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."

Comments

Nothing to worry about for academics

[jw3]

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.

Re:And yet

[Jugalator]

They don't? All calculations generate the sources under the "Source information" link on each page.

Re:That's pretty standard

[PCM2]

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.

not quite what it says

[fermion]

The Wolfram terms of service says that Alpha is capable of generating content from several data sources,and sometimes Alpha considers the content sufficiently original that it will attribute the content to itself. Otherwise, it will attribute the content to the source where it was derived. What is interesting is that we have a machine generating what is essentially one time use content, and the machine then gains a copyright to the content that others, even humans, have to respect. It is no more crazy than assigning a copyright to a corporation, so we should not be surprised. In any case, Wolfram does have a point that content should always be attributed to a source, and that people have become quite lazy on this issue, as various accusations of high level plagiarism have shown. Since Google only indexes, it does not really know Providence and cannot claim copyright to anything in particular.

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.

Re:This just seals the deal.

[Onyma]

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'.

Re:That's pretty standard

[Bakkster]

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.

Nothing new for Wolfram

[PopeRatzo]

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.