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

Right when it comes up...

[svallarian]

Damn slashdot effect takes it right back down. :)

This seems to work.

[Sul3n3t]

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

wee bit 'o whoring:

[Xzzy]

Since slashdot apparently has zero stories detailing the ordeal that this guy went through other than saying "closed because of copyright issues", here's a shiny direct link to the owner's writeup of what happened.

Haven't finished reading it yet, but it is pretty interesting so far. Shame the article submitter neglected to put this link in his story..

Re:wee bit 'o whoring:

[Spy Hunter]

What a horrible ending! CRC is the big winner here. By threataning to bring a lawsuit they probably wouldn't win they have won all sorts of money and rights to the intellectual "property" contained in MathWorld. This case shows as plain as any I have ever seen the problems with our legal system.

Re:wee bit 'o whoring:

[aka-ed]

Thanks to chrisatslashdot, memphis.edu has a mirror; just in case, though -- here is the final chapter, told by Eric W. Weisstein:

Settling the Case

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.

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: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).

Oh NO!

[Uttles]

I just went to the site to check it out, and I have to say it's really nicely done, and I'm sure there's a lot of great information there, but I read the first article about a new subset of normal numbers, and my brain hasn't hurt that much since MthSc 410!!! Thank God I'll never have to look at that stuff again!

(this is humor, I'm not slighting math as I think it's the most important subject, especially in early education, but that article is rather confusing to anyone who hasn't been working with that level of stuff for several years)

Re:Oh NO!

[bachelor3]

I'm not slighting math as I think it's the most important subject...
I totally agree. We need resources like this, since 3 out of 10 North Americans have trouble with basic math...that's like, what, 60%?

Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ?

[RareHeintz]

Well, since I can't get to the site, I don't have the whole story. But if CRC sued this site because, for example, it contained values for natural constants (pi, e, Planck's constant, etc.) that also happened to be published in the CRC handbook, then it raises the question: Does the CRC own numbers that they didn't make up (though they may have put in effort calculating or measuring them to some precision)?

It strikes me that if this in fact what happened, then the CRC was crassly trying to remove free-as-in-beer competition through a frivolous lawsuit, by claiming to own a copyright on the basic physical and mathematical constants.

So, to answer your question, it does relate to your rights, because it's yet another story about how well-monied corporations try to restrict speech on the net by suing those who speak in ways they don't like, and hoping that the financial burden of pursuing the suit will cause the speaker to give in.

If that doesn't make it clear for you, then I suggest you put up a large and well-documented website devoted to exposing abuses of corporate power by some large and litigious corporation (Walmart, Sony, any of the big names will do), and see if you feel empowered when you get the first letter from their lawyers.

OK,
- B

Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ?

[Rand Race]

If you write a book (or make a movie, website, etc) you can claim copyright, therefore copyright is one of your rights. That the particular copyright in question is not yours is irrelevant as this can easily be construed as affecting everyone's potential right to protection of information. Just because you chose not to excersise your rights doesn't mean you don't have them.

Trust me, if you ever want to publish in dead tree format something you maintain online you need to read this guy's story.

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

Next time: put the /. effect to good use

[ethereal]

Here's a thought for future story submitters: since any posting of this magnitude will guarantee a rapid /.ing of any posted site, why not make the links point to the bad guys, like CRC in this case? If I'm going to /. some web server and still not read the story (which is mirrored in a post below, BTW, just before I was about to post it), then I'd rather /. a server of some guys who quite clearly Have It Coming, And How.

Congrats to Eric and Wolfram, so sorry to see that you had to give in and settle, but on the other hand maybe you made the right choice in order to get this invaluable resource up on the web again. And now we know that CRC is just as low as Gracenote and other money-grubbing "fencing in the commons" corporate scum.

People talk about "piracy" of intellectual property. Well, guess what: downloading a song from Napster isn't piracy. But using a limited right of publication in print form to destroy an entire online encyclopedia is the very definition of piracy. CRC essentially boarded and scuttled mathworld, and now they're selling it back to the rightful owners a piece at a time. So from now on, when Hilary Rosen blathers about piracy, remember: we know the real pirates by their actions. They are CRC, and Gracenote, and any other company that takes a publicly-generated free resource and tries to coopt that resource for their sole gain. It's a valuable lesson: it takes real money and a corporate seal to be a true pirate these days.

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:the moral of this story . . .

[raresilk]

Begging your pardon, but it appears that Eric Weisstein "hired lawyers" too. However, he made a mistake in hiring them only after he was threatened with litigation. Does that make him a person from whom society should be protected, in your view? Is Eric not welcome anymore on your planet? I imagine not.

One likely reason that Weisstein failed to obtain legal advice in advance of litigation, when it actually could have helped him avoid this situation, is ignorance about what lawyers really do. Businesses and business people of all types, small and large, routinely obtain legal advice before entering into contractual committments. Hiring a lawyer to review a contract is not, as you suggest, a signal that one is going on the warpath, or a manifestation of hostility to one's fellow man. It is, rather, the equivalent of hiring a security consultant to attempt unauthorized entry to your system, and advise you of needed security measures - a prudent precaution.

Don't you want to know whether your network has holes in it like a sieve? OK then, why would you not want to know if your contract has holes in it like a sieve? And why do you consider it detestable to hire an expert to provide you with that information? It's prejudices like yours among the sci-tech crowd that render the Eric Weissteins of the world so vulnerable to this type of exploitation.

Re:the moral of this story . . .

[raresilk]

Entering into a contract for publication of a book is a business venture - not the equivalent of Joe Blow plugging in his new Imac to surf the web. If you are going to play in the real world, you owe it to yourself to recognize that not everybody out there is a warm fuzzy, and to find out what the rules are before the bad guys take advantage of your ignorance. It has nothing to do with "blaming the victim," or blaming anyone. It has to do with using appropriate precautions for the environment you're in. If you walk out into a busy street inside the crosswalk, sure, you have a right to expect the traffic to screech to a halt. That's what the law requires them to do, and that's what a good driver would do. But does that mean you should just walk into the crosswalk blindfolded and take your chances? I'm not saying these things to "blame" Weisstein for what happened -- I'm saying it because I'm very sad that it happened, and because I hope it doesn't have to happen to anyone else. That's why I strongly recommend going into contractual transactions with your eyes open, and seeking professional advice if you have any concerns.

And speaking of "blaming the victim," I hear an awful lot of that on Slashdot in other contexts. Aw gee, too bad you got rooted, shouldn't have had your ports open, etc. People here seemingly have no problem understanding that a security lesson can be learned from even the most malicious of system intrusions, provided the victim educates him/herself and takes appropriate precautions in the future. All I'm trying to do is show how that principle applies in the contractual context as well.

Not Really usefull in the New Form

[NateTG]

I think an alternative to MathWorld is called for. There are some serious problems with the current one:

• It appears from Weisstein's story that CRC has "retroactive" copyrights to the site. When they publish a part of the site, they get copyrights for it?
  
• Any contributers must sign CRC's boilerplate copyright agreement. Since CRC has already demonstrated some serious misbehavior, it's a quite sinister notion. Personally I'm quite reluctant to give them rights to anything I have written. It probably also precludes contributing the same material to other locations.
  

Did you READ his account of things that happened?

[AtariDatacenter]

Okay. Gave a book company permission to print a snapshot in time of the website. Book company doesn't do much to promote the book. Said it was a bad seller. Turns around and sues the company who we worked for (who was aiding him with the website) saying it was their best seller. Gets the website shut down.
In the end, he settles with the publisher for what I consider some outrageous terms. Like the publisher can publish a snapshot of the site whenever they want. The website has to cary its copyright, and the book publisher's. Submitters have to sign the book publisher's copyright form. Anything that the author can't certify has to be rewritten.

Hate to say it, but even though his site is still running, he got horribly screwed in the end. [apologies for the pun]

What if...

[the bluebrain]

a group of the original submitters (who never signed the CRC "boilerplate") were to sue CRC for copyright infringement?
It might nullify the contract between Weisstein & CRC, and lead to the demise of the book, but with an adequate number of mirrors - I think the wold is ready for the if-you-want-a-hardcopy-then-download-it-and-print- it book.

Re:CRC

[ttimes]

You should read Eric's account of the case. It is quite a testament to Eric's vision and commitment to mathematics but also to the voracity of business. Though CRC did not prevail in court, they got money out of this and the rights to all future submissions. All this for data they don't own! What was Eric's fine maths site has now been co-opted into an information gathering point over which lawyers hold sway. AND, here comes the wrought irony, if you do contribute, you have to agree to the same ambiguous boilerplate contract that suckered Eric in the first place. Thank Eric and Wolfram for their commitment, but wear garlic when around CRC.

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

Is Eric doing the Wrong Thing?

[swillden]

This is a really, really sad story. Eric created something wonderful, was a little bit incautious in how he tried to use his material, and ended up losing ownership of his own work. The worst part is that he has lost ownership not only of what he did, but also of whatever he or others might add to it later!

I can see why WRI didn't want to foot the big legal bill for fighting CRC; they don't really care about who owns the content of the site, as long as they can keep it up it will drive people to the web site, which will help them sell copies of Mathematica (an awesome piece of software, BTW, too bad I can't afford a copy -- it's not priced for casual users like me).

However, at the end of it all, Eric and WRI are in a situation now where if they produce more material (or if they accept reader submissions), they're actually adding value to CRC Press' ill-gotten gains! And that really has to rub them the wrong way.

Wouldn't it make more sense for them to stop adding to it, and start another project whose ownership weren't in dispute? Sure, it would mean starting over, but I'll bet the whole thing could be reproduced in a couple of years, particularly if they were to GPL (or similar) everything to encourage submissions. According to the front page, it currently has just over 10K entries; if the project could convince a professor or two from each University in the world to submit a half-dozen entries, and if there were a little organization to keep them from overlapping too much the new site would soon eclipse the old.

Let WRI take down the current Mathworld and leave CRC Press with nothing but a set of dead pages to try to sell! Right now, according to Eric, CRC Press is shortsighted enough to find that an acceptable outcome. I suspect they'd change their mind over time, as the new site grew to eclipse the old and some competitor of theirs got to publish snapshots of the living, breathing #1 math resource on the web.

Boycott Not Companies But Individuals...

[toupsie]

It appears that one of the main problems that Eric Weisstein had during his ordeal were people that just didn't care and only had a profit motive in mind. Not only should you boycott this company but the individuals that were involved in the mess. A blacklist of corrupted individuals that an someone can reference before making a deal would be a lifesaver for so many. I am sure as hell never going to have any publishing relationship with Bob Stern or company that employees him.

We must remember that its not companies that ultimately screw with us, its people. Once people realize they cannot hide behind the corporate curtain, they will start acting more responsible. Granted, reading a contract is incredibly important but supplying a devious contract and calling its "normal, standard and harmless" is pure evil for an editor to do and unethical to the maximum. Rot in hell, Mr. Stern, you're name has been added to the list.

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^(

Re:Boycott CRC, but give them some feedback too

[rossz]

Am I correct in thinking CRC is big in mail order? If that's the case, instead of just boycotting them, take the time to fill out an order form, but don't include a check or credit card number, instead, include a note saying you will not complete the order until they release their unjust copyright stranglehold.

boilerplate data

[Alien54]

the annoying paragraph is:

By indicating your consent to this permission request you consent to the following uses of your Contribution: the non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual and irrevocable license without compensation of any kind to Wolfram Research, Inc. to exercise all rights under copyright in all media and formats, for the full term of copyright, and all renewals and extensions thereof, including without limitation, the right to reproduce, publish, sell, and distribute copies of works containing the Contribution, selections therefrom, and translations and other derivative editions based upon such works, in print, audio-visual, electronic, or by any and all media now or hereafter known or devised, and the right of Wolfram Research, Inc. to license or authorize others to do, license, or authorize any or all of the foregoing throughout the world.

IANAL, etc. and maybe I need more coffee, but there is nothing in here that says that you cannot use your own stuff. It just says that they can use your stuff and you will not hunt them down and sue them about it after the fact.

It doesn't give them exclusive rights to anything at all. Now wasn't that what the original hassle was about, them trying to grab exclusive rights?

Of course this is not exactly like the GPL either, because it is just a license to them, not the whole planet.

Now that would be a good idea, to GPL the site.

It took mathworld's absence...

[shimmin]

... to make me see its obsolescence.

Don't get me wrong. Mathworld is a great resource. Eric did an enormous amount of great work putting it together. Unfortunately, being the work of a single person, it is and always will be limited in very important ways.

First off, all of the treasure troves always seemed very idiosyncratic. Since they represented only what the author felt was important / had access to / had time to write up, this was inevitable. Particularly amusing in the chemistry treasure trove which manages to be mostly useless to a college chemistry student while still bothering to include the mineral names of a great number of inorganic compounds.

The math treasure trove, by virtue of its sheer size, eventually escaped the worst effects of idiosyncrasy, but it still suffers from covering topics it varying levels of detail utterly out of proportion with their importance in mathematical study.

Despite all this, in its day, mathworld managed to be an enormously useful resource. However, even before it was shut down, it was beginning to totter under the effects of being (mostly) a one-man project. Despite the solicitation of "contributors," who did write a small fraction of the entries, Eric took a great deal of pride in having put the treasure trove together, and in his management of the treasure trove project, ensured that outside contributions would never be a substantial enough part of the project to threaten his claims to absolute control over it.

And absolute control was definitely one of his priorities. Mathworld was protected by some of the most stringent anti-mirroring measures I have seen. If the web server thought too large of fraction of the archive had gone to any IP or group of IP's, they banned the entire network. With a few rare exceptions, such bannings were without appeal. Yes, this meant that if someone else at your school attempted to mirror mathworld and got caught, you were banned from it until if and when your sysadmin managed to make nice with Eric.

I don't deny that Eric, being the author of almost all the material in the treasure-troves, had the right to do this. However, these policies forced me to reevaluate my opinion of him. Whereas before, I considered him a great altruist, I came to realize that offering mathword free to the public had no altruism in it at all -- it was simply a business decision to amass personal fame and publicity for his product, which he never intended to give to the public to use in any way he did not intend. Mathword, while originally free as in beer, was never free as in speech.

This is the great irony of mathworld's downfall: Because Eric never allowed anyone to have substantial collaberation in or to mirror the site, when it fell, the only way to get the information was off of a few illicit mirrors created from the CRC CD, and even then, Eric and Wolfram still shut down any mirror they became aware of. Again, I don't blame him for doing so -- it was his work. It just caused me to reevaluate the spirit in which the work was put together.

I now hold Eric Weisstein in about the same esteem as RMS. Both created a wonderful thing, but in time, their respective egos became one of the larger barriers to that thing acheiving its full potential.

What direction should mathworld have gone? What resources are there that attempt similar things in better manners?

First off, there is http://planetmath.org, a collaborative attempt at becoming what mathworld should have been. All contributions are under a public license of sorts, so it is immune to what befell mathworld. It is, however, still in its infancy. Go there, contribute, and fix that.

Second, there is http://www.mathforum.org, which has been bounced around from being a project of the Stanford math department, an independent dot-com, a subsidiary of WebCT, and now finally a not-for-profit sponsored by Drexel University. This is not an encyclopedia, it is a question and answer service for K-12 math questions. Because it is entirely volunteer-staffed, though, it actually answers whatever questions the volunteers feel like answering, and as a result, has amassed an archive of answers to math questions ranging from the most basic to graduate-level topics. In its current incarnation as a not-for-profit and with the site licnesed to print the authors' work with the author's retaining ownership, it should last as long as Drexel pays for the web space. I recommend that anyone who is interested volunteer as a Math Doctor to help enrich the site.

These two sites, I feel, far better embody the open-source spirit than mathworld, and in time their potential vastly exceeds anything Eric Weisstein will ever manage (mostly single handed). I bear no ill will towards Eric. I greatly respect his work. I just believe that the paradigm and motive it was compiled under are now obsolete, though it took the CRC morass to make me realize that.

Let's start demanding royalities

[AxelBoldt]

I have contributed several little things to the website over the years. I never signed over my copyrights. CRC therefore owes me royalities. The letter will go out soon. Maybe I can find a crappy lawyer who takes on the case for 70% of the settlement?

Re:Oughtn't our laws protect good not evil?

[raresilk]

I think you're misreading my comments. I am not attributing Weisstein's predicament to any defect in US law. On the contrary, I believe existing US law would have protected Weisstein quite effectively, had he chosen to seek even a superficial understanding of that law and his rights prior to entering into the contract with CRC. Conversely, no law or regulation on earth can protect those who insist on remaining ignorant of their rights and duties under it.

Nor did I ever say that CRC's behavior was "perfectly legal." It may well be that CRC egregiously breached the contract -- there are two sides to every lawsuit story. However, the best way to prevent such disputes from arising is to obtain a clear understanding of contractual language and the rights and duties it imposes prior to binding oneself, clarify any ambiguities with the other party prior to binding oneself, and document that entire process in writing. There is nothing mystical about this method, and many people are able to handle it without legal advice.

For those who feel less confident, legal counsel is widely available and not as costly as one might think. (You notice I don't publish my real name or even my email address here, so this is absolutely not a plug for my individual services.) Most lawyers charge less per hour than the scientific and technical consultants we hire to assist in our cases. And guidance on a simple contract would likely take only two to three hours of work.

For example, say a client comes to me and asks "I'm interesting in publishing a book based on my web site. Here's my book contract. If I sign it, can I still do my web site?" I'd briefly review the contract, determine what clause covered the rights being purchased, and draft a brief letter to the publisher along the lines of: "My client has a website. I understand Clause X.2(b) to confer only rights of printed publication, and thus that my client will remain able to operate his website without any payment to you. Is that also your understanding? If not, please advise." Many people are suprised to learn that a court looks not only at the contractual language, but also the parties' communications about the contract, to figure out what the contract requires. And you want to get these things nailed down before signing anything, so they don't come back to bite you later. The cost of legal fees for a simple letter-swap of this nature, customary in all types of business transactions, is miniscule compared to the cost of litigation if you fail to perform it. And, like I said, an informed person can handle this without any legal help at all.