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How Wolfram Alpha's Copyright Claims Could Change Software
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister suggests that Wolfram Research's claim to copyright of results returned by the Wolfram Alpha engine could have significant ramifications for the software industry. 'While software companies routinely retain sole ownership of their software and license it to users, Wolfram Research has taken the additional step of claiming ownership of the output of the software itself,' McAllister writes, pointing out that it is 'at least theoretically possible to copyright works generated by machines.' And, under current copyright law, if any Wolfram claim to authorship of the output of its engine is upheld, by extension the same rules will apply to other information services in similar cases as well. In other words, 'If unique presentations based on software-based manipulation of mundane data are copyrightable, who retains what rights to the resulting works?'"
The key word is "claims". Until this is tested in court, anyone can say anything. I could make a contract that said anything, I could say for each click you owe me $50, however to collect that I would have to sue and most likely the judge would throw it out. Until this is tested in court, it means nothing.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Modern compilers do a lot of optimization. By analogy to the Wolfram claim could compiler optimized binaries be considered subject to a copyright via the compiler? That would be bad.
The display on my monitor is now copyright Acer.
The output of Garage Band is now copyright Apple.
The document I just wrote in Word is now copyright Microsoft.
The text message I just sent is copyright Verizon.
The photo I just took is copyright Canon.
This opens Pandora's box like you wouldn't believe. We should be restraining copyright, not expanding it.
I void warranties.
This is absurd. They used programs to create their Alpha Engine. Does that mean that whoever wrote those programs owns their engine? It'll never fly.
... so any future searches that show the same results are copyright me and WA must license them
So would this extend to something like, say, a Photoshop filter, where the machine is generating the output? Does nik software suddenly have a copyright claim on my photos?
Or does Autodesk have a claim on my animated movie, because, while I used the software to create the objects and things, it was really the software that generated the resulting file.
This isn't a slippery slope, this is a big bottomless hole.
Given that he (allegedly) tried to sue because of a citation, this should not come as a surprise. Especially since that case was about an employee researcher whose proof (that rule 110 is capable of universal computation):
From this review of 'A New Kind of Science'
So this essentially means that no-one will want to do anything generally useful with alpha, if they won't benefit from their work?
Many years ago when procuring a data processing system for air traffic control, one bidder had buried in their small print that they retained copyright on all data produced by their system. We didn't buy that system (the copyright claim was an influence) so I don't know how it would have played out in court.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
There goes any remaining chance of anyone actually using this search engine...
Sounds a lot like the retail chains claiming copyright on information from their Black Friday fliers to keep the prices from being posted too early. Granted Wolfram Alpha is a little more complicated but if it is simply processing facts and laying them out in a certain way they might be able to patent the algorithm but the results are still facts.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The owner of the machine producing the output is the owner of the output.
So while Wolfram might successfully claim ownership of the output of Wolfram Alpha, no way in hell could, for example, Microsoft claim ownership of things made on your own computer just because you're running "their" software on it, because it's only "their" software inasmuch as they own the copyrights on it; the actual copy of the software, and the machine it's running on, are yours.
Though it would also seem necessary for the owner of a machine to be able to transfer ownership of that machine's output to someone else if they liked, e.g. if you were renting a machine, common sense would seem to suggest you own its output, even though you don't own the machine.
This could raise questions about whether the user of a website like Wolfram Alpha could claim that, as he was the one using Wolfram's machine, and as a customer rather than as an employee (where work-for-hire laws might apply), he should be the owner of the output.
It could also raise the possibility of someone like Microsoft sneaking in a clause in their EULA (which nobody ever reads) claiming that anything produced with MS Word is actually copyrighted to Microsoft and you, the end user, merely have a license to use it... But I'd like to see that farce try to fly in court.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I am a philosopher, and I disapprove of all intellectual property laws in general.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Seriously, I mean, people that do what he does just wreck the world for everyone else through unmitigated greed. Claiming the output of a program? For what? So he can try and figure out ways to charge people for 2+2=4? Just, what a jackass.... I seriously, everytime I read about Wolfram, the guy is more and more of a dick all the time. I'll piss on his grave, for sure, when he finally kicks off.
This is my sig.
Copyright requires that a human creates something. Wolfram's software is clearly not a human, and it is unlikely to be even close to artificial intelligence either. Hence, no copyright.
My experience to date has been that the output of Alpha is mostly underwhelming.
That explains why there's an infinite number of monkeys out there claiming they own every copyright.
A phone book publisher doesn't own the right to your phone number, nor does it own the exclusive right to print listings of phone numbers, but it does hold copyright to the unique presentation of phone numbers. That is, you can copy the phone numbers out of their book, reformat them, print it, and sell it, but you can't just photocopy each page and the sell that.
#1 URL =1
#2 URL = 100
#1 URL + #2 URL = 101
I have copyrighted this claim of adding 2 Web pages to obtain a resulting sum.
To License This Product Please Deposit Euro 10,000,000
into Account # 4432333 of Nigerian Saving Bank And Trust
Yours In Industry,
Kilgore Trout
Seems like there is a very simple to this.
If you don't like the license, then DON'T USE IT.
If no one was to use Alpha (particularly if you tell them that the license is why you don't use it) then they would change their license in a hurry.
This is idiotic. This would be like saying that if you purchase an Ipod, apple owns the sound waves created by the files you put on it. Or, if you purchase a loom, that the loom maker owns the rights to all items that come from that loom. See, Wolfram alpha doesn't do anything but sit there until you put something into it. I mean, sure you could look at the webpage all day long, but until you put in "Are you skynet?" or "What is 1+1?" and get a result, its pointless. Just like an ipod needs mp3s, and a loom needs thread. Both items are user provided. I can't wait to see this go to court.
Well,
I can tell you one thing. If it ever is held up in court and program output becomes copyrighted in any way, I am basically going to quit the industry and open up an Italian restaurant.
I have no intention of participating in a field that is seething with greed and sowing the seeds of its own darkness.
The restrictions of IP are so catastrophic right now, that real advances in computer usability are essentially being delayed and in their place, anything that you can create with pretty bitmap graphics is declared a HUGE ADAVANCE or some how "cool".
This whole mess is because we do not make anything worth a damn any more. In my opinion everyone wants to live like a king and do little if any real work, which is what the whole idea of extending copyrights and IP to ludicrous ends is all about.
Computers suck right now, and I do not see it getting any better if this sort of restriction is placed on the industry. Can't f'in own anything any more because some rich arse has a army of lawyers to bribe congressional leaders and grease the rails for new extensions to IP laws.
Perhaps we should target Wolfram in earnest, and simple remove the incentive to buy Wolfram products. We did it with UNIX, (we=open source community). Mathematica could be rebuilt in 5 years with a good focus.
Some projects such as Sage already have made large strides:
http://www.sagemath.org/tour-quickstart.html
Sage has similar capabilities to Mathematica including the separation of client and server for example.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Machine-generated output per se isn't copyrightable, since machines aren't (yet) capable of original authorship. Of course, computer output is copyrightable if it also contains original, human-generated content, for example Wolfram's logo, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright, search for "authorship."
Assume for a moment that Kurzweil is right, that people will be mergeable with machines, that your mind can be dowloaded into a neural simulator and run - recreating you, thoughts, memories, etc. All of you.
So there you are, a process running on a computer, probably in some 3D game on steroids - eternal life! But if this copyright grab stands, and the software running the simulator is copyrighted, does that mean that your very thoughts are copyrighted, too?
If you assume a materialist definition of the world, that what we see is what is, and there's no spirit, no Valhalla, no flying spaghetti monster, then we humans are, in fact, a functioning material machine.
Thought police, indeed.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If this isn't a bogus claim, then just feed it your iTunes library. The sole copyright on the output would then be transferred to Wolfram. Wolfram could then upload all this music to some torrent for free.
Been know in other sources for a long time, the only thing different is it is on a web service.
GCC and other GPL software explicitly allow generated output not to be bound by their own licence.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception
Facts, figures and data returned by a search engine are not eligible for copyright protection, you can see that from a plain reading of the law. Corporations would love to extend copyright onto everything so they can make more money, but that is not the purpose of copyright and this idea will be tossed out on summary judgment.
I might be able to be _convinced_ to go along with copyright on the results of their search engine IF .....
They were willing to step up to the plate and take responsibility for the accuracy of their results. If I relied on the results of their search engine to design a pressure vessel and it blew up, they should pay damages.
If they have the right to copyright for what their software generates, they also have the responsibility for the accuracy of what their software generates.
Somehow, I don't think they'd stand behind their results .....
hint: Angel.
My Babylon
This not a troll. I am serious. For a full analysis read here --> http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/wolfram-alpha-and-hubristic-user.html
Some choice quotes
Indeed (as we'll see), every decade since the '80s, billions of dollars and gazillions of man-hours have been invested in this fundamental error, to end routinely in disaster. It's as though the automotive industry had a large ongoing research program searching for the perpetual-motion engine.
The error is that control interfaces must not be intelligent. Briefly, intelligent user interfaces should be limited to applications in which the user does not expect to control the behavior of the product. If the product is used as a tool, its interface should be as unintelligent as possible. Stupid is predictable; predictable is learnable; learnable is usable.
I was reminded of this lesson by a brief perusal of Wolfram Alpha, the hype machine's latest gift. Briefly: there is actually a useful tool inside Wolfram Alpha, which hopefully will be exposed someday. Unfortunately, this would require Stephen Wolfram to amputate what he thinks is the beautiful part of the system, and leave what he thinks is the boring part.
WA is two things: a set of specialized, hand-built databases and data visualization apps, each of which would be cool, the set of which almost deserves the hype; and an intelligent UI, which translates an unstructured natural-language query into a call to one of these tools. The apps are useful and fine and good. The natural-language UI is a monstrous encumbrance, which needs to be taken out back and shot. It won't be.
et's examine this difference between Google and WA. Basically, Google is the exception: the UI that is not a control interface. Because Google's search interface is not a control interface, it should be an intelligent interface, as of course it is.
Google is not a control interface because intrinsic to the state of performing a full-text search is the assumption that the results are to some extent random. Let's say I've heard of some blog called "Unqualified Reservations" and I type it into Google.
Am I sure that the first result will be the blog itself? I suppose I'm about 95% sure. Do I have any idea what will come next? Of course not. Will I automatically click on the first result? Certainly not. I will look first. Because for all I know, the million lines of code that parsed my query could be having a bad hair day, and send me to Jim Henley instead.
Google is not a control interface, because no predictable mapping exists between control input and system behavior, and none can be expected. A screwdriver is a control interface because if I am screwing in a screw and I turn the handle clockwise, I expect the screw to want to go in. If the screw is reverse threaded, it will want to come out instead, confusing me dreadfully. Fortunately, this mapping is not random; it is predictable. (Yes, Aspies, by "random" I mean "arbitrary.")
But if you are an actual flow user who actually needs to get something done, WA could give you an alternative, manual interface for selecting your tool. You might perform the discovery task by browsing, say, a good old-fashioned menu. For example, the Nutrition Facts tool might come with its own URL, which you could bookmark and navigate to directly. There might even be a special form for entering your recipe. Yes, I know none of this is very high-tech. (Obviously the coolest thing would be a true command line - but the command line is truly not for all.)
A more intriguing question is whether the Graffiti approach can be applied to full-text search. Many modern search engines, notably the hideous, awfully-named Bing, are actually multiple applications under the hood - just like WA. If Bing figures out that you are searching for a product, it will show you
This space for rent.
Input: Is alpha original work?
Ouput: "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."
Seems worthy of copyright to me.
Hang on... this is like the "trying to copyright pictures of paintings in the public domain." You can patent a camera, but it has been unambiguously ruled that trying to copyright a photograph of something in the public domain does not add any creative value to the painting and thus does not constitute a novel creative work. Same thing here, you can patent/copyright your bit of software, but claiming that any output it generates also constitutes a creative work by the coder of the software will not fly because the user of the software is usually the one who is doing the creative work. Maybe I'm thinking more along the lines of word processors and books where this is obvious and any goon trying to claim otherwise would be laughed out of court....
"Im sorry Dan Brown, but Bill Gates has the rights to your new book since you use MSWord2008, should have used emacs."
Also, fuck Wolfram, I was given a copy of his big fat book "New Science" or whatever, I'm not going to read it, and I can get Mathematica for free through my Uni, but I think I'll stick with my TI83 emulator since TI doesnt have a God complex.
This will make Richard Stallman Rich. Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?
main(t,_,a)char *a;{return!0 main(-86,0,a+1)+a)):1,t main(2,_+1,"%s %d %d\n"):9:16:t "@n'+,#'/*{}w+/w#cdnr/+,{}r/*de}+,/*{*+,/w{%+,/w#q#n+,/#{l,+,/n{n+,/+#n+,/#\
q#'+d'K#!/+k#;q#'r}eKK#}w'r}eKK{nl]'/#;#q#n'){)#}w'){){nl]'/+#n';d}rw' i;# \
){nl]!/n{n#'; r{#w'r nc{nl]'/#{l,+'K {rw' iK{;[{nl]'/w#q#n'wk nw'
\
iwk{KK{nl]!/w{%'l##w#' i;
}'+}##(!!/")
I can now copyright the 12 days of Christmas! (Well, if I hadn't ripped the code off from Wikipedia)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...this charming bloke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashleigh_Brilliant) seems to have set some precedence for a very small byte-count-threshold for what i copyrightable. I should think it would be an easy matter to create a program which delivers every conceivable combination of words to form a longish sentence - if the results are copyrighted by virtue of having been produced by my program...?
Of course it will never hold up in court, but it is a wonderful metaphor for how insane software patents are!
IAIFARSIJDPOOTV - I Am In Fact A Reality Star; I Just Don't Play One On TV
One can only hope that those who wrote the compiler that Wolfram used to write their code realize that they now have claim to the Wolfram program.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They've just trained teams of underpaid humans to answer the search results. That's how they get a valid copyright.
So.. suppose their output includes a repetition of your input. Suppose you input a copyrighted phrase or image? Would that not invalidate their copyright claim? They can claim design elements, sure. But this is a real stretch.
If Wolfram is Turing-complete then the output is the same as the output to any Turing machine.
So wouldn't that make their claim overly-broad?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The copyright of machine generated work has been a matter of law for more than a hundred years.
If you think this is in any way open to debate, ask yourself who drew Toy Story.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just to have some fun...
... seriously
printf("your mother");
printf("(C) 2009");
This post is "(C) 2009" because I am a computer... any attempts to quote or respond to this post will require written permission by my creator.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now what he needs to do is apply for a patent on claiming copyright on the output of a mechanical transformation.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The really interesting thing would be to start copyrighting possible outputs of Wolfram Alpha (without actually running it), and then suing Wolfram for violating your copyright on the prospective query. Let the courts sort out that mess!
They may claim copyright of the output, but the copyright of the input lies clearly with the users.
And since the output cannot be generated (or is meaningless) without the input, every claim of copyright of output means violating the users' copyright of the input.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I've just finished writing a program to generate and copyright every 140 character string.
I'll soon own Twitter!
I'm not saying Alpha should be copyrighted, but those are non-sequitors - just because a court ruled that one instance of software results was a creative work, doesn't mean that all results of software are creative. Just as the fact that humans can copyright most photographs they create, doesn't mean that a photograph of public domain artwork can be copyrighted. It can't, because there is no creative element.
The physical examples of monitors, cameras and phones would certainly fail the requirement for any creative element.
Also the ruling might be made on other grounds - e.g., that it runs on their servers. After all, it's standard practice that if you use your work PC to do something, the copyright automatically belongs to the company (even if you do it in your own time). This would obviously have ramifications for online services, but wouldn't affect any other kind of software, let alone physical products that you own.
Wolfram Alpha will patent the idea of Italian restaurants, too.
Dog is my co-pilot.
This is already an accepted practice, lots of game companies claim the output of the tools that they supply with the game. The only new thing is that this is with a "serious" application instead of a toy... but if its OK for one why wouldn't it be for the other?
No one's claiming copyright on facts. The issue is the expression of that information. Are you saying that Wikipedia or Britannica aren't covered by copyright? Obviously they are. If the Wolfram Alpha results were produced by a human, they would too. The question is, does that change if the final presentation step is automated by a program?
OK: so what happens when it generates nonsense and I waste a lot of my time; or someone dies as a result of acting on what Wolfram Alpha told me ? Will he 'fess up, say "mea culpa" and open his cheque book to compensate me ? I doubt it.
Stephen: remember that things cut both ways!
So, after millions of queries, what happens when the software inevitably outputs something that's already been copyrighted by someone else?
Is this the cataclysmic event that spawns the Singularity?
I'm pretty sure that in the UK this would be considered slavish reproduction of mere information not sufficiently creative to warrant copyright protection. They do get database rights and they have copyright in the artistic and creative parts of their website but not the snippets of information presented on that site.
1. put up a "fact" or two (creatively written!) on your website ...
2. get a friend to submit it to the WA engine
3. when that "fact" is available to search you do a lookup
4. sue WA for copyright infringement
5
6 [lawyers] profit
The U.S. Supreme Court decided around 1992 in the case of Feist v. Rural Telephone that the mere aggregation of customer information of a telephone company is inadequate to obtain copyright protection, basically tossing out the entire premise that "sweat of the brow" alone was adequate, and overturning a more than 80 year precedent in Pacific Telephone v. Leon from 1911, I think.
Since there is no creativity in the computer generating an automated result, I suspect the results are not copyrightable.
Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> - My Blog
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I mean..I just asked WA why Wolrfram is such a douchebag and it pretended not to understand. Google, by contrast returned 28,000 hits.
If this is true, it is beyond appalling. Nothing is too bad for a company that makes software buyers into its servants.
Does Canon own a copyright in a photo I take (using its copyrighted firmware)?
Does Lexmark own a copyright in an image I print?
Does Adobe own a copyright in my photoshop file?
What if the printer inserts some 'fingerprint' into the printed image so that the print can be traced to that particular printer.
What if this 'fingerprint' were under their copyright?
Wouldn't this make every single thing printed by their printers under their copyright?
Cos this already happens...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Also the same result for "Why isn't wolfram/alpha sure what to do with my input?"
By this logic, all motion pictures would be owned by Panavision and Ari-flex. For those were the "machines" that created the output.
Wow, who's going to be lining up to buy this product now? Nothing scares away potential customers like the threat of a potential lawsuit, ...just from generating some docs.
(What does their product do again?_
"Article I, 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite for copyright protection. The constitutional requirement necessitates independent creation plus a modicum of creativity. Since facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship, they are not original, and thus are not copyrightable. The Copyright Act of 1976 and its predecessor, the Copyright Act of 1909, leave no doubt that originality is the touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works. The 1976 Act explains that copyright extends to "original works of authorship," 17 U.S.C. 102(a), and that there can be no copyright in facts, 102(b). [499 U.S. 340, 341]... A compilation is not copyrightable per se, but is copyrightable only if its facts have been "selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship....
Lower courts that adopted a "sweat of the brow" or "industrious collection" test - which extended a compilation's copyright protection beyond selection and arrangement to the facts themselves - misconstrued the 1909 Act and eschewed the fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or ideas."--Feist vs. Rural Telephone, U. S. Supreme Court, 1991.
Obviously it's not cut-and-dried, because Wolfram Alpha does more in the way of selecting and compiling facts than the average computer program, but it is still a mechanical process.
The person who designed the wind chime that hangs outside my house put some creative originality into it, but I would hate to think that the output of the wind chime itself is copyrightable, just because the wind chime's mechanism rearranges the notes into patterns that no human thought of before.
If the court decides that the output of a machine meets the test of originality, and if there's any validity to the theory that an identity of seven consecutive notes constitute plagiarism of music, then I am certainly going to set my computer to work producing as many different seven-note sequences as it can as fast as it can, and try to copyright them all.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Pardon my American slant for this post to a global community.
The US constitution states that copyright exists "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 8; United States Constitution)
Copyrighting the output of a machine does not "promote progress of science and useful arts". Machines do not need a monopoly over ideas to induce the financial motivation ostensibly needed for creativity. "Authors and Inventors" refer to people. As much as I love my computer, it is not a person.
My oppinions are subject to change, however, the second my laptop goes on strike for better pay and working conditions.
If my parents can't claim ownership and copyright related to my existence in any shape and form, why should fucking corporation act as if I was their slave somehow?
Slavery has been abolished but the desire to act as owner of other humans has been alive, basically, for the same reason, to gain financial benefit.
Corporations have been granted increasing powers to be able to act effectively as proxy masters of slaves for the benefit of an alarming small group of really rich people.
I'd trust the FSF's take on this more than Wolfram's because the FSF has a long history of interpreting copyright law correctly. The relevant GNU GPL FAQ entry says:
Wolfram has no interest in user's freedoms (as should be obvious from their claims to control user's output) but the implications of this are interesting for Wolfram considering what compiler Wolfram is likely using to make GNU/Linux and MacOS X binaries. I think Wolfram is merely looking at this situation with the most restrictive interpretation not just for the user (which is enough reason to reject Wolfram's programs entirely) but with regard to which copyright holder would control what.
Digital Citizen
Ever hear of NMap?
NMap uses a modified GPL license that states that the output from the NMap program itself is subject to copyright and the GPL.
You can't take the output of an NMap run and use it as input into another program unless you either make that program also GPL.
This is absolutely no different than what Wolfram Alpha is claiming, and NMap has been claiming it for years and years.
And NMap is one of many many programs that claim this.
The copyright of machine generated work has been a matter of law for more than a hundred years.
Wolfram does not own the copyright to the information, but that's not what's really important in this case. It's the same as citing Google Calculator if you use it to solve homework problems.
Using a machine to generate and collate information into a useful form factor easily has precedent. Just look at the steam tables. Sure, steam's not something any of us can lay claim to, but generating the pages of numerical solutions for the various physical properties is. The phase diagrams are very easy to defend as creative work, as good graphical communication is something requiring high intellectual effort. And it's valuable. A similar argument can be made for the steam tables themselves. Engineers for many decades relied on these tables, and they are for sale, like sheet music. After all, someone creatively designed the model that generated the data (and if you prefer not to use theirs, the option is always open for you to figure out a way create your own for personal use - or profit if you're innovative enough!)
In this way, it's easy to see how the output of Alpha is copyrightable. One could argue it's a monumental achievement as a creative intellectual work. Basically the whole point of the engine is to make knowledge universally accessible in an easy form factor. The fact that it's free to use doesn't mean the authors don't want credit for it (why this is so rarely understood boggles my mind). If you would prefer not to respect the copyright on the output, the same option is available as the steam tables - generate your own, or find another source that's been released for free and open use, or simply find a way to make do without it.
- Hover Conversion Industries -
I've heard that EA initially tried to claim that it held the copyright to all works created with Deluxe Paint (which originally came out in the mid-1980s).
If EA owns copyright in clip art, it owns copyright in derivatives of clip art. How much clip art came with Deluxe Paint?
Does the inventor of the shovel have a property right to every hole that's ever been dug?
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
This very issue (the soon-to-be-reality of computer systems that can and do claim copyright on their output) is why I called on the authors of GPL v3 to include provision for a "Greater GPL". They summarily dismissed the proposal and said such application of copyright is impossible. They were and are quite wrong about that. http://pagesmiths.com/blog/C1602834558/E1763876253/index.html
to grab-bagging assholes like these appear to be making of themselves, DO what the "commies" did: line them up against a brick wall, reincarnate them, and bill their heirs/survivors for the bullet. The, to extend THAT, bill them for the labor costs, too.
How dare these assholes set up and dare to drag the rest of us over some precipice designed to give them money and control. We hobbyists can reasonably efficiently use all sorts of tools to create database and other interfaces. Then, these fwads would dare to copyright our interface AND data. SCREW THAT and SCREW THEM! Send that wolf howling back into it's hole with a failed patent writ on its ass.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Yes, I remember seeing low cost versions that were "not for commercial use" and so on. I often wondered how that was enforceable [...] I assumed it was because there would be some code inserted by the compiler (I dunno, start up stuff, or required libraries?), and the point is that that code was written by a person, and hence the company owned copyright on it.
And you'd be correct. Back then, there wasn't a BSD- or LGPL-licensed set of libraries like the modern glibc or Newlib or uClibc. So the budget versions of compilers came with -nc clauses on their libc licenses.
A prayer wheel application ...
Just the ticket for the on-the-go iPhoner.
(flip) (flip) (flip) (flip)
-- D
It's not a translation, because the output has nothing to do with the source code; you cannot inspect the binary and translate it to the same source code.
Clearly the output must have something to do with the source code! Since when does a translation have to be a one-to-one, reversible mapping? A clear example is Babelfish. That is an obvious mechanical translation and yet it drops the gender from adjectives when translating from French to English so that both "Je suis grand" and "Je suis grande" map to "I am tall". When you ask it to translate back it chooses "Je suis grand".
This is the same as a compiler. Like English in the above example, machine code carries around less information and so some data is dropped when converting from, say C++. The machine code generated will depend on the compiler, just like a language translation will depend on the translator program you use (although for very simple examples there are not many options for difference). Seems exactly like a mechanical translation to me....
If Wolfram's claim were to be held up, what would stop me from say creating a suitably powerful super computer, and outputting every possible combination of sound waves for every time between 0:01 and say 5:00 and thereby gain copyright over any future music?
I mean this claim is so incredibly stupid, I don't know what the people at Wolfram are thinking.
Anything we say in English... In fact, right now England has copyright to any book written in English or any software using words like while, if, end...
Now, seriously, the copyright thing is out on hand, copyright purpose is supposed to be protect creativity and research not to protect benefits or corporations.
I remember M$ was that greedy too and claimed ownership over the content uploaded on their hosting. It was very easy to right their wrong: someone just posted some illegal images and MS was screwed. Do the same to wolfram, they deserved it.
This reminds me of a piece of proprietary software called Miserware. The original license said you needed permission to publish data reported by Miserware. After some rumblings, they issued this e-mail:
Dear MicroMiser beta participant,
Thank you for your involvement in the MicroMiser beta! The response so far has been tremendous and well beyond our expectations. The information we are getting when you run the mw-feedback script is really helping us improve our products and documentation.
The license you agreed to when registering for the beta said you needed permission from MiserWare to publish data reported by our software. We would like to lift this requirement to some extent by allowing you to share performance and power numbers reported by MicroMiser. More precisely our lawyers told us to say it like this:
"You are hereby authorized to disclose information regarding the performance of the MicroMiser software, provided that such information is provided to you in a MicroMiser software report."
This includes any information (including energy savings information) provided by MicroMiser in any of its log files and/or information reported in tools such as the mw-feedback script which reports system specific information to MiserWare thereby aiding future development and earning you points in the incentive program.
Several folks have asked about benchmarking against other power management software. With regard to benchmarking, we want to clarify the intent of the license. Our intent was not to preclude benchmarking altogether, but to ensure the measurement methodology is fair to all parties. More precisely, our lawyers told us to paste both permissions together:
"You are hereby authorized to disclose information regarding the performance of the MicroMiser software, (i) provided that such information is provided to you in a MicroMiser software report, or (ii) provided that such information is obtained using techniques approved in writing by MiserWare."
There is no need for you to sign another license agreement as these clarifications simply give you additional permissions under the original license.
These clarifications are the result of your feedback. Please continue to send your comments to feedback@miserware.com . We promise to keep listening.
Regards,
MiserWare
Good thing they have lawyers, huh? Needless to say, I thought about it for a millisecond, and realized I could live without this particular piece of software.
WolframAlpha works by taking you reqested searchstring (with no claim to own it, if you wish to claim ownership of your searchstrings, that is you own wierd legal hassle),
then it runs it through alot of software, which Wolfram claims ownership to (Fair enough I think, since they created it).
Though the process of information from third parties (which they do not claim ownership to) is added to the results, and in the end a display of the results is given (which they claim ownership to, not the actual facts given, but the display).
So the question is, If I give you a paper stating " 4+4 = 8, derive by Mr. Anonymous Coward. " Should I be able to claim ownership? Sure as Fucking hell I should. Otherwise any author in the world will have their copyright claims declared invalid since they only repeat trivial content (letters and words) with their name attached.
Can I claim ownership of the 4+4=8 part? No ofcause not, just like WolframAlpha isn't claiming that they own the fact that the derivative of x^2 is 2x, even though a user calculated this from their search engien, however if you take a screendump of the result, then you cannot rightfully claim that you are passing on _your_ work.
And people please, trying to claim that you made the output is just plain dumb. It's a search engien, a very intelligent one yes, but still, its a search engien. You aren't creating anything, you are simply shown results to you queries.
Reminds me a bit of IPIX who claimed ownership to
every VRL image generated with their software, and had you pay for it.
Eventually, they got bankrupt.
why would you take the risk of a court case and not pony up the $50?
Once again demonstrating why we must destroy the malignant patent, trademark and copyright system which has grown like a cancer to stifle creativity in our societies. Viva la Blender! The ultimate revolution. Just Press Puree! -WJ
Who let the Mr. Wolfram have mod points? Didn't expect that.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
God save us from these morons...
this is no different *from* the Yellow Pages
The software is deterministic. Therefore it is not the software which creates the output, but the user, the questioner. Ask the same question, get the same answer. The software is a tool, much as the brush for a painter, or the chisel for a sculptor. Control over the output is in the hands of the question, and therefore the creator is, and should be, the author.
I can't see this claim standing up to even a moderately well-financed challenge.