[HN Gopher] Free as in Climbing: Open Data Project Threatened by...
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Free as in Climbing: Open Data Project Threatened by Bogus
Copyright Claims
Author : pabs3
Score : 66 points
Date : 2021-03-28 12:56 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| glong64 wrote:
| It's a pity that the EFF has lost its credibility last week by
| participating in a witch hunt against RMS.
| breck wrote:
| I wasn't a fan of their approach to that issue, but still
| strongly support the EFF. I do wish they would take a more
| principled stand against #ImaginaryProperty, but someone
| recently explained to me, and I concur, that people should
| incorporate 10 or even 100 new non-profits to do that as #EFF
| has a big portfolio and shouldn't be expected to do everything.
| If anyone out there forms new orgs to work toward
| #IntellectualFreedom and #EndingIp, please drop me a line and
| let me know what you need!
| Rule35 wrote:
| True. They can burn a lot of credibility in a single
| unwarranted witch-hunt against a named individual.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Not sure 100% adherence to an individual's particular political
| positions is the way to measure the worth and value of an
| organization.
|
| I love and support the ACLU and disagree strongly with some of
| their positions.
| b215826 wrote:
| > _Not sure 100% adherence to an individual 's particular
| political positions is the way to measure the worth and value
| of an organization._
|
| No one is asking the EFF to agree with everything RMS says.
| However it's quite ironical that the EFF deviated from its
| stated goal of protecting free speech [1] on the Internet and
| joined the lynch mob trying to cancel RMS. This does cast the
| EFF in a negative light since now there's speech that the EFF
| likes and speech they don't. As long as there's such a
| dichotomy, it's hard to take an organization claiming to
| defend free speech seriously.
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/issues/free-speech
| jstanley wrote:
| If you think it's unreasonable for people to blanket-denounce
| RMS based on the content of 1 or 2 of his opinions, then you
| might want to consider whether or not it is reasonable to
| blanket-denounce the EFF based on 1 or 2 of theirs.
| Rule35 wrote:
| The EFF is a lobbying organization, RMS is an actual person.
|
| Also, there should be a higher bar for them because they're a
| faceless organization attacking RMS. If RMS attacked them, as
| individuals, I might agree to some equivalency.
| ryannevius wrote:
| I've been using Mountain Project for over a decade now. The site
| made a turn for the worse when it was acquired by REI, and then
| improved again when REI decided it wasn't worth it for them and
| handed ownership back over to the founder. onX has now owned
| Mountain Project since January, so this is likely originating
| with them.
| kevin_b_er wrote:
| We are now in an era where copyright laws do not promote the
| progress of the science and the arts. They merely serve as
| protectionism from competition and criticism.
| hklgny wrote:
| I mean the guy scraped their site and created a competitor. If
| I add content to a site, I'm for sure not transitioning
| ownership to them, but I'm also not giving everyone else in the
| world permission to take it and use it anywhere they want.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| Legal precedent suggests you are probably granting the public
| access to take it and use it any way they want.
|
| Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
|
| > Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit's affirmation of the district
| court's grant of the preliminary injunction prohibited
| LinkedIn from denying hiQ access to publicly available data
| on public LinkedIn users' profiles.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Also, a dataset itself is not a creative work and is not
| entitled to copyright protections. The particular
| presentation of a dataset may be, but not the dataset
| itself.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._
| R....
| hklgny wrote:
| Fascinating, thanks to you both for the links. I'm
| wondering why companies like Yelp and the realtor
| association have been so effective at maintaining data
| ownership if this is the case.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Massive efforts using obfuscation, spurious lawsuits,
| lobbying, and buying up competitors. Only speaking about
| the NAR, but as a past insider.
|
| The NAR only exists because of lobbying to create laws at
| the state and local that institutionalize themselves as
| the only legitimate real estate agents, or over-specify
| the qualifications for being a real estate agent until
| they are only satisfiable by being a member of the NAR.
| If all fails, access to MLSes prevents any rebellions
| below a certain size - the vast majority of Realtors(r)
| make no money, and losing MLS access is not an option. In
| order to create your own MLS, you'd have to pull an Aaron
| Swartz and get away with it before being cut off (which
| is probably the main reason why MLSes are a federation
| rather than a single system), or slightly more
| realistically get a bunch of no-money making Realtors(r)
| on your side and pull an Alexandra Elbakyan with their
| credentials. The problem with the latter would be that
| the listings turn over a lot more often than scholarly
| papers, and you'd have to deal with de-listing.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know if you have been watching Disney's moves for
| the last few decades, but we have been at that place for a
| while now!
| ta988 wrote:
| And patents do the same. Especially software patents. As we are
| producing faster we should also reduce drastically the lifetime
| and coverage of copyrights and patents.
| varispeed wrote:
| If only patents covered genuine inventions. If you look at
| what's getting approved these days, I don't think anyone
| competent is working in the patent office.
| breck wrote:
| > we should also reduce drastically the lifetime and coverage
| of copyrights and patents.
|
| Agreed. And when you do the math you realize the ideal length
| === 0.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > And when you do the math you realize the ideal length ===
| 0.
|
| Do you honestly believe this? I agree the patent system is
| broken, but I'm not convinced we should completely abolish
| it. I am speaking broadly though and not just for software.
| For software I could see patents as long as a few years
| making sense, and shorter would be fine. 18 months seems
| about right as a benchmark to me.
|
| A much simpler solution to the patent system is you have to
| pay exponentially more to keep it as time goes on. This
| would also solve copyright issues, specifically for Disney
| and other megacorporations.
|
| I realize there is no magic bullet to this, but I actually
| think the patent system has merit and is worth fixing
| rather than demolishing.
| breck wrote:
| > Do you honestly believe this?
|
| There's nothing I honestly believe in more.
|
| #ImaginaryPropertyLaws are a *total* sham. The dramatic
| expansions [0] in 1976 and 1998 have proven it beyond a
| reasonable doubt with nothing to show for it except
| massively increasing inequality [a].
|
| The news? Hasn't improved at all, arguably gotten worse.
| Pick up a NYTimes from 1871 and compare it to one from
| today [1]. Today's have color photos, other than that,
| worse compared to 150 years ago.
|
| Scientific papers? Terrible. Look at the reproducibility
| crisis. Now Elsevier and Wiley and American Chemical
| Society are suing India to prevent poor kids from
| accessing SciHub. [2]
|
| Medicine? Watson, Crick and Franklin did their famous
| work in 1953. The healthspan in the USA is *decreasing*
| [3]. That opioid crisis? Ultimately attributable to USPTO
| [4]. War on cancer? Started in 1970 and we've gotten our
| *ass kicked* [5]. The only positive developments have
| been the massive grunt work public domain research
| projects funded by US and global taxpayers.
|
| Space travel and electric cars? Completely f _cking
| plateaud until Elon Musk came out and said f_ ck patents
| and kicked everyone's ass [6].
|
| How about computing? Absolutely dominated by TCP/IP, the
| web, Linux, Git; all public domain or libre software.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extensio
| n_Act
|
| [a] https://cdn.vox-
| cdn.com/thumbor/dgJmaIkwy4Xb9CACHYp_J4j18TI=...
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/York-Times-Complete-Front-
| Pages/dp/07...
|
| [2] https://torrentfreak.com/sci-hub-libgen-face-isp-
| blocking-in...
|
| [3] https://apps.who.int/gho/data/view.main.HALEXv
|
| [4] https://longbets.org/855/
|
| [5] https://www.cancer.gov/about-
| nci/overview/history/national-c...
|
| [6] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150217/0618293005
| 2/elon-...
| musingsole wrote:
| I'm very exhausted with trying to treat ideas as
| property. I'll accept it got us here and appreciate it
| for that, but it's a broken model that requires massive
| orchestration to keep in reality. I want something
| different (and better...though that's the hard part).
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It seems to happen quite often that online communities spring up
| when one person happens to start a forum or wiki (and/or write a
| custom website) around their hobby. Usually it becomes popular by
| being first/better/through random chance. But then these online
| communities grow while the site is still owned and run by whoever
| founded it and it seems not great to have basically a random
| unelected dictator running it. There can be other problems too,
| e.g. popular websites can be expensive to run, especially if you
| have a lot of images.
|
| It often seems to play out in one of a few ways:
|
| - the owner continues running the site benevolently and never
| gets bored or dies. Maybe the site runs ads or has a donate
| button for funding the site.
|
| - some company offers the owner a large amount of money for the
| site. The owner is happy to get paid and not need to manage the
| site anymore. The company will try to extract that money out of
| the community through unpleasant commercialisation while not
| caring much about the community itself. Likely includes a
| redesign and potentially deleting a load of old content because
| it doesn't fit the new database schema. Needless to say the
| original community might not like this but the owning company
| will probably be trying to bring in more new visitors and won't
| care.
|
| - some very relevant company buys the site. E.g. a car
| manufacturer buying a forum of owners of their cars. This is
| similar to the above but the company will likely care more about
| the community and less about monetisation. However moderation may
| change and posts critical of the new owners may mysteriously
| disappear.
|
| - some similar company (eg a magazine about the same topic) buys
| the community. This would probably be somewhere between the two
| above. The magazine wants to turn a profit but they hopefully
| care about the community too.
|
| - some company or charity already representing some of the
| community acquires the site. For example in this case it could be
| a big national climbing or mountaineering club. How well this
| goes probably depends a lot on the company. E.g. if they are also
| selling guidebooks, they might not like it if the community risks
| reducing their sales. If the club just run eg huts or offer a
| life insurance policy or safety training or instructor
| certification it might be different. And maybe the club will care
| about their own members more than the acquired community.
|
| - the owner helps set up some small foundation to control the
| site. This feels like it could go well and likely to have the
| interests of the site aligned with those of its users. But
| funding the site could still be a challenge. And the board in
| control is likely to be made up of the kind of people who want
| positions on boards, which might not lead to the best results.
| Perhaps one model of funding involves having relevant companies
| (eg gear manufacturers who want to encourage people to go
| climbing and therefore want to buy gear) pay to sponsor the site
| and in return get someone to sit on the board though this feels
| like it has some risks too.
|
| I quite like the last (and first) option but it doesn't seem like
| a natural path from starting a site to setting up a foundation
| whereas it seems quite easy to accept an offer from some company
| who want to buy your website.
| bilalq wrote:
| Woah, MountainProject is a owned by REI. I wouldn't have expected
| this from them.
| scrose wrote:
| I was just skimming through things, but it looks like MP and
| REI might have parted ways last year:
| https://rockandice.com/climbing-news/mountain-project-and-re...
| wtallis wrote:
| Mountain Project's About page includes this bit:
|
| > In 2015, REI acquired Mountain Project to solidify the future
| of this amazing resource for the climbing community. Every line
| of code was redone from ground zero and traffic skyrocketed. In
| 2020, REI returned Mountain Project to its founders.
|
| And the site footer links to Adventure Projects, Inc. It looks
| like REI hasn't been involved since May 2020, and Adventure
| Projects was acquired by onX in December 2020.
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(page generated 2021-03-28 23:02 UTC)