[Beowulf] HP Moonshot also with AMD Kyoto

[Joe Landman]

On 04/14/2013 10:31 AM, Ellis H. Wilson III wrote:
> I wanted to add my data point to this discussion as I find it very
> interesting, but I want to simultaneously stress how important it is (to
> me at least) that we keep this civil.  Both of you guys add a lot to
> this list and it would be a great loss to have one or both of you drop
> in activity because of a battle over ideology in reposts.  Comments in-line:

[...]

> I think this is strongly dependent upon whether or not the audience of
> the list is already exposed to the media outlet the article is from.

Hmmm ... a natural extension of this argument, not requiring any reach 
at all, is that posting other published digital copyrighted work online 
in any forum that may not have exposure to that work is ok.  Literally, 
all we have to do is substitute "published digital copyrighted work" for 
the word "article" and we arrive at the same point.

And that argument has been fairly well litigated, and the results are 
fairly well known.

[...]

> Comparing posting a snippet to posting the whole article will
> undoubtedly favor the former in terms of aggregate traffic to the site,
> but I highly doubt that doing so is any more or less illegal.  For
> instance, looking at their copyright-licensing page, I see that "No
> parts of any Incisive Media publication or Sites may be reproduced,
> stored in or introduced into any retrieval system, or transmitted, in
> any form or by any means..."  So I think the case that snippets are ok
> but full reproductions are not is a difficult case to make.  Perhaps
> there are laws that preempt this that discuss what percentage of a work
> can be reproduced without it infringing on copyright that I'm not aware of.

In the US there is a concept of "fair use" which allows some snipping. 
The courts have been arguing over what fraction constitutes fair use. 
Pretty much all of them are in agreement that 100% does not fair use 
make.  That has gone over rather poorly for those replicating 100% of 
others work.

It generally has implications for those posting such things, and those 
hosting the site for such posts.  Even if your actions are not illegal 
or in violation of others rights in your jurisdiction, they may be in 
the jurisdiction where the servers are.  And if thats the case, the 
owners of the machines may simply choose to limit their risk by removing 
the material, the posting, and the posters.  This has happened, and does 
happen, quite frequently here.

So claims that "its not illegal or in violation of others rights in the 
EU" are irrelevant if the servers are in the US and it is illegal or in 
violation of others rights here.  The converse is true, that if 
something in the US is clearly legal or not in violation of others 
rights, yet illegal or in violation of others rights in the EU, this is 
very much something that has to be addressed.  Just look at all the EU 
privacy cases against Google and others.  Things that are fine here are 
not in the EU.  Should Google completely ignore the EU privacy laws?

> On etiquette -- I absolutely abhor advertisements, which is why I use
> AdBlock and FlashBlock on Firefox.  This is a HIGHLY ideological

Etiquette is not about advertising.  Etiquette is about not abusing a 
resource, not blasting large messages which may be better read online 
via pointers.

If you don't like advertisement, thats fine.  You don't have to.  You 
don't have to click on it.  The media that covers us, and pays Nicole's, 
Doug E's,  Rich B's and many other good folks salaries, are paid by 
advertising.  So, does depriving them the chance at getting revenue for 
their hard work (writing articles) by replicating their postings in 
their entirety bereft of adverts here for all to see ... help them 
continue to cover and write about this market?  That is, by doing so, 
you have effectively deprived them of their ability to obtain 
compensation for their work, in the form of advertising revenue.  Is 
this right for *you* to decide to do this to them?  Would you feel 
unhappy of *they* decided that you have to have your salary reduced by 
some random amount, though you did the same work that usually results in 
more salary for you?

No, it is not your right to make that decision for them (nor they for 
you).  Reproduction of the work in its entirety, bereft of the 
advertising, for many others, deprives them of the potential for that 
revenue.  Posting a link and a small snippet provides them the 
opportunity for that revenue.

You might argue, "hey, thats a limitation of their business model" and 
you'd be right.  One of the aspects of this business model is that once 
it becomes unprofitable for most everyone in the market, they will leave 
this market and cover others.  Is the possibility of loss of coverage an 
issue?  Look at it this way.  If you are trying to convince public 
policy makers, and those with purse strings of the value of your work in 
order to get them to give you more money for your research, would it not 
be beneficial to be able to point to a set of media resources that in 
fact cover the subject area in question, and support your viewpoint?

Sure, reproducing one article will not bring this whole construction 
crashing down.  Or two.  But at what point in time do we say "hey, lets 
actually not piss off those who write about our subject area"?

The etiquette on the part of the reader is one where we get to chose 
where to spend our bandwidth, time, resources on reading or not reading 
an article.  The etiquette on the part of the authors and publishers is 
whether or not by your actions you are directly negatively impacting 
their business, beyond your own personal advertising filtering options 
on your own machine.

Reproduction in full without permission is generally considered bad 
etiquette on the part of the reproducer.  If we feel the article is 
interesting based upon the specific paragraph or quote, sure, we can 
make that decision to click or not click.  The stated "altruistic" 
reason for violating this etiquette is ... well ... not even weak.

If the article has a creative commons license and specifically allows 
reproduction, by all means, go for it.  In this case, the article has 
social media links, that directly go back to that page, chock for of 
advertisements and the article, for the people to use.

There really isn't any gray area here.  Its pretty much black and white. 
  The Inquirer, The Register, HPCWire, InsideHPC, ClusterMonkey all 
depend upon people clicking those links for them to make money.  Is it 
your right to decide that they cannot make as much money by full 
reproduction to a wide group of people?  Or would you in fact do them a 
favor by "driving traffic to them" which, once you start processing 
this, you realize is silly.  You've consumed an advert supported product 
delivered to you without adverts, and now you are going to go to the 
site to see adverts?  Um ... no.

> conversation though, so I'd prefer to avoid it if possible.  The
> take-away I'm intending to convey is that resting etiquette on one side
> or the other of that debate is itself a tricky thing to do, and likely
> not to result in all parties on this list being happy about it.  My
> perspective is that we should avoid erecting any policies that take a
> side on that issue.  I do see a place for policies that protect the list
> from copyright infringement, however, so perhaps the former perspective
> is a moot point.

The issue is if the Inquirer folks call up Penguin and say "guys, stop 
this person from posting our articles without permission, and remove all 
the old ones he's posted", what do you think is going to happen?

This list is a community resource sponsored and operated by a company 
paying the bills for it.  It should not involve any increase in risk for 
them to do this.

> Just my 2c,
>
> ellis

FWIW:  I can't stand adverts, but I understand they are a necessary 
evil.  They pay for what it is we consume.  They pay for the folks 
building the Chromium browser, and the GMail system.  They pay for many 
of the things we use, seemingly gratis, but really not so much.  I 
filter the egregious flash and other autoplaying javascript ads at the 
browser level.  I cannot fathom why anyone would think that autoplaying 
a video after turning a volume up to the maximum is ever a good idea for 
gaining interested eyeballs.  You don't have to like advertising, you 
don't have to watch it, or pay attention to it.  But its not your call 
to make to deprive those whom depend upon it, the opportunity to make 
that revenue.

This is different in my mind than SEO which is, IMO, completely evil, 
and only decreasing the value of search results as they attempt to learn 
how to game the algorithms.

-- 
Joseph Landman, Ph.D
Founder and CEO
Scalable Informatics, Inc.
email: landman at scalableinformatics.com
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