[Beowulf] HP Moonshot also with AMD Kyoto

[Ellis H. Wilson III]

On 04/14/2013 12:23 PM, Joe Landman wrote:
> On 04/14/2013 10:31 AM, Ellis H. Wilson III wrote:
>> 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.

You will note that I separated my points into three separate veins:
1. Conjecturing on the impact of reposting full articles in an email 
list on the aggregate traffic for a site
2. The legal implications doing so are likely to have, and how snippets 
deviate from full re-posts
3. How all of this fits into the "etiquette" and policies of a list.

I /never/ correlated my argument that increasing traffic with making 
doing so "ok" from a legal standpoint as you suggest, or at the very 
least, that was definitely not my intent.

I continue to believe reposts will lead to, on the whole, larger amounts 
of traffic reaching that site.  I don't believe this makes it legal. 
It's an orthogonal consideration.

>> 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.

Agreed, and thanks for the note about "fair use."  That is indeed the 
part of law I was referring to but had managed to forget exactly what it 
was called.  Interestingly, a quick google search gets me to:
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

This page has four factors that are considered, and since two of them 
would be in favor of how Eugen shares full posts, whereas two of them 
would be against him, I continue to be on the fence about what I suspect 
would actually happen.  I'm sure there's some case law that would 
clarify that.  Whatever the legal decision in the US, I doubt this has 
any practical ramifications for him (besides possible removal from the 
list if this is against policy).  It's not going to be worth it for any 
of the people Eugen reposts to try and sue him, particularly across 
national boundaries.

Moving on from considering this from an academic perspective, I'm 
personally for snippets in terms of raw words in the email, but 
definitely more selected and/or larger snippets than the one small part 
of the first paragraph I get in my RSS feed from scalability.org :D. 
Some of those are utterly useless in conveying what the article is 
really about.  I suspect this is my RSS reader or your RSS server 
though; no doing of your own.  I just mention it as an example of where 
a larger piece of text makes all the difference in the world in terms of 
my going to the site to read it or not.

>> 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.

I disagree.  If we can agree that this type of reproduction falls into a 
legal gray zone because it is for non-commercial and educational use, or 
at least can agree that the likelihood of Eugen being sued over it is 
very low, then all that is left is whether or not full reposts like his 
are respectful to the authors or not.  Since the only reason why people 
would be upset about the repost happening in full that I can think of is 
loss of advertisement and thereby revenue, this boils down to how full 
posts impact the traffic.  Ergo, etiquette is *only* about 
advertising/money.  As an example, I have NO problem with people 
reposting my academic papers or posters.  The ACM or IEEE might, 
however.  I make no money from my works (at least directly).  They do. 
So all that matters is the $s in terms of respecting or disrespecting 
somebody.

> 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?

I'll continue your analogy here to demonstrate my point that this is in 
more of a gray area than you suggest:

How would I feel, if somebody decided to increase my salary by some 
random amount, but in the process used some of my work in a way I didn't 
agree to?  I'd probably be inclined to agree to that use, even if that 
use wasn't fully optimal for myself.  It's a net-gain for me, so unless 
I felt I could get that optimal gain myself, without their help, I fail 
to see how this would truly upset them.

Again, sure, if Eugen decides to post in the future just smaller 
snippets, he'll increase their "salaries" by larger random amounts, but 
ultimately I'll argue he is not beholden to do so (from a purely 
practical, non-legal perspective) if he doesn't wish to, nor is doing so 
truly disrespectful if we can agree he is increasing their traffic (and 
thereby ad-serves).  This is particularly true because Eugen isn't 
taking some part of that ad-serve revenue for his own.  If that were the 
case, it would be a far harder decision for the author.

I agree that it's disrespectful if the link isn't along with the full 
text, or if the authorship is removed or buried.  That's clearly just 
stealing work and pretending it's yours, which is disrespectful for 
obviously plagiarism reasons.  Eugen didn't do that at all.

> 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.

You're failing to see that many of us aren't actively RSS'd to many of 
those sites.  So the potential to get those of us who aren't served ads 
to, was 0%.  Now it is somewhat larger than that.  Even if it is 1%, 
that's a net-gain.  I went to the site because my email is on my left 
screen in my triple-monitor setup, so reading the whole article in 
Thunderbird was not an attractive proposition.  I much preferred to read 
it, and see any graphics along with it, in Firefox, which was on my main 
larger screen.  Though I didn't see them, I'm sure they served me some ads.

> 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?

I continue to agree with everybody that some policy should be shared 
with the list regarding how much is acceptable to snippet or copy from a 
copyrighted site.  I don't think any of us want to get Penguin in hot 
water, whom we all appreciate providing this service.

Best,

ellis