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Wolfram|Alpha's Surprising Terms of Service
eldavojohn notes that Groklaw is highlighting the unexpected Wolfram|Alpha ToS — unexpected, that is, for those of us accustomed to Google's "just don't use it to break the law, please" terms. Nothing wrong with Wolfram setting any terms they like, of course. Just be aware. "We've seen people comparing Wolfram's Alpha to Google's Search from a technical standpoint but Groklaw outlined the legal differences in a post yesterday. Wolfram|Alpha's terms of use are completely different in that it is not a search engine; it's a computational service. The legalese says that they claim copyright on the each results page and require attribution. So for you academics out there, be careful. Groklaw notes this is interesting considering some of its results quote 2001: A Space Odyssey or Douglas Adams. Claiming copyright on that material may be a bold move. There's more: if you build a service that uses their service or deep-links to it, you may be facilitating your users to break their terms of use, and you may be held liable."
All they ask is that you attribute them when publishing results derived from their service. Example:
Methods: "The comparative population studies were derived from the Wolphram Alpha service (Wolphram, 2009)"
Regular thing for academics. I cite NCBI blast service, I cite PFAM, I cite dozens of other services out there. Most of these tools require or ask for an attribution; and in most cases, this is anyways necessary in a scientific procedure.
j.
They don't? All calculations generate the sources under the "Source information" link on each page.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Then I guess you should have read the actual terms before you posted, hmm?
Attribution and Licensing
As Wolfram|Alpha is an authoritative source of information, maintaining the integrity of its data and the computations we do with that data is vital to the success of our project. We generate information ourselves, and we also gather, compare, contrast, and confirm data from multiple external sources. Where we have used external sources of data we list the source or sources we relied on, but in most cases the assemblages of data you get from Wolfram|Alpha do not come directly from any one external source. In many cases the data you are shown never existed before in exactly that way until you asked for it, so its provenance traces back both to underlying data sources and to the algorithms and knowledge built into the Wolfram|Alpha computational system. As such, the results you get from Wolfram|Alpha are correctly attributed to Wolfram|Alpha itself.
If you make results from Wolfram|Alpha available to anyone else, or incorporate those results into your own documents or presentations, you must include attribution indicating that the results AND/OR [emphasis mine] the presentation of the results came from Wolfram|Alpha. Some Wolfram|Alpha results include copyright statements or attributions linking the results to us or to third-party data providers, and you may not remove or obscure those attributions or copyright statements. Whenever possible, such attribution should take the form of a link to Wolfram|Alpha, either to the front page of the website or, better yet, to the specific query that generated the results you used. (This is also the most useful form of attribution for your readers, and they will appreciate your using links whenever possible.)
A list of suggested citation styles and icons is available here.
Failure to properly attribute results from Wolfram|Alpha is not only a violation of these terms, but may also constitute academic plagiarism OR [emphasis mine] a violation of copyright law. Attribution is something we expect you to give us in exchange for us having provided you with a high-quality free service.
The specific images, such as plots, typeset formulas, and tables, as well as the general page layouts, are all copyrighted by Wolfram|Alpha at the time Wolfram|Alpha generates them. A great deal of scholarship and innovation is included in the results generated and displayed by Wolfram|Alpha, including the presentations, collections, and juxtapositions of data, and the choices involved in formulating and composing mathematical results; these are also protected by copyright.
You may use any results, including copyrighted results, from Wolfram|Alpha for personal use and in academic or non-commercial publications, provided you comply with these terms.
If you want to use copyrighted results returned by Wolfram|Alpha in a commercial or for-profit publication we will usually be happy to grant you a low- or no-cost license to do so. To request a commercial-use license, go to this form and provide the input for which you want to use the corresponding output along with information concerning the nature of your proposed use. Your request will be reviewed and answered as quickly as practical.
DISCLAIMER: These results are the property of Wolfram|Alpha.
Breakfast served all day!
Wolfram is located a few blocks from me in Champaign Illinois
Come on man, you could at least feed it a useless and disgusting expression. That's its purpose ya?
http://www94.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=zeta(sin(atan(x^i)))
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
You didn't know what you were looking for, we did.
we found it for you, you WILL find that what we gave you is what you were looking for.
If you have a problem with this, we will kill you.
(or failing that, come close enough for a copyright suit... how about a copyright vest? trousers?... what about a copyright shirt and tie?)
Of course it requires attribution; it's used to create original data. You shouldn't use BLASTN or CLUSTALW without citing their authors, why would it be any different for something like this? As has been mentioned numerous times already, W|A is not merely a search engine. It's a set of algorithms for manipulating the data that you specify.
And how pathetic/dishonest a scientist or professional would you have to be not to want to attribute it? Sources of information should be cited and experimental results should be verifiable.
There are couple of really scary things in the terms of use. For instance, minors are not allowed to use the service without the permission of adults, and adults become fully responsible for the actions of the child. I am unsure of why they felt they had to put that in there. Then there is the first sentence "The Wolfram|Alpha service may be used only by a human being using a conventional web browser to manually enter queries one at a time". I hate to have to define what a conventional browser is. For may people it would be only IE.
More scare is the ambiguous policy to deep linking. To wit "It is not permitted to use Wolfram|Alpha indirectly through another website that has created a large number of deep links to Wolfram|Alpha, or that automatically constructs links based on input that you give on that site, rather than on Wolfram|Alpha. You may not in effect use Wolfram|Alpha through an alternate user interface presented by another website." Clearly they want to not have bots and third parties writing code to hijck the site. Disappointing given the wonderful work they did with Mathworld.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's because that's not its purpose since it's not a search engine. That's like asking your calculator for the definition of the word 'derivative'.
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
Don't see what the big deal is, here. Since Google doesn't host any of the actual information, you don't need to cite them as a source. You do need to cite the page you get to from Google, though. Think of W|A like a procedurally generated encyclopedia/textbook/almanac. Just like any of those other sources, you should cite it as a reference.
The sooner people stop associating Google and Alpha in their heads, the better.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
It'll solve differential equations.
Play Command HQ online
Anybody who has used Wolfram's products, such as Mathematica, for more than a few versions, knows that they don't have, how shall I say this? a very enlightened view of the relationship between the party that sells a product and the party that buys that product.
In fact, their user agreements have always been among the very worst in the software industry, that is, if you happen to believe that the consumer has any rights at all beyond the right to give money to the vendor.
They've always been pretty hostile toward their customers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This whole "new kind of [whatever]" meme might be really funny if it weren't so sad -- not because Wolfram doesn't really think he is smarter than almost everybody else (he does), but because - reportedly - he can't be prevailed upon to care about what most other people think, let alone how his choices might affect them:
I think Wolfram's attitude evokes pity, but indignation seems to be a far more common response. He should really consider working on (or, if he's already done so, promoting) A New Kind of Wolfram; he might find it a terrific challenge, but the new kind of Stephen would probably get more recognition than the old kind.
Just like any of those other sources, you should cite it as a reference
I should, if I'm writing an academic paper. I never thought of it as something that should be enforced, with them claiming I've violated the ToS, or threatening copyright infringement, especially when all I'm doing is posting a search result to Slashdot.
Google does, in fact, host all of the information used in their searches (it doesn't go out a spider the web in response to your request, it spiders it earlier, creates a database, supplements that database with information about your and other users past searches and behavior, and uses that database when you enter a search query.)
You are making the easily understandable mistake of assuming that the "Source Information" link does, in fact, liest the sources of information used in the query. While you'd think that would be the case, if you actually read the disclaimer at the bottom of the popup list of sources, you would see that it specifically states that the information provided is "intended as a guide to sources of further information", and disclaims any necessary connection between the cited sources and any particular Wolfram|Alpha search result.
Well it claims to make information computable. I accept it's not meant to find results like Google but the issue with it is it doesn't even seem to gather basic data in a computable form.
I mean, you try things like "On what date did the Falklands war commence?", "How many species of Melocactus are there?", "On what date was Adolf Hitler born" and it outright fails.
It has the data for two of those questions. It's just having trouble with the (somewhat odd and verbose) way that you asked them.
When did the Falklands war begin?
When was Hitler born?
It doesn't seem to know what to do with "on what date." That phrasing requires an understanding of the preposition 'on' in the abstract sense (instead of the 'physically on top of' sense) and knowledge that the phrase "what X" is meant to constrain the answer to the type X without otherwise modifying the question. Or specific knowledge that asking "what date" is the same as asking when.
Without understanding "what X" form it may have processed Hitler's birth into a date, then interpreted your question as "what date was the following date" (asking for the date of the date) instead of "what was the following date" (asking for the date directly). For example, it understands "what was January 1" and "when was January 1" but not "what date was January 1".
Also, it didn't understand the word "commence" as referring to the start of a war.
Okay, so I figured maybe I'm asking questions that are out of the intended realm of knowledge it supports and the assumption is that you'd never want to compute with this information. So I tried something Mathematical - I mean, that is Wolfram's speciality right?
"How many non-isomorphic labelled trees are there with 4 vertices"
Fail.
I've tried a few other relevant, factual questions and it just falls flat over, not even able to try and answer them.
I'm sure it does do a great job of making information computable, the problem is it's unable to gather the information in the first place.
It doesn't seem to know about trees or labels, but it knows about graphs:
How many graphs with four vertices are there?
It also won't do exhaustive searches through entire categories of knowledge to compute a result. It has to know how to figure it out directly. I think its main limitation is its intelligence, not how much data it has.