[Foundation-l] Iran?
Just wondering whether anyone's had a check in from any of our wikimedians in Iran? Any safety reports on our folks? Philippe ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 3:00 PM, philippephilippe.w...@gmail.com wrote: Just wondering whether anyone's had a check in from any of our wikimedians in Iran? Any safety reports on our folks? Good question. I just know that Mardetanha (a steward) is physically good and frustrated with election results. But, he is not living in Tehran. I'll ask people at fa.wp to send to me information what is going on with them. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
Thanks, Milos... i was concerned about Mardetanha because of my connection to him on Elec Comm, good to know he's well. Now let's see what we can find out about the rest of our folks! Thanks. On Jun 20, 2009, at 9:21 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: Good question. I just know that Mardetanha (a steward) is physically good and frustrated with election results. But, he is not living in Tehran. I'll ask people at fa.wp to send to me information what is going on with them. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
There is a wealth of work done all the time by primary source researchers and publishers, which could be improved on by having wikisource entries, translations, c. Related question : how appropriate would large numbers of public domain texts, with page scans and the best available OCR [and translations of same], fit with what Wikisource does now? This is clearly a wiki project that needs to happen : OCR even at its best misses rare meaning-bearing words. If not Wikisource, where should this work take place? SJ On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
This has reminded me to complain about Google Books. Google has the world's best OCR (in virtue of having the largest OCR'able dataset) and also has a mission to scan in all the public domain books they can get their hand on. They recently updated their interface to, as they put it, make it easier to find our plain text versions of public domain books. If a book is available in full view, you can click the 'Plain text' button in the toolbar. Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: There is a wealth of work done all the time by primary source researchers and publishers, which could be improved on by having wikisource entries, translations, c. Related question : how appropriate would large numbers of public domain texts, with page scans and the best available OCR [and translations of same], fit with what Wikisource does now? This is clearly a wiki project that needs to happen : OCR even at its best misses rare meaning-bearing words. If not Wikisource, where should this work take place? SJ On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
I've got the first report. There are no information that something happened to any Wikimedian. Take a look at [1]. I don't expect bigger scale problems in Iran, but not just because of that analysis. Except theocratic structures, preset situation in Iran reminds me a lot to the situation in Serbia during late period of Milosevic. State structures without connection to reality have to reform themselves or they'll be replaced. Fortunately, [ordinary] Iranians don't want war because still fresh memories to war between Iraq and Iran. The situation was similar in 2000 in Serbia. [1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Easier than scanning, though :) On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
So the bot just has to run at human speeds so it does not get banned, it still won't get tired or make unpredictable mistakes. And you can run it from different IPs to parallelize. --Falcorian On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Falcorian alex.public.account+wikimediamailingl...@gmail.comalex.public.account%2bwikimediamailingl...@gmail.com wrote: So the bot just has to run at human speeds so it does not get banned, it still won't get tired or make unpredictable mistakes. And you can run it from different IPs to parallelize. --Falcorian On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
For some reason, I am reminded of a Supreme Court case about the information in telephone directories. Maybe because of the insanity of trying to put public domain material under copyright. From: Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 11:47:28 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Falcorian alex.public.account+wikimediamailingl...@gmail.comalex.public.account%2bwikimediamailingl...@gmail.com wrote: So the bot just has to run at human speeds so it does not get banned, it still won't get tired or make unpredictable mistakes. And you can run it from different IPs to parallelize. --Falcorian On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
For Supreme Court cases, would it be possible to have a bot pull the audio decisions from Oyez, and convert them into text? From: David Gerard dger...@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 8:41:45 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Except google isn't asserting any kind of copyright control over these books, they're just not making it convenient to download them in your preferred format. Maybe not The Right Thing, but not as boneheaded as suing a party who reprints public domain material, as was the case in Feist v. Rural (the supreme court case you mention.) Sent from my portable e-mail unit On Jun 20, 2009 3:23 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote: For some reason, I am reminded of a Supreme Court case about the information in telephone directories. Maybe because of the insanity of trying to put public domain material under copyright. From: Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 11:47:28 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Ver... ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Wow, what's Wikipedia's policy about using a bot to scrape everything? On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Falcorian alex.public.account+wikimediamailingl...@gmail.comalex.public.account%2bwikimediamailingl...@gmail.com alex.public.account%2bwikimediamailingl...@gmail.comalex.public.account%252bwikimediamailingl...@gmail.com wrote: So the bot just has to run at human speeds so it does not get banned, it still won't get tired or make unpredictable mistakes. And you can run it from different IPs to parallelize. --Falcorian On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Not likely. I've been banned from Google's regular search at least a dozen times during semi-frenetic search sprees in which I was identified as a bot. There is no doubt that if you try to automate it you will be quickly shot down. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Brian wrote: Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. There are roughly 2-3 million public domain books in Google Books. That's easy to fix :) ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Where does it forbid them? 5.3 You agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services by any means other than through the interface that is provided by Google, unless you have been specifically allowed to do so in a separate agreement with Google. You specifically agree not to access (or attempt to access) any of the Services through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers) and shall ensure that you comply with the instructions set out in any robots.txt file present on the Services. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
Milos Rancic wrote: I've got the first report. There are no information that something happened to any Wikimedian. Take a look at [1]. I don't expect bigger scale problems in Iran, but not just because of that analysis. Except theocratic structures, preset situation in Iran reminds me a lot to the situation in Serbia during late period of Milosevic. State structures without connection to reality have to reform themselves or they'll be replaced. Fortunately, [ordinary] Iranians don't want war because still fresh memories to war between Iraq and Iran. The situation was similar in 2000 in Serbia. [1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html Nuclear weaponry in Iran may a concern to powerful western countries, but I don't see it as being a major factor in the country's internal politics. While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
If a bot has a meaningful effect on server load (i.e. page requests), it falls under the category of malicious software, which is highly illegal. From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2:35:52 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship Brian wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. How is violating Google's ToS against the law? Sites put all sorts of meaningless garbage into these documents, and users mostly ignore them. Of course Google's evil; it's about time that people noticed that. They use their deep pockets as a way to bully other sites ... with a smile. Fortunately the U.S. does not have database protection laws like the E.U. Ideally, every PD item they host should also be hosted on an alternative site, but that's a massive undertaking, ... and they know it. Nothing requires them to be nice to the competition, such as by making it easy to copy their material. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
2009/6/20 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Milos Rancic wrote: I've got the first report. There are no information that something happened to any Wikimedian. Take a look at [1]. I don't expect bigger scale problems in Iran, but not just because of that analysis. Except theocratic structures, preset situation in Iran reminds me a lot to the situation in Serbia during late period of Milosevic. State structures without connection to reality have to reform themselves or they'll be replaced. Fortunately, [ordinary] Iranians don't want war because still fresh memories to war between Iraq and Iran. The situation was similar in 2000 in Serbia. [1] - http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_bueno_de_mesquita_predicts_iran_s_future.html Nuclear weaponry in Iran may a concern to powerful western countries, but I don't see it as being a major factor in the country's internal politics. While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country. Believe me that it is possibly to fraud an election and shift the real results completely :-) History knows many of such examples. See for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_people%27s_referendum,_1946 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_general_election,_1946 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Vietnam_referendum,_1955 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud I don't know if it happened in Iran or not - I think we will know it for sure not eariler that 50 years from know, or maybe even never... -- Tomek Polimerek Ganicz http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/ http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Anthony wrote: Wow, what's Wikipedia's policy about using a bot to scrape everything? I don't know about any policy, but I think it should still be discouraged. For me this has less to do with predation on other sites than with our inability to keep up with the volume of data that would be produced. Proofreading and wikifying are labour-intensive processes. It is very easy for the technically minded to bring the scan and OCR of a 500-page book under our roof, but without the manpower to bring the added value these processes are scarcely better than data dumps. Ec On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Falcorian wrote: So the bot just has to run at human speeds so it does not get banned, it still won't get tired or make unpredictable mistakes. And you can run it from different IPs to parallelize. --Falcorian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Geoffrey Plourde wrote: If a bot has a meaningful effect on server load (i.e. page requests), it falls under the category of malicious software, which is highly illegal. Malicious software or overloading servers goes well beyond ignoring a ToS. Why should downloading whole books from Google have any greater effect on server load than downloading a whole book of similar length from Internet Archive? Ec From: Ray Saintonge Brian wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. How is violating Google's ToS against the law? Sites put all sorts of meaningless garbage into these documents, and users mostly ignore them. Of course Google's evil; it's about time that people noticed that. They use their deep pockets as a way to bully other sites ... with a smile. Fortunately the U.S. does not have database protection laws like the E.U. Ideally, every PD item they host should also be hosted on an alternative site, but that's a massive undertaking, ... and they know it. Nothing requires them to be nice to the competition, such as by making it easy to copy their material. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higginsparkerhigg...@gmail.com wrote: Except google isn't asserting any kind of copyright control over these books, they're just not making it convenient to download them in your preferred format. Maybe not The Right Thing, but not as boneheaded as suing a party who reprints public domain material, as was the case in Feist v. Rural (the supreme court case you mention.) They want people to use their service. Fair enough, given that the scanning and OCRing happened on their dime. -- Stephen Bain stephen.b...@gmail.com ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
A bot or bots calling up massive amounts of data at high speed can have a negative effect on a server. While I doubt the bot we use would have the power to take down a Google server, the speed of the requests and the constant number of requests will definitely be noticeable, possibly leading to unpleasant consequences. From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Saturday, June 20, 2009 5:07:44 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship Geoffrey Plourde wrote: If a bot has a meaningful effect on server load (i.e. page requests), it falls under the category of malicious software, which is highly illegal. Malicious software or overloading servers goes well beyond ignoring a ToS. Why should downloading whole books from Google have any greater effect on server load than downloading a whole book of similar length from Internet Archive? Ec From: Ray Saintonge Brian wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. How is violating Google's ToS against the law? Sites put all sorts of meaningless garbage into these documents, and users mostly ignore them. Of course Google's evil; it's about time that people noticed that. They use their deep pockets as a way to bully other sites ... with a smile. Fortunately the U.S. does not have database protection laws like the E.U. Ideally, every PD item they host should also be hosted on an alternative site, but that's a massive undertaking, ... and they know it. Nothing requires them to be nice to the competition, such as by making it easy to copy their material. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Geoffrey Plourde wrote: A bot or bots calling up massive amounts of data at high speed can have a negative effect on a server. While I doubt the bot we use would have the power to take down a Google server, the speed of the requests and the constant number of requests will definitely be noticeable, possibly leading to unpleasant consequences. And data accumulation at such a high speed would also be more than could be properly handled at the Wikisource end as well. We regularly get whole works from Internet Archive and other sources, without any such problems arising. I would not reasonably expect a greater accumulation rate from Google. Ec _ From: Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net Geoffrey Plourde wrote: If a bot has a meaningful effect on server load (i.e. page requests), it falls under the category of malicious software, which is highly illegal. Malicious software or overloading servers goes well beyond ignoring a ToS. Why should downloading whole books from Google have any greater effect on server load than downloading a whole book of similar length from Internet Archive? Ec From: Ray Saintonge Brian wrote: That is against the law. It violates Google's ToS. I'm mostly complaining that Google is being Very Evil. There is nothing we can do about it except complain to them. Which I don't know how to do - they apparently believe that the plain text versions of their books are akin to their intellectual property and are unwilling to give them away. How is violating Google's ToS against the law? Sites put all sorts of meaningless garbage into these documents, and users mostly ignore them. Of course Google's evil; it's about time that people noticed that. They use their deep pockets as a way to bully other sites ... with a smile. Fortunately the U.S. does not have database protection laws like the E.U. Ideally, every PD item they host should also be hosted on an alternative site, but that's a massive undertaking, ... and they know it. Nothing requires them to be nice to the competition, such as by making it easy to copy their material. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] flagged revisions
Samuel Klein wrote: I agree this is important, to the projects and to the progress of flagged revs as a concept (which is still one step of a long journey). It is worth a quick thread on f-l for that reason if not for general interest. I was so taken aback by the conceit that the adoption of one single extension by a single language in a single project might be of interest on a foundation level, that I didn't reply directly, but decided to think hard about whether there is anything at all about flagged revs that might be of foundation level relevance. I was in fact mildly surprised to find that I could conceive of one such issue. And that issue is what limits should we set on the size of wikipedia projects to whom we will _allow_ setting up of flagged revs. The leading programmer of flagged revs has suggested 100 000 articles in the wikipedia context (smaller sizes ok for instance in wikisource contexts). But since wikipedia is nearest my heart, that is what I will focus on here. My thinking suggests that 100 000 should be the hard lower limit; below which size, there would have to be extraordinarily strong and exceptional circumstances where flagged revs could conceivably be allowed. Do bear in mind that flagged revs is labour intensive, and bestows very little benefit in the early stages when emphasis is getting just any content at all up there, and use by readers is not really that intensive, nor is there much media interest yet, nor the general public that involved. My thinking is that it should be strongly discouraged that flagged revs be used on wikipedias below 250 000 articles, before that size community building and content creation should be key, not worrying about the face the wikipedia presents to the outside world. But on the other end of the spectrum, on projects like the one I am active on (the Finnish Wikipedia)... Disruptive behaviour is not wired into our genes or our culture, but quietly coöperative behaviour has been. Our wikipedia is a paradise in comparison to many. For this reason personally I would consider it a great shame if we were to be granted flagged revs before say 750 000 or one million. And even as I say this, I know there are the chance brothers (Fat and Slim) that this devout wish will be observed. I consider it a great problem that solutions for problems larger wikis have are nearly without exception foisted on smaller wikis without much consideration of what their real effect there will be, and are they really ready for it. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Stephen Bain wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higginsparkerhigg...@gmail.com wrote: Except google isn't asserting any kind of copyright control over these books, they're just not making it convenient to download them in your preferred format. Maybe not The Right Thing, but not as boneheaded as suing a party who reprints public domain material, as was the case in Feist v. Rural (the supreme court case you mention.) They want people to use their service. Fair enough, given that the scanning and OCRing happened on their dime. How does that give them any special rights? There are no database protection laws in the US, and sweat-of-the-brow has been rejected as a basis for new copyrights. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
