The Return of Eric Weisstein's World Of Mathematics

Many readers (like this Anonymous Coward) have written with the good news that "Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, a free, online encyclopedia of mathematics was taken off the web thanks to a lawsuit by CRC Publishing. After much legal wrangling, it returns today stronger than ever. See it rise from the ashes at http://mathworld.wolfram.com."

Comments

This seems to work.

[Sul3n3t]

www.mathworld.com seems to work, instead of the other link. Seems so obvious too.

This is a happy day for all.

[i_am_nitrogen]

In this time when most of our attention is focused on the little guys being bullied around by the likes of Microsoft and the government (please, no flames - I'm a patriot, just not a blind patriot), it's very refreshing to see a case of this where the "little guy" finally succeeded. I have to say this almost made me literally jump for joy. I've been waiting for this site to return for a long time. Eric's other treasure troves are incredibly useful, but since my focus is in computer science the mathematics section proved particularly useful to me. This should serve as an inspiration to all the little guys out there who are having a hard time with a bully.

But what the heck, knowing my luck, by the time I finish typing this and hit the submit button, there will probably already be 150 posts saying the same exact thing as this and I'll get moderated as redundant... I promise this at least was a unique and original post when I first clicked the Reply button!

Check your contracts BEFORE you sign them.

[Svartalf]

This whole mess was due to his lack of a careful reading of the boilerplate. It was loosely set up so that the interpretation that CRC's legal team came up with (Which was that MathWorld was infringing on thier copyright). They kept asking for money, using a lawsuit as leverage, according to the blow-by-blow account on MathWorld- this isn't about infringement, this is about cash, pure and simple. In the end, Wolfram caved because it was cheaper to give the cheating SOB's what they were asking for than to fight for the principle of the thing.

If my job doesn't depend on something from CRC Publishing, I'm NOT buying it anymore.

Boycott CRC

[chrisatslashdot]

Check out Eric Weisstein's ordeal.
There's a mirror here. My apologies, Eric

A short synonpsis might be: Eric spent from high school to present of his life creating this wonderful resource. One day he returns from lunch to find Sherif's Deputies waiting to serve him with a federal copyright violation lawsuit for publishing his work on the web. Now after more than a year of negotiations all of Mathworld belongs to CRC and Eric pays them so that he can continue working on it.

Print his story out and stick it in the CRC books of your local book stores.

Or contact CRC and tell them what you think.

CRC Press LLC Headquarters
2000 NW Corporate Blvd
Boca Raton,FL, USA 33431


Phone
1(800)272-7737 x6066
(561)994-0555
Fax -
1(800)374-3401
(561)989-9732

the moral of this story . . .

[raresilk]

It is really sad that a researcher who appears to give so much to the community had to spend so much time and effort struggling out of a legal morass. Based on his published account, I certainly agree that CRC behaved in a shameful and abusive matter, regardless of whether its position on the contract and copyright issues was legally justified. However, may I take this opportunity to suggest that if the author had invested a relatively minor amount of time and money in consulting a lawyer prior to signing his book contract, the protracted litigation and consequent much-greater expense might well have been avoided.

Now you're probably looking at my sig and thinking "what a shameless plug by a sleazy lawyer trying to drum up business." But I am primarily a litigation attorney. I can (and do) make a hell of a lot more money representing one side or the other in protracted, expensive misery-inducing litigation than I could hope to make by doing three-hour book contract consultations for legally-naive techno geniuses, even if half the people on /. became my clients. But I feel this sense of grief and waste often, even in dealing with my existing clients - I wish I could tell them: "if you'd gotten legal advice at the outset of this situation, or paid heed to the legal advice you did get, you wouldn't be in this pitched battle today."

Please, please, take this case as an example. Cut yourself some slack, and consult an independent lawyer before signing any agreements. Don't count on your "editor" for legal advice. Listen politely when someone says you can ignore all the fine print in their contract because it's just "boilerplate" -- then say, "yes, I know all that stuff is legalese. So I'm sure you won't mind if I have a lawyer look at it, and get back to you." Any reputable company will permit this, and even respect you for it. On the other hand, if they raise a stink, that ought to tell you something right there . . .

Re:wee bit 'o whoring:

[Speare]

From that page, here is the meat of the settlement, which is far from a "win" by Wolfram and the site's creator:

• We eventually concluded that there was no real business discussion possible. CRC was simply incapable of listening to or evaluating an actual business proposal. So we weighed the costs of continued litigation against the costs of giving CRC some of the cash for which it appeared so hungry. The cash approach won.

• In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.

  There are a few other consequences of the settlement which are of interest to MathWorld readers. The first is that a copyright statement "© 1999 CRC Press LLC" (in addition of the © 1999-2001 Wolfram Research, Inc. notice) now appears at the bottom of MathWorld entries that have a corresponding article in CRC's printed shapshot. Despite the fact the I (or volunteer contributors) wrote these entries, that CRC Press did nothing to support their creation or the creation of the web site in which they appear, and the fact that they existed in the website long before they ever appeared in the printed version, the tail has truly come to wave this dog, and this copyright statement will henceforth be a constant reminder of this fact.

  Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the website. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the website unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions on-line to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.

I understand not having the financial resources to fight such disastrous suits, but I really wish more light was shed on this issue BEFORE the settlement. There is a whole world outside Wolfram Research, and perhaps such a fight would have been possible if more people knew it was necessary.

Re:Boycott CRC, but give them some feedback too

[garyrich]

Thir customer feedback page

http://www.crcpress.com/us/custserv/cust_issues. as p

Their Editorial contacts:
http://www.crcpress.com/us/Publish/edcontact.asp

Chapman & Hall/CRC

Sunil Nair
Publisher
44-20-8875-4385 Mathematics
snail@crcpress.com

Bob Stern
(561)998-2549 Mathematics & Statistics
bstern@crcpress.com

Kirsty Stroud
44-20-8875-4386 Statistics
kstroud@crcpress.com

Electronic Publishing Division

Steve Wells
Director, Electronic Product Development
(561) 998-2557All CD and Web Projects
swells@crcpress.com

Re:wee bit 'o whoring:

[interiot]

Not only that, but the settlement requires contributors to make the same mistake that Eric unknowingly made in the first place (contribution permission form here).

Mixed blessing, Read this before celebrating!

[ackthpt]

On the surface it seems like a good thing, until, while reading this commentary, you get to this part:

Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the web site. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the web site unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form.

The short of it is, they caved to CRC and if you want to be a contributor, but retain all your rights, you can't be a contributor. 8^(