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Deja, Google, Open Source, Oh My
blkros writes: "Over on Wired
there's an article about Deja News and the plans to try to get Google to open source the Usenet archives it got when it bought Deja News. Part of the plan is to have the Library of Congress oversee it and put it on university mainframes. Google has taken the archives off the web for now Aaagh!"
While many web forums offer a search function, this is useable at the site only and not indexable by net-wide spiders (such as Google). While in some cases this is a feature, it locks up the content in a way that prevents it from being found, used and archived by net users in general.
I know a few subject matters very well and am happy to be helpful to pass on knowledge, answer questions and participate in dialogue. When this becomes lost I have to answer the same questions again and again, wasting my time. Furthermore, my answers that may be of help to others are lost, depriving them of knowledge that may have helped them.
I have surface knowledge of a great many more topics. I research these, I try to further my knowledge in some, I have to learn about others for work or for other reasons. Being able to easily find information is invaluable and my publicly archived questions may be useful to others.
I know little or nothing about an even greater range of knowledge. Being able to read what others have asked and answered is a wonderful way to start bridging those gaps.
Unarchiveable web forums, mailing lists that don't archive messages on the web and even IRC let this human knowledge slip away.
Not that there isn't a place for all of the above, but I wish more people would consider things beyond their immediate needs.
Bleh!
Personally, I think Deja dropped the ball when they "improved" the site to include all the ads and such. I think the google interface, even though it's more limited, is light years ahead of where Deja was going in the last few years. Deja was soooo slow .. it went from like 2-3 seconds per page to like 20-25 seconds per page a few years back (when the ads came in with the new interface). Now with Google, it's lightning fast. Since google has taken over, I guess that I have benefitted from the improvement in speed that Google has to offer that in my mind makes the service much more valuable. I especially like the ability to view multiple responses simultaneously and the highlighting is much better. I can't say enough good stuff about the google interface, and as far as what's missing from Deja .. the _only_ thing I miss is posting .. Even the older articles I used less frequently and am willing to sacrifice in the name of the tremendous speed!
.. it's a major part of my very existence.
I use groups.google.com at least 10 times every day
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- Aaron Hightower - Lead Programmer - Rush2049 Coin-op
My FOIA inquiry got a PDQ PFO from the CIA. They can FOD, FWIW.
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Slashdot: News For Zealots. Stuff That's Hypocritical.
The tone of the article was such that it implied that Google should be providing this information to the public at large, simply *because* they bought it from what was Deja.com. There's the accusation that Google are doing something morally wrong by taking the archive offline - meanwhile ignoring the fact that Deja.com had already taken a large portion of the archive offline with little or no warning. Google, apparently, are online villains of the deepest dye for wanting to get some form of commercial return for the money that they paid to acquire the archive in the first place.
So let's start from first principles here: the fact that Deja had such a comprehensive archive is not remarkable. The remarkable bit is is that *nobody else has done anything similar*. Deja's value as a resource, both in the commercial sense, as well as in the historical sense, is in its rarity. Goggle, in acquiring the deja.com archives, *prevented* this resource from being lost forever. Yet they're apparently villains for not immediately doing whatever the Open-Source community wants them to. Talk about bloody-minded ingratitude.
There's an argument being made that this information is ours already, although from what I understand, this is legally problematic. However, if you don't agree with Google being able to commercially exploit *your* precious Usenet postings, the answer is straightforward: start posting with "X-No-Archive: Yes" in your headers, and write a *polite* email to Google asking them to remove all your posts from their archive.
For myself, I'm quite glad to see that Google have obtained the archive, and if they do as good a job of running it for easy access as they have with their search engine database, I'll be extremely pleased.
Meg Thornton.
Perkin's Postulate: Online tech support is designed to provide everything short of actual help.
A friend who works at Google said that they got the archives "barely" -- they were apparently copying data as technicians were tearing apart what was left of Deja's systems and hauling the equipment away.
I got the impression that there was a lot of work to be done to fix the data so it was in a coherent form, much less fit into Google's existing storage and databasing environment.
As long as they're still collecting news, plan on improving the existing search engine (my source says yes to this one thing) and it remains free-as-in-beer I'll be satisified.
What kills me overall is the decline in the overall quality of USENET. Too much good content has gone to crap, non-archived, non-searchable web forums (ahem) and what's left on USENET outside of a few newsgroups is spam, porn and isn't worth the time to search.
Hm. Does Google own the database of Usenet postings?
Google does indeed own a copy of the database of usenet postings. More on this later
You see, since every person ever write to the Usenet still retains copyright to their postings, isn't it in the slightest bit illegal to actually *sell* the database? Or at least immoral?
This is a funny bit of Usenet culture/law. While it is generally accepted that usenet users are giving others permission to copy there works they *do* retain copyright. So why can deja go around selling this work? IANAL, but here is how I see it, I think I'm (mostly) right.
1) When you post to usenet, you're sending your work to whatever every archives are in place, and you know it. By posting, you are giving any other user permission to view and archive the material. In fact, you yourself are commanding that the message be forwarded to all other connected computers, and therein lies the implied permission.
2) This strikes me as an important point. What deja.com is selling is not the rights to the posts, or the posts themselves, but the work that they put into archiving the posts, which is considerable. It is the same way that free software sell CDs with open source programs on them. They are selling the data itself and the work that went into collecting the data, not the rights to the data. So, while you may have put a lot of effort into writing that post for alt.silly.rantings, deja.com didn't sell that work, deja.com merely sold the work that went into collecting your work.
Do you see what I'm saying? Or am I just rambling?
Stupid like a fox!
The freaking article is entitle Deja 'Revolt' Against Google, how anyone could have completely misread it and gave the horrible write up we just got is quite amazing.
This leads me to the main question: Major sites such as Google, eBay and Amazon, have become a valuable part of the 'Net and have become an intrinsic part of the World Wide Web experience for many people. Yet, these companies are yet to prove their viability and could collapse at any time if their investors grow tired of shouldering their debts and underperformance. What will happen to the 'Net when the next big dotcomm to fall is eBay or Amazon, or Google? Especially since Google's USENET archive and WWW cache have become invaluable to a number of people.
Does this justify asking the government to step in and take over these resources so they are preserved for posterity as Frank Davies and many others have suggested or is would this be undue interference by the government?
Finagle's First Law
Good, it ought to be able to keep Congress from doing anything for at least another few years... ;-)
And if they have archives of the alt.binaries.* or alt.bainaris.* heiarchy, that should keep the Congresscritters occupied for a good loooooong time...
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"Overrated" is "overfuckingused".
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Has anyone tried submitting FOIA requests to the CIA, FBI, NSA, NRO, etc, to try to get copies of any Usenet archives they may have? If they have such archives, it is unlikely that they will meet any of the criteria that would allow them to deny a FOIA request, e.g., privacy, national security, etc.