the content of the post, only adding markup to it that the user can ignore at will.
I'd be much more up-in-arms if they were subtly insinuating new content and altering posts from Usenet, but a simple bit of advertising marked as such seems perfectly reasonable when the company has to make money somehow to actually provide this service so many of us use for free.
So what's the last time someone actually SPENT money at Deja then?
Given that filtering proxy web servers already exist to suppress banner ads, how hard could it be to extend one to filter out deja's embedded adlinks. The link has that little icon preceding, which other deja embedded links don't have (if I remember correctly -- it's been a few weeks since I did a deja search). The icon can be used as an in-context cue as to which links are adverts and which aren't.
Should these kinds of steps be necessary? Has Deja committed some kind of great sin here? The new links are an ugly form of noise, but that's largely a matter of taste. Some newbies might confuse the adlinks for meaningful content, but they will learn. Will the new adlinks interfere with the utility of Deja searches for the clueful user? Maybe, but I rather doubt it.
On the other hand, Deja has every right to make money from their web site, and to massacre it however they see fit in order to bring in the dollars. Go too far, though, and they'll drive users away.
To summarize: they've got the right, the links aren't that bad to begin with, and if you're really offended by them, then there's something you can do about it. In other words: *shrug* It seems like a tempest in a teapot to me.
--Jim
Well, if I post 'I think this IBM modem is the worst crap I have ever seen', then the link probably won't recommend anything...
And if you're too stupid to recognize deja's links you're probably too stupid for Usenet and the Internet in general.
--
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind.
Its teaching, therefore, should be
My argument is "not very much".
Leaving copyright concerns aside for a moment, from a marketing point of view, what deja have done is quite intelligent - it increases the value of their website to potential advertisers because it creates an automatic targeting of content to individuals based on what they are reading at any point in time.
What's nice about it is that it doesn't trespass on their privacy because it doesn't need to gather personal data over a long period of time to determine the habits of the individual, it just uses your current activity as a guide to what you are interested in and provides links to the relevant content.
Now I don't for a minute buy the argument that it's all "for the good of our users", but it most certainly is "for the good of our sales volumes", and if you value Deja.com's presence on the internet, that's probably not such a bad thing. If they cannot sustain proper revenues, at worst they fail as a business and shut down (or get bought by Microsoft), and at best they don't have the cash to develop their functionality to make it better for their users (which means that in the long run they're doomed anyway).
So - getting to the point - with all the great many things that we find unacceptable on the internet - tracking our browsing habits, changing so much as the formatting of our text, heaven forbid trying to find out our age, sex or name (all prerequisites to doing business with anyone in the non-digital world), that doesn't leave much space for business to act.
It also seems to be redefining business innovation as "how do I get around yet another aspect of marketing that online users find unacceptable?", when innovation used to be, "How do I provide something people really want/need, that isn't provided by anyone else?", and so in the end, the consumers lose out after all, so where does that leave online businesses that want to sell stuff to an online audience?
I don't claim to have the answer and I'm not arguing for doing away with privacy, so please don't misinterpret me, I'm just throwing this out there for discussion.
OK - I can't resist, I'll say it. If I were Deja.com, I would fight to keep my ability to do this, if not in the current way that it is done, then in some way that still forces the reader to take notice of my link, because it's damned hard to sell on the internet and if I'm running a company, I'm going to want to push my products in a way that gets them sold - this idea looks like it might work, and if my users object, my guess is they can always read usenet some other way - I provide a service, the cost of that service to the users is targeted advertising, and it's up to them to make the tradeoff. I'd probably dispute the fact that I'm stealing someone else's copyrighted content, and if not, I'd probably find a legal way around it through the use of page design. As far as I can see, it's not very intrusive, and I haven't changed the text of the message, I've just created relevant links and embedded them behind the text, in no way is the substance of the message changed.
That last paragraph's a bit strong, so I'll rely on Slashdot user intelligence to notice that I'm playing devils advocate to a certain extent.
Salocin.com
I used to use Deja as part of my work, to quickly search through archives of a handful of specific newsgroups. I didn't mind the banner ads (advertising doesn't work on me), I could easily find what I wanted. I'd still use my normal account to post.
Then they introduced the first changes. Finding what I wanted was a pain, but still useable.
Now they've added this junk, aimed to target the point-click-drool types even further. Particularly that the links don't really help
It's getting the same in the music press over here (the UK), with "If you like this, try this" sort of articles.
Is it me, or is the world full of stupid people?
You sir, and your little "copyright", are about the sickest things I've seen on /. in a long time. It shows just how perverted the whole concept of "IP" is.
/. tried to make a book from the comments posted to the Hellmouth stories.
/. does not own my words in a way that they can make a book from it without asking me, and I still believe that Deja cannot turn my posts into their advertisements. The DMCA is just a very convenient way to stop them.
I assume you allude to the signature you find below all my postings. I created that signature after I found that Slashdot posted a notice on every page it generates that "this page is copyright slashdot.org", which it isn't - I own my words, not slashdot. This has changed since then, but I kept that signature as a reminder that I own my words, nobody else. That proved useful when
The signature has no legal relevance. Current German copyright law says that you own your works whether you create a disclaimer or not, and US copyright law is the same since 1974. Before that, you had to register your works with some copyright bureau and mark protected works with a © symbol and the year of registration. You US citizend may know the details better than I do, I hope.
Your reaction to my signature shows that the reminder works. You have started to think about copyright and IP, and it's consequences for your life. That's exactly what I want to happen.
Personally I think that current IP law is indeed sick and perverted. It is still law, though, and govers your and my life as well as the life of Deja.
am making a point to post all of your comments on a web page of mine. What are you going to do, sue me?
If you are an US citizen, I don't even have to sue under current legislation. I just have to send you a DMCA takedown notice to you or your provider. You then have to take down these pages, or sue me and so does your provider. In fact, your provider has to take down these pages, unless he wants to become legally liable. It then becomes your duty to prove that you actually have the needed license to host that content and that I have no legal base to force you to take down the pages.
This is sick, and if I remember correctly, ACLU is currently working to have this changed. Also, there is no similar law currently in Germany or the EU, and I hope there never will be (in fact, I am working with groups like Fitug to stop such regulations becoming law in the EU).
But DMCA or not, I still believe that
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
This is NOT good advertising. It's offensive to the advertising profession as well. The purpose of advertising is not to deceive.
It's the internet. And while I'm certain I understand the complaint here, I'm not sure I agree that clinging to potentially outmoded paradigms about information is useful-- especially since this instance so much resembles fair use. AFAICT, all Deja is doing is providing a service to their users which relies on one of the supposed strengths of the web-- the ability to link to other resources. This saves Deja users the time it would take to copy & paste text from your post into the input line of a search engine and sift through the results. Personally, I think this implementation is completely useless (see below), but that's me. I do find it useful when I'm reading anything and there are salient links, either to detailed information or external sites created by entities mentioned in the text. Sadly, Deja may link to things that the original poster may not like. The original poster may have biases which are contradicted completely in the "reference" materials. So what? Maybe there will arise in the East a great new shiny thing like "Gnuja Ve!" which has much better links (i.e. links that align more closely with the biases of the person posting on Usenet).
Having looked at the example, yes, I think it is awful the way it is done-- little orange triangle or no. I would prefer my reference links in a clearly marked "reference" section before or after or off to the side of the post. Most amusing is that it links to some really lame telephone modem when the posting is clearly in a group devoted to cable modems.
I do not have a signature
If you feel violated, you can remove your posts from Deja.
http://www.deja.com/forms/nuke.shtml
Simple as that.
Sure , today they're only adding links, but on the basis of all the arguments saying Deja.com is doing an OK thing, what's to stop them from doing more?
Right... and teenage smoking leads to crack babies. It's a damn hyperlink. Big deal.
It's a whole lot more; it's an attempt to pressure and force Deja to do what "we" want. ... You don't like it, fine, complain once, ...
Yes, that's what's happening, and no, sorry, it's not going to stop because this is not yesterday's world anymore. The consumer will do what the hell he or she wants, in whatever way they feel like, and not just in the way that some corporate provides for them.
Previously the power resided almost exclusively with big organizations, including government and corporates. Individual empowerment means not only that individuals have more of a say individually, it also means that they can organize and join in the fun of playing the pressure politics game.
Slashdot is one forum where such fun gets expressed and featured a lot, both formally and informally. Trying to limit this new-found freedom and channel it into just those forms that companies like Deja find acceptable is just not going to happen. Sorry.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Violating an unwritten code, my ass!
An article is a copyrighted work attributed to the writer. Inserting endorsements for products, without the author's permission, constitutes making a derived work which distorts the original work. It is not ``fair use'' by any stretch of the imagination. Note that there aren't even any clearly visible mitigating disclaimers that state that the article was modified by the insertion of hyperlinks.
Note that I do not browse Usenet through Deja News, so seeing the links is not what offends me.
I do post to Usenet, and I'm appaled by the idea of my text being linked to products and services without my explicit endorsement and permission.
If they are going to do that, I expect to have control over what products I'm connected with, and I expect to get a chunk of the advertizing revenue.
I know that they get about a gig of text postings every day so you could pack less than a month on a dvd-rom.
"We are not tolerant people. We prefer drastically effective solutions"
I disagree that either of these are "over the line", or even close to it.
Expiring news was always up to the control of the local news admin. It was assumed that many newsgroups would never be expired, at least on some sites. For example, consider the comp.sources.* groups, rec.humor.funny, and other moderated groups. Things like the expire: line were hints to the local news admin, never a requirement.
Likewise, public access news sites have always been common, deja.com is just continuing that tradition.
Well, I have also created a derived work from your posting by including your quotes. This has been accepted since day one also.
So, it comes down to, "by posting, the user has given implied concent to do all sorts of things to the work, including copying, making permanent public displays of the work and making some derived works." You are going to have to argue that this particular type of derived work was *not* implied.
good luck. IANAL, so I have no idea how you would do that.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
And please put these damn "old" archives back online. Thank you.
--
I wouldn't mind this as much if they'd alter the color of the bogus links so that they were clearly distinguished from links provided by the author of the original message. Let the "normal" links remain in blue and make the "marketing dweeb" links be yellow (not red, because of accessibility issues).
It'd be even nicer if they'd give each of those link elements a "class" attribute so that tools that mine deja could disregard them. This will, no doubt, be easy enough to do based on the value of the "href" attribute, but providing an even easier "class" would be a gesture of good will.
I don't like it if someone changes my message that I'd written - in no way. So I think people are right to 'bitch' about it. On the other hand Deja News is a free service, so you can't protest too much. I would not mind if the links were put below my message: that would be just as good for Deja, but my text hasn't been altered. It would be clear that this link has been added by Deja. It's a good thing that you can change the behaviour of this feature and switch it off. But what I find really annoying is that you have to do something to archieve this. It would be much better if that feature is off by default, and can be switched on if you like. Deja should either put the link below the message in its own area or change their policy to opt-in instead of opt-out.
You found a sword: +4 damage, +5 moderator points
...unless you are being subjected to some type of deja brain control. Ok, this copyright issue is getting way out of hand. A violation of copyright can only be charged if the material has a commercial value. The commercial value of your posts (assuming it has any) is greatly damaged once you put it out there for free and it becomes accessible to countless numbers of users. Generally, e-mail and usenet posts have little to no value to begin with. Furthermore, had you actually read my message you would see that I wasn't saying you had a choice as to whether or not deja links your messages to products, but rather that if you don't like what they are doing you have the CHOICE not to use their free service.
You know, I'm pretty sure this will be useful to someone, and I think that having links here and there is a good thing. A link doesn't have any implied meaning, it's just a reference. As long as they are not sponsored links, it's ok.
They should clearly indicate that the links was inserted by them, beyond just including this little arrow.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Well, Deja already changes messages by automatically colouring the different nestings of messages, by making all links clickable, overriding font selection, stripping headers, etc. Why should inline advertising be any different from these other techniques? It's just like Open Source Software, make the basic product free, but make money on the value-added stuff.
Now that the disclaimer's out of the way, yes, I too was stunned. That places an advertisement under the name of the author - seems like misappropriation of the author's identity for a commercial endorsement - a tort called "Commercial Appropriation." That's the whole Vanna White case scenario - basically, if you are using my words an image to sell products, I deserve compensation. I actually egosurfed Deja for an old FAQ I used to maintain (which is very clearly copyrighted in its text) to see if they'd placed ads in that. (They hadn't, yet.) I'm substantially closer to a Federal Courthouse (drive by it on my way to work), and while I couldn't pursue this because of my employment, I can think of some people who might represent me...
Anyway, that is just plain reckless. But Deja has sucked ever since they went away from the 'Dejanews' format to this new useless Deja-portal format - I never look at it anymore, while I used to be a weekly visitor.
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
A violation of copyright can only be charged if the material has a commercial value. The commercial value of your posts (assuming it has any) is greatly damaged once you put it out there for free and it becomes accessible to countless numbers of users. Generally, e-mail and usenet posts have little to no value to begin with.
My suggestion is that anyone who disagrees with what deja is doing should stop using their service. Considering they are in business to make money (aren't we all?) and hosting usenet is a free service they provide, not something from which they profit, IMHO we are lucky they haven't taken down the entire usenet portion of their site.
People are dealing with it: they're providing feedback to Deja on parts of it that they don't like. That's much more constructive than merely ignoring the service as you advocate.
Evidently you don't like direct feedback. Deal with it. The Internet has empowered consumers out of their previous mere passive roles, and the change is here to stay.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Beyond the aspect of hyperlinking to ads or other commercial features, this situation raises some question about inserting hyperlinks into reprinted copyrighted text.
Take for example an an article by Bruce Sterling. Most of the writings on that site are described as "literary freeware". The acceptable use policy points out that copyright is retained by the author, but permission is granted for unlimited copying and distribution in any media for non-commercial uses only.
So the non-commercial clause would clearly rule out links to ads or e-commerce "services" such as Deja.com is offering. But what about other links?
The acceptable use policy also forbids altering the text. So if I reprint one of his articles on my website, that is fine. But what if he makes a mention of, say, NASA. Would I be forbidden from linking that word to the NASA website?
Is adding a hyperlink to a word truly "altering the text"? The sentence still reads the same as the author wrote it. Perhaps it is in the same way that adding italics can alter the text. What about a reverse situation: taking an article from the web that contains hyperlinks and printing it on paper for distribution, but not including URLs. Would that count as altering the text?
If I printed out an article for distribution but added footnotes connected to certain words, would that be permissible? I would think it probably would if I made clear that the footnotes were my own and not the original author. Likewise if I inserted commentary into the article.
So then how to create hyperlinks in the original article but to indicate that they are not part of the original article? Putting them as footers to the text is awkward. Putting them in a sidebar puts them closer to the original word but still doesn't provide the direct intuitive connection that linking the actual word provides. Perhaps the link could take the reader to an intermediate page with a disclaimer that then auto redirects after a few seconds to a target page.
This is a new situation in copyright brought about by the nature of the web. Perhaps there needs to be a new "fair use" created here: the right to add non-commercial hyperlinks to a reprinted article.
Trickster Coyote
Ideology is for ideots.
Perhaps not, but it has always been understood that wherever a link appears, it was the author's intent to provide the user with more relevent information. There is no assurance that the links will actually point to something useful.
The example showed this quite clearly in that it pointed to shopping links for modems in the midst of a conversations about ethernet hubs (!!).
But that's not what Usenet is about!!!! It really irritates the hell out of me for a commercial interest to say something like this. I wonder what kind of links they might put in a message posted to alt.support.warez.recovery.
But what I REALLY want to know is what kind of barriers are put up between their choice of links and their advertisers. Or, to put it another way, what influence do the product manufacturers have over what links get created. Could this ever happen: "Wow, I can hardly wait to get my new Playstation2. That think is going to kick some serious ass!!"
Or how about: "My life's a mess. I just want to shoot myself. Nobody would really care..."
Who's paying for link placement???
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
Deja's not a free service at all. Deja gets compensated for their service by having its users look at advertisements. You might call it a trade of services. But you can't call it "free", nor even "without cost." With this service, they've added to that cost but shifted some of it to the content providers themselves, many (most?) of whom aren't even aware of Deja's existence. For them the cost is the potential of a tarnished reputation - I certainly couldn't post a review of a hardware product on Usenet, for example, if I knew that it would be archived permanently with links to that product or a competitor. I wonder if a .signature license would help.
How about this, Deja?
Instead of embedded links, just place a small colored area to the left or right of the original message saying "Here are some links to products mentioned in this post. Click for great deals!!"
I certainly think this is just as effective, and keeps the original poster's head from exploding over the issue.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I wonder if they are going to do this for Adult Oriented Groups.
They could have a link to a page with a little picture of a strap-on, whith some customer reviews!
--
it's a sig, wtf?
http://x70.deja.com/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=645976 861&CONTEXT=964036700.413794493&hitnum=0
which does contain a (mostly relevant) ad-link. but it turns out the post's footer has "begin 666 arrow_link.gif" in it.
The most absolutely ridiculous one I found (totally by accident) is at: http://x75.deja.com/threadmsg_ct.xp?thitnum=16&mhi tnum=2&CONTEXT=964038837.1165557925
See the ad-linked "51" in the header? At least it should be fairly obvious to even the most clueless reader the orginal poster didn't put an ad-link in the time-stamp header of his post.
I searched Deja and found not a single mention that there are ad-links being inserted. And I have not found anything to explain that the little orange arrows mean something special. If they put the links off in a side-panel as some have suggested, I wouldn't care at all. I already am used to all the flashing and spinning crapola. But I'm pretty annoyed that they're doing it and not giving any notice. And nuking old posts isn't an option for me, I had several posting accounts that are dead now and I'll never be able to nuke their posts. Same goes for those who munge to avoid spam.
I just wonder how long it is going to take before you see an entire paragraph which is just one big hyperlink to one or more of their products. Next thing you know the entire post will be just one big keyword shopping mart...
barzok wrote:
Actually, this header (X-no-archive) has been around as long as Dejanews has, and has been used by individuals like myself for just as long. I, for one, don't want to look back at what I thought 4 years ago -- that would should down my impression of infallibility...
As for whether Deja has the right to alter posts, I think that they are out of bounds on this one; however, now that I think of it, then Google (with their highlight search terms feature) is just as guilty as well.
Toshi
What are the liabilities of Deja.COM if I demand under the DMCA that they remove copyrighted material that belongs to me from their site? Can somebody with the appropriate background explain?
I am in Germany, but Deja.COM should be governed by US law. Is the DMCA already applicable to their state?
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
This "feature" isn't very context-sensitive. It bases the link strictly on the text it is linking from, ignoring the rest of the post. For example, someone might post a message, "You do *not* want to use a modem in this case.", and Deja would hyperlink the word "modem" to an ad for one. This could conceivably be confusing to someone reading the message...is the post endorsing or not endorsing the use of a modem?
Or, someone might post "I happen to think that Sony makes the best HDTVs." and Deja links "HDTVs" to some HDTV they're promoting, made by Toshiba. Hell, that borders on false advertising!
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Sounds like the consumer-ratings strategy Deja's moved to hasn't been working and they're grabbing at any idea that might, might, might catch on and get them more page views and ad revenue.
Incidentally, it's a touch arrogant of them to use a generically-named header field that other, more scrupulous Usenet archivers would use, as their opt-out trigger now that they're in the business of editing people's posts without consent. Maybe folks just don't want their posts archived by Deja in light of something like this.
And for the record, it most certainly does give the appearance of being a hyperlink created by the post's author. Putting ads and links in a aidebar--even right next to the relevant line in the post--would not.
It's certainly creative on their part, but it's not going to be the "innovation" that saves them. Deja's move away from straight Usenet webification to being a product and service rating site was a good idea. Their big problem is that their interface design is more convoluted than their competitors'. And more convoluted than a newsreader, which is no easy feat.
You'd think they'd have hired an interface designer by now. Maybe they've never talked to regular users or held any focus groups.
Since Deja is so well entrenched, I believe that it is economically infeasible to start another advertiser supported Usenet archiving search engine, to compete with Deja. I think the only you can create an alternative to Deja is to start a user supported service. A service where Users pay the bills! In this type of service only a business that listens to it users stays in business. Or too put it this way, if you don't like the service of your local broadcast television station you complain, if you don't like your ISP you complain. I bet on average the ISP listens allot better to users than television station. Television stations listen to advertisers well.
I believe that it is posable to start a user supported Usenet archiving search engine. I am a computer professional who uses Usenet for my personal and professional use. I am willing to pay between $5 and $10 per month for an advertising free premium service. I would expect to receive users friendly features such as the ability to download whole threads at a time, along with others.
So is anyone willing to take me up on the offer? Or at least we can start a new Usenet group alt.deja.sucks to discuss alternatives to Deja.
Then again, they might link crap to something really interesting, right?
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
My issue is that many people who browse the internet do *not* have half a brain. What will those people think when my USENET article is marked up, without my permission? I can't imagine a *lot* of people I know being able to tell the difference between something I authored on USENET (these people probably don't even know what USENET is) and something that they will believe I authored on deja.com.
My conclusion is that Deja's policies fall far short of what they need to be doing if they are going to be marking up USENET postings. I will be writing to them expressing my thoughts, and if it's timely enough I'll post my message here.
My understanding is that most of the posts on USENET are considered "informal discussion", and as such are not copywriteable. I think in order for a posting to be copywritten, it must satisfy intellectual property requirements. Ideas, facts and short phrases are usually not considered "original" works, and therefore not copywrittable.
There is also a notion of "implied release", whereby anyone who posts to USENET, by doing so, gives tacit release for the "work" to be reproduced.
All that aside, common sense should prevail. If I write a poem or a song and post it, as it is an original work, that exists in another medium (like the napkin I wrote it on), it is copywritten. If I reply to some kooky poster by saying "you silly twit! how can you think paranormal aliens are amongst us!". I would be fool to try to expect copywrite protection for my insult.
Going on means going far
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Sure, Dejanews isn't the best way to get into Usenet and it's their bandwidth, right? But for now i'd like to talk about Mentos Mints[TM]. They're great. My husband and I enjoy the cool fresh taste after a long day... because hey, I deserve it.
Mentos: The freshmaker.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
So what you are saying is basicaly that since you don't pay for the service they can do as they want with any 3rd pary's copyrighted works ??
How would you feel about it if your text would have appeared on /. as fllows:
Blane.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Nuking your articles manually is a pain, several thousand articles of mine are waiting to be deleted. Has somebody already written a perl script using LWP to generate nuke requests automatically?
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Nah, ignorance isn't a good enough reason to moderate someone down. You assume the complaint is about wanting to prevent people from using our posts. It Isn't. It's about wanting to not have them use your posts IN A WAY THAT PUTS WORDS IN YOUR MOUTH. Let's say I download the "I Love you, you love me" song from the Barney show, then I edit it for parody by changing "love" to "screw". This is "fair use" only so long as I don't try to pass off my parody as if it were the original. If I were a distributor for a large record company, and I put out my altered version in such a way that it was not obvious that it was a parody, then I've just slandered the Barney show, and the PBS guys would have every right to sue my ass for this.
This is what is happening on Deja.com, when they take our posts and alter them to look as if we put in hyperlinks to sites, when we may never even had heard of those sites. In the example from this article, they made it look as if the person posted a link to a particular modem seller, when that person might not like that modem seller.
How would you like it if you put up a post containing: "So, I opened up three terminal Windows.", and it ended up turning "Windows" into a hyperlink to an MS-Windows site, tricking the newbie public into thinking you actually put that link there?
There is a huge difference between fair use of someone's material and putting words into that person's mouth. When you use someone's material fairly, then you make darn sure you clearly state if the quote is literal or not.
So your allegation of hypocracy is not applicable.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It's NOT I don't want to see the silly hyperlinks, it that they are, effectively, misquoting me!
They have changed what I said!, and have put in an implied endorsement.
What if every message on
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
2 spelling errors in a title, that must be a record ..
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
You're wrong twice. They have, in fact, changed the content of the post. A hyperlink is like a parenthetical comment -- it refers to a tangential subject. Making, say, "blane.bramble" into "a href="http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nic k=blane.bramble">blane.bramble" changes it from a name to a description. What would the case be, in your opinion, if for some reason Deja made every reference to Amazon became a link to Barnes & Noble? Or every reference to Slashdot became a link to Microsoft? Clearly, such links would be completely irrelevant and misleading. They would be changing the implications, so to speak, of the message.
Second, "the whole concept of usenet" is not flawed if Deja's actions constitute copyright infringement. Deja is profiting from posters' works, without any compensation to the authors. Profit-making activities do not fall under the doctrine of fair use, and especially not if they involve the distortion of posters' words. "The whole concept of usenet," though, concerns documents freely given by the authors to others for their own use, not for republishing or distortion for commercial gain.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
I wonder what would happen if I started posting large word lists containing corporate and product names to some of the abandoned alt groups?
:-)
Further, I wonder what deja's reaction would be if I inserted creative HTML fragments into said posts so as to (try to) break their mutilation features...
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
x-no-archive has been around a long time. However, Deja is working on a new one called "x-no-productlinks" which will allow your posts to be archived by Deja AND avoid the smelly auto-linking.
If everyone used x-no-archive then Deja would be useless - and it does come in handy for research at times.
Unless you're a complete blithering idiot (I'm not ruling it out in your case) you can clearly see the orange triangle marking off the links as special. (Not to mention the fact that its a link to a deja.com page should tip you off that the original poster did not make it.) They're not changing the content of any messages! Or did you not actually stop and consider the facts before posting?
People are not going to be confused and think you put random Deja.com product pages in all your usenet articles.
If you go back and read it, it says that they are working on a way for people to over-ride it. It has not been implemented yet. Here is the quote: 'we are currently in the process of implementing an "x-no-productlinks: yes"'
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
I've used Deja pretty much since the beginning, and it's an absolutely invaluable tool. By far my most visited site, even before Slashdot. I've never really understood how they can stay in business while providing their service for free. Please don't kid yourselves that the dinky little banner at the top actually funds the site, any more than Slashdot's does. So I can't blame them for trying to supplement their funding in all sorts of different ways. Personally, I'd rather pay a yearly fee for using them, since I actually get value out of the service. However, the fee users are prepared to pay might not be sufficient to keep them going, same as a magazine subscription doesn't really keep the magazine afloat--it might defray some costs, but the bulk of revenue still comes from advertising.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Remarq is the only other usenet catagorizer, but it's rather poor in terms of the depth that deja got.
Is it time for an 'open' usenet search engine, one that realizes exactly what usenet is and doesn't hide behind called newsgroups "discussions" or "chat rooms"? Unfortunately, such an effort would require tons of diskspace, and a fast text search engine to be effective. Additionally, we lose much of the history that deja has *somewhere* on their servers: we'd most likely have to start with posts in 2000 and can only archive from then on. It may have to be ad driven to pay for said power, but as long as the ads were just for page impressions and not tied to the search or articles.
I know that when I am looking for a solution to technical problems on the net, I turned to deja first, followed by google. Usenet posts tend to be more focused, so getting a specific answer is easier there.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If you don't want someone storing your words, use x-no-archive.
If that isn't enough, then should you be posting in the first place?
The worrying thing about Deja is that many people have no clue it's there (despite positing to news) and vice versa, that Deja seems to be shielding newbies from the fact that they aren't usenet, they're merely a storage facility, sucking it up from publicly available sources.
Deja will need to tread a very careful line here to make damned sure that the inference cannot be drawn that links are personally recomended by the poster. It might be PD, but there's still the issues surrounding copyrighted works and reasonable use of them. They're still my words, even if they are resident on someone else's machine. If that someone else changes their meaning (and adding links is a subtle form of semantic editing) then I might well have a problem. A legally attackable problem? Yes, almost certainly.
This "progress" is understandable from Deja's point of view, but worrying from a usenet poster's perspective.
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
How is this different from those web sites that munge URL's and render the text into silly accents or flip the pictures over or whatever?
/. rushed to their defence? Why the opposite now? Why all mutterings about "it's my usenet post and they can't alter it." What crap.
Deja takes an existing public resource (Usenet) and munges it to add some hyperlinks.
whateveritwascalled.com takes an existing public resource (the web) and munges it by adding some BA Baracus quotes and silly pictures.
Remember when the second of these got hit my a copyright infringement notice and
If I set up a web interface to Usenet that showed all posts with the word 'Microsoft' rendered as 'Micro$oft' would that be wrong, if I made it obvious it had been altered? So what is wrong with what Deja are doing? I'm not convinced the service is all that useful, but there's nothing wrong with it.
-----
Thank you for contacting Deja.Com Customer Support. Thank you for your recent e-mail concerning the new feature in Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service that detects product names in Usenet messages and hyperlinks these names to related content in Deja.com's Precision Buying Service. These hyperlinks are not sponsored advertisements, but are simply pointers to other areas of Deja.com which we hope you will find relevant and helpful as you are reading Usenet discussions.
---
GetSystemMetrics(SM_SECURE) == FALSE
The problem here is not the advertisement. The problem is that Deja is insering the ad in the harvested post and republishing it under the original posters name. That is very illegal and even more immoral.
If they did the same thing without the original authors name it might be lega but still be immoral.
Now, IANAL but if any usenet poster challenged Deja in court I am rather certain that Deja would have to stop this practise right away.
OTOH, if one is ever in court based on the contents of a posting archived on Deja you have the perfect defence, they edit postings and got some mis-attributed...
Report this to Amazon and let them sue Deja. Poff! Links be gone... *g*
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
If I write that I am using an Acme widget, I do not want to be quoted as I am using an Acme widget which you can buy at a great price from DiscountAcme! Nor do I want anyone to add links in my text, if in the text I promise that I have personally checked all links mentioned in this post!
If they put the links in the margins or before/after the text, that'd be their own business.
And I don't buy the "just add this X-header" argument either. Am I, as an usenet user, supposed to be aware of the quirks of all news-referring services. Next thing they want me to add a header if I will not want to purchase the products they think I would like, or what? Deja does not own the usenet!
P.S. Doesn't the press ethic (and law in most countries) dictate a clear separation between text and advertisments, so that the readers can know what is what?
In Murphy We Turst
What's the difference between Deja.com doing this and Hotmail or some other service inserting a little tagline at the bottom of my email saying "Get Free Email At Hotmail.com"? Is it because they're matching shing in the text to an actual ad or just tat they're appending HTML?
-Sean
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
I think their service sucks. I can see how their service is really innovative, but its just not cool. I think I would be really pissed if links magically appeared in all of my usenet posts, especially to products that I do not endorse.
...and insert a one click order the product link...oh, wait, that innovation has already been done....never mind....
alt.sex.fuzzy.sheep
alt.sex.fetish.bald.dwarfs
alt.conspiracy (was it by chance that this add is here? or is "The Man"?)
alt.kill.the.world (ads for Used Russian Nukes?)
I like the thought of whenever someone in an MS newsgroup says anything about linux, there's an ad.
aren't they entitled to do do what they want with it?
I feel you got this the wrong way around. They go ahead and modify the contents of *your* post (sent from wherever by whatever means, not necessarily through deja) without asking first and present the modified version as yours, you have to actively prohibit them from doing so by using the (not-yet-implemented) header stuff. If there's such a thing as copyright, I'd see this as a clear violation.
If a Linux geek posted some rant about MicroSoft, do you think he'd appreciate his mention of MS linked to an MS ad?
My personal 2nd p0st to /.
since they alter the contents of the post and still attribute it to the original author.
If they did not attribute it to the original author it might be legal based on the fact that the contents was posted to a public forum. Just might.
What's next? Copyrighting your conversations?
:) Information wants to be free. Apart from my stuff! Mine! Mine!
Yes.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I'm waiting for the day when there's a post from somebody talking about Linux on the desktop and Deja sticks in a link to furniture at Office Depot.
They have an abysmal uptime record.
You are lucky to have 50% uptime on a given week.
I post a message about wordprocessing. Deja adds a link to an ad for Micro$lop Word. Suddenly my post, under my name is advertising (read recommending) products from Bugware Inc. Since I am a rather vocal Micro$haft hater I would think I can sue Deja for copyright infringement and defamation of character :-)
If they did not include my name if might be legal though...
Oh great, now source code patches on deja.com are going to get corrupted by some damn robot going in an inserting random URLs whenever it finds a keyword:
+
+ f=open("/dev/modem", O_RDWR);
+
Well, I suppose most newsgroups which are likely to have source code posted are also archived elsewhere, but still, the most convenient place to search for instance, the mailing-list "info-cvs@gnu.org" is deja.com, and that routinely has source patches posted to it.
Bang the head that doesn't bang!
I clicked on the link, and it took me to a page with a post discussing modems, where the word "modem" was a hyperlink. Clicking on that took me to a page WITHIN DEJA.COM where people could rate a particular modem.
Does this really constitute advertising? Much of Slashdot appears to be up in arms about this, but what if the link had taken you to a page where every review of that particular modem SUCKED, and basically said "Don't buy this modem, it's a pile of junk"? From what I've seen, there's nothing to stop anyone from creating such a review.
I don't really see how this is a bad thing. It is simply a link within a post that takes you to a place to get more information, good or bad, about a certain type of product. Does this constitute altering the content of the post? I don't think so. No more than making someone's email address a "mailto:" hotlink in a browser. You won't get that as a hotlink in some text based newsreaders, and I'll bet the original poster didn't format their post with their email address as a hotlink...does this mean now deja.com is altering someone's post by making their email address a hotlink?
How about when you put a URL into your post? On a text based newsreader, this won't be a hotlink, it'll just be a URL listed in the text. But on deja.com, it's a hotlink. Does this mean deja.com is altering the content of your post? What if you didn't want it to be a hotlink? Not only that, but deja.com has a redirect for virtually every hotlink that sends it through deja.com first before sending it to the site listed in the URL. Does this mean deja.com is altering the content of your post? They've been doing this since the dawn of deja.com, and nobody's complained yet.
If the hyperlinks they insert take me to another page on deja.com where I can write a review, good or bad, for a product in question, I don't see how this can be anything but a good thing for someone searching the newsgroups for information. Especially since they put their little orange triangle in front of it so you know it's a deja inserted link.
Sure, today they're only adding links, but on the basis of all the arguments saying Deja.com is doing an OK thing, what's to stop them from doing more?
Deja.com has moved from being an internet service, archiving Usenet posts, to an Internet parasite, illegally modifying other people's post to further their own economic well being. Yes, links are a form of communication! What else are they? By adding in the links they are changing the message of the poster, and that is not just illegal but immoral and unethical.
This is a major violation of the free speech rights of Usenet posters. What good is free speech if just any old person can change what you said before it arrives to a listener? This is a form of censorship, and it doesn't matter if it's a "little" or a "lot"... it's wrong and should be fought.
There are no excuses sufficient to justify this without asking permission from every single poster of the message. Yes, that burden is impossible; that's why they shouldn't be doing this.
I think what's annoying people here is that the added links are not explicitly credited to the site: it would be easy to get the impression if not forewarned that the original poster had added that link.
This is OK as far as it goes, but some people don't want their names put to someone else's advertising, a reasonable enough desire. As I see it there are two ways around it:-
The first would get them around the PR problem, and would probably bring the copyright problem into fair use (or at least near enough thereto to make it a dicey proposition to sue) and the second would get them round both at a slight cost in screen space and seamlessness.
Thoughts?
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
I certainly agree that this is a gross and disgusting violation of my copyright. So much so, that for the first time in my 13+ year history of posting on Usenet, I'm putting an X-No-Archive header in my post.
The problem is with the 6,000+ articles of mine that are already in Deja's archives. There is no easy way to remove them. They have a nuke page, where you can laboriously type in article numbers, and reply to emails. But even if that could be automated, that would only get rid of the 3,000+ of those articles that were posted from email addresses that still exist. I have no option when it comes to the ones I posted from companies that I don't work for any more, or from companies that don't exist, or divisions of companies that disappeared in re-orgs.
--
A "freaking free-loading Canadian" stealing jobs from good honest hard working Americans since 1997.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I haven't seen any other examples of this, but from the example provided, it looks distracting. The poster is talking tangentially about modems, and the highlight emphasises a basically unimportant part of the post and makes it look like the most important part. However, it can be disabled, which I will probably do. Deja is IMO a great way to browse usenet, and I'm really glad they removed the stupid "rating" sidebar that they had at one time.