All intelligence enhancing technologies make us "stupid". Printing decreases the need (and hence the ability) to memorize. Calculators damage our ability to do unaided mathematics. (Although if I never see another table of proportional parts it will be too bloody soon.)And so on.
The real question is are we "smarter" with the aid of these crutches than we are without them? Is a literate person with a book better able to recall quantities of information exactly than someone with memory alone? Is a person with a calculator better able to do mathematical calculations than someone with a pencil and paper?
Joni Mitchell out it: Something's lost and something's gained by living every day.
As a writer with several novels in print, I'm a great fan of intellectual property. As a techno-journalist who spends most of his days dealing with computers, security, the new media, etc., I'm also keenly aware of the limits on what can be protected.
I've had stuff copied and posted on the web (in Russian, no less!) Am I happy about it? No. Am I going to lose sleep over it? No. Did it amount to stealing from me? Ethically perhaps, but practically no. The pirates didn't, as far as I can see, make a dime off it and I can't see that I lost any money either.
The key to any effective protection of intellectual property (a phrase that leaves me somewhat queasy because of the way it is "applied") is to realize that some things are flat impossible to effectively protect.
Let's assume someone (call him Satan) claims a property right in your immortal soul. Let's further assume that person is able to bribe Congress into passing a law recognizing his property right in souls. It would make no difference whatsoever because this person has no way to enforce that claim. This is almost exactly the situation the music publishers and movie industry find themselves in. Well, they can, with enormous expense, hunt down and punish individuals. But for everyone they catch hundreds or thousands more spring up and the copying continues.
The law doesn't matter, morality doesn't matter, ethics don't matter. If you can't protect it it becomes effectively a free good.
In general the key to protecting intellectual property is in whether someone is attempting to benefit financially from the property. If the pirates are trying to make money off copying they can be tracked down and thwarted by following the money trail. If someone simply copies something and posts it for free there's effectively nothing you can do about it -- except waste a lot of money and make a grand, braying ass of yourself.
This gets lost because the hoorah over protecting intellectual property is not really about protecting intellectual property. It is about trying to protect obsolete business models. Publishing, music, movies, etc. are all locked into high-cost inefficient ways of doing business that make companies huge amounts of money while providing ever-decreasing benefits to the people paying for the goods. Not surprisingly, as technology makes cheaper, better alternatives available, those business models are being bypassed.
I've discussed all this at some length in my blog Heresy Pornography and Treason in the "Whack the Gopher" URL:http://http://heresypornographyandtreason.blogspot.com/2007/09/copyrights-whack-gopher-and-sfwa-why-i.html series of posts and I return to the theme there from time to time.
--Rick Cook
No the lecture notes are NOT fair use. They're a completely new work and the copyright is owned by the student who took them.
Remember, it's not the facts that can be copyrighted, it's the expression. Now if a court reporter took down the lecture verbatim, or someone recorded it, you might be able to make a case. But notes? No way. No how.
Let me repeat:
No reference source is perfect and none is to be completely trusted. That's where critical reading, and critical thinking, come in.
However on the evidence, Wikipedia is about as good as the EB (which, by the way, is not the top-rated encyclopedia).
>If you found an error in a printed encyclopedia and alerted them, it would be fixed in the >next edition, in perhaps five years or so.
>Or their next DVD edition in 6 months or immediately in their on-line version.
Not on your say-so they won't. If you're lucky they may decide to pursue your claim. Or not.
"And if you alerted them they would fix it and IT WOULD STAY FIXED forever. "
Well, no.
This is a printed book, remember? The errors are permanent for that edition -- which as I recall lasted for about 20 years. They published supplements, but they did not publish errata.
You want to talk about a small elite clique? Try the EB organization and the scholars they favored. They were notorious as far back as the 1950s. (Well, notorious within restricted circles anyway.)
And as for accuracy -- tests have shown that on the whole Wikipedia is about as accurate as the EB. They both have problems, but of different sorts.
One of the things that drives this argument is that most people simply aren't aware of the problems with printed reference books, especially things like encyclopedias. People are aware of the problems with Wikipedia because, like everything else about it, its problems are public. In the age of blogs they have a much tougher time hiding them than the Encyclopedia Brittianica did in the 20th Century.
The truth is that you have always needed to read critically to do research. That's never going to change.
Stuff and nonsense.
Tests have shown that Wikipedia is about as reliable as the Brittanica.
I myself found multiple errors in the edition of EB I owned, including a spectacularly misidentified orchid genus in a photograph.
Wikipedia gets it accuracy by a completely different method than a conventional enecyclopedia, but it works and apparently works about as well. This is something that the Brittanica and others simply can't get their heads around and it leads them to some very silly statements.
Now please note neither an encyclopedia or Wikipedia is considered an authorative source for serious (ie, grown-up) research. They are both however good at getting you oriented and giving you places to start.
My EB? Went to Goodwill long ago. I can get far more current, and more accurate, information off the web (not from Wikipedia) -- provided of course I exercise a little critical analysis.
Slashdot Mirror
All intelligence enhancing technologies make us "stupid". Printing decreases the need (and hence the ability) to memorize. Calculators damage our ability to do unaided mathematics. (Although if I never see another table of proportional parts it will be too bloody soon.)And so on. The real question is are we "smarter" with the aid of these crutches than we are without them? Is a literate person with a book better able to recall quantities of information exactly than someone with memory alone? Is a person with a calculator better able to do mathematical calculations than someone with a pencil and paper? Joni Mitchell out it: Something's lost and something's gained by living every day.
As a writer with several novels in print, I'm a great fan of intellectual property. As a techno-journalist who spends most of his days dealing with computers, security, the new media, etc., I'm also keenly aware of the limits on what can be protected. I've had stuff copied and posted on the web (in Russian, no less!) Am I happy about it? No. Am I going to lose sleep over it? No. Did it amount to stealing from me? Ethically perhaps, but practically no. The pirates didn't, as far as I can see, make a dime off it and I can't see that I lost any money either. The key to any effective protection of intellectual property (a phrase that leaves me somewhat queasy because of the way it is "applied") is to realize that some things are flat impossible to effectively protect. Let's assume someone (call him Satan) claims a property right in your immortal soul. Let's further assume that person is able to bribe Congress into passing a law recognizing his property right in souls. It would make no difference whatsoever because this person has no way to enforce that claim. This is almost exactly the situation the music publishers and movie industry find themselves in. Well, they can, with enormous expense, hunt down and punish individuals. But for everyone they catch hundreds or thousands more spring up and the copying continues. The law doesn't matter, morality doesn't matter, ethics don't matter. If you can't protect it it becomes effectively a free good. In general the key to protecting intellectual property is in whether someone is attempting to benefit financially from the property. If the pirates are trying to make money off copying they can be tracked down and thwarted by following the money trail. If someone simply copies something and posts it for free there's effectively nothing you can do about it -- except waste a lot of money and make a grand, braying ass of yourself. This gets lost because the hoorah over protecting intellectual property is not really about protecting intellectual property. It is about trying to protect obsolete business models. Publishing, music, movies, etc. are all locked into high-cost inefficient ways of doing business that make companies huge amounts of money while providing ever-decreasing benefits to the people paying for the goods. Not surprisingly, as technology makes cheaper, better alternatives available, those business models are being bypassed. I've discussed all this at some length in my blog Heresy Pornography and Treason in the "Whack the Gopher" URL:http://http://heresypornographyandtreason.blogspot.com/2007/09/copyrights-whack-gopher-and-sfwa-why-i.html series of posts and I return to the theme there from time to time. --Rick Cook
Why don't we sue these clowns for being idiots? Gawd knows I'm allergic to idiots. cattywhumpus
No the lecture notes are NOT fair use. They're a completely new work and the copyright is owned by the student who took them. Remember, it's not the facts that can be copyrighted, it's the expression. Now if a court reporter took down the lecture verbatim, or someone recorded it, you might be able to make a case. But notes? No way. No how.
For example: http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/15/1352207.shtml?tid=95&tid=14 references a test by Nature. An earlier test by the Guardian (now apparently unavailable on their website) showed them to be about equally accurate.
Let me repeat: No reference source is perfect and none is to be completely trusted. That's where critical reading, and critical thinking, come in. However on the evidence, Wikipedia is about as good as the EB (which, by the way, is not the top-rated encyclopedia).
>If you found an error in a printed encyclopedia and alerted them, it would be fixed in the >next edition, in perhaps five years or so. >Or their next DVD edition in 6 months or immediately in their on-line version. Not on your say-so they won't. If you're lucky they may decide to pursue your claim. Or not.
"And if you alerted them they would fix it and IT WOULD STAY FIXED forever. " Well, no. This is a printed book, remember? The errors are permanent for that edition -- which as I recall lasted for about 20 years. They published supplements, but they did not publish errata. You want to talk about a small elite clique? Try the EB organization and the scholars they favored. They were notorious as far back as the 1950s. (Well, notorious within restricted circles anyway.) And as for accuracy -- tests have shown that on the whole Wikipedia is about as accurate as the EB. They both have problems, but of different sorts. One of the things that drives this argument is that most people simply aren't aware of the problems with printed reference books, especially things like encyclopedias. People are aware of the problems with Wikipedia because, like everything else about it, its problems are public. In the age of blogs they have a much tougher time hiding them than the Encyclopedia Brittianica did in the 20th Century. The truth is that you have always needed to read critically to do research. That's never going to change.
Stuff and nonsense. Tests have shown that Wikipedia is about as reliable as the Brittanica. I myself found multiple errors in the edition of EB I owned, including a spectacularly misidentified orchid genus in a photograph. Wikipedia gets it accuracy by a completely different method than a conventional enecyclopedia, but it works and apparently works about as well. This is something that the Brittanica and others simply can't get their heads around and it leads them to some very silly statements. Now please note neither an encyclopedia or Wikipedia is considered an authorative source for serious (ie, grown-up) research. They are both however good at getting you oriented and giving you places to start. My EB? Went to Goodwill long ago. I can get far more current, and more accurate, information off the web (not from Wikipedia) -- provided of course I exercise a little critical analysis.