Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
Robert Rohde wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:
>   
>>  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.
>> 
> It's easy to explain any margin you want when there are no monitors, no
> reporting of local tallies, and vote aggregation is controlled by a small
> group in one government agency.  It's basically a matter of changing numbers
> in a spreadsheet.
>
> Regardless of what actually happened, it is pretty clear that the process of
> voting in Iran lacks the fundamental transparency necessary to provide
> confidence in the results.
Sure, transparency is a problem, but its absence alone does not imply 
fraud.  It hurts the Iranian authorities even more if the vote count is 
accurate because nobody believes them. 

Ec

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
Samuel Klein 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?
>   
 From my perspective it fits perfectly with the vision that I had of 
Wikisource on the first day of its existence.  Tim Armstrong 
[[User:Tarmstro99]] has already done a considerable amount of valuable 
work relating to law on Wikisource.  That has been mostly a one-man 
project to deal with a massive amount of material.  Some have even 
proposed deleting all the US Code material on the grounds that we don't 
have the ability to keep it up to date. That has prompted some very 
interesting questions and ideas about how this kind of stuff might be 
handled, but taking those questions to the next level requires lots of 
work.  Most regular Wikisourcerors already have long personal to-do 
lists to keep them busy.  So the question is not really about whether 
Wikisource should host these goods, it's about recruiting volunteers to 
do the hard work.

Ec

> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Gerard 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.
>>
>> 


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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
Stephen Bain wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higgins 
> 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


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Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] flagged revisions

2009-06-20 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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



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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
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 
>
>
> 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
>>  
>> 
>
>   


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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Geoffrey Plourde
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 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
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
>  


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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Platonides
Brian 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.

Uh?
That's not the TOS I am reading:
> 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.
> 
> 5.4 You agree that you will not engage in any activity that interferes with 
> or disrupts the Services (or the servers and networks which are connected to 
> the Services).

The second part is missing.
Seems that US have different terms than the rest of us.

-http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS


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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Stephen Bain
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higgins 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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
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
>   


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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Anthony
Evil I tell you.  Evil!

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 7:56 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:

> 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 
> 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
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
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  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


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Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread Tomasz Ganicz
2009/6/20 Ray Saintonge :
> 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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Geoffrey Plourde
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 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread Robert Rohde
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Ray Saintonge  wrote:

>  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.


It's easy to explain any margin you want when there are no monitors, no
reporting of local tallies, and vote aggregation is controlled by a small
group in one government agency.  It's basically a matter of changing numbers
in a spreadsheet.

Regardless of what actually happened, it is pretty clear that the process of
voting in Iran lacks the fundamental transparency necessary to provide
confidence in the results.

-Robert Rohde
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Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Commons: Service project or not?

2009-06-20 Thread Yann Forget
Ilario Valdelli wrote:
> IMHO the role of Commons is not so clear and this discussion confirm
> it to me. We can identify two roles:
> 
> * support and passive role for other projects
> * independent and active role to describe and collect media files
> 
> We can discuss for long time, but a role is sufficient, two roles are 
> "caos"!!!

[cut]
I think this is completely at the opposite of what Commons should be and
try to be. Hopefully this seems to be a minority view.

There is absolutely no opposition between hosting files for other
Wikimedia projets and being an independent free multimedia repository.
Actually, it is quite the opposite: both are complementary objectives.
If the files are available for Wikimedia, there are also available for
anybody else. And the dynamics created by best files competitions (FP,
QI and VI) bring in documents which would not be there otherwise.

> Ilario

Regards,

Yann
-- 
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread 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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread Ray Saintonge
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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Brian
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 1:29 PM, Platonides  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.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Anthony
Wow, what's Wikipedia's policy about using a bot to scrape everything?

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:47 PM, 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.
>
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:34 PM, Falcorian <
> alex.public.account+wikimediamailingl...@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 
> 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 
> > 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 :)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ___
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> > > > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > Unsubscribe:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Platonides
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.

Where does it forbid them?
The most related part is section 5.
I understand that doing queries at bot rate may be against #5.3 but I
don't see anything against this.
Unlike searches, the book OCR result will be cached, so this shouldn't
be inconvenience them (and they don't place ads there!).

I'd wikify the html instead of just moving to plain text, though.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Parker Higgins
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"  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 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
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...
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Geoffrey Plourde
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 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Geoffrey Plourde
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 
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List 
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.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  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 
> 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
> >
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Brian
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.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  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 
> 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
> >
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Falcorian
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  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  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
> >
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Anthony
Easier than scanning, though :)

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:04 PM, Brian  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  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
> >
> ___
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Brian
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  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 :)
>
>
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Platonides
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 :)


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Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread Milos Rancic
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

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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Brian
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  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 Gerard 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.
> >
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Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread Samuel Klein
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 Gerard 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.
>
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[Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship

2009-06-20 Thread David Gerard
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.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread philippe
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.


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Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread Milos Rancic
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 3:00 PM, philippe 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.

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[Foundation-l] Iran?

2009-06-20 Thread philippe
Just wondering whether anyone's had a check in from any of our  
wikimedians in Iran?  Any safety reports on our folks?

Philippe




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