Month: November 2000

MathWorld’s Copyright Problems.

The O’Reilly Network recently featured an article by John McDonald, Treasure Trove Looted, which shed some light on situation surrounding Eric Weisstein’s MathWorld. I had heard the problems involved copyright issues, but assumed they involved the sort of copyright issues that are more common with the Internet where copyrighted material gets posted on a web site. In this case, though, the problem is far more complex and contains a great lesson for authors.

It seems that Weisstein’s site, which contained a lot of valuable information about math-related topics, became so successful that he successfully pitched a book proposal to CRC Press and much of the content Weisstein wrote for the web site became a book, The CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics.

Here’s where it starts to get weird. After publishing the book, CRC Press informed Weisstein that its contract with him clearly granted CRC Press ownership of any derivative works, and the web site was just such a derivative work. After some back and forth, the site is completely shut down as of this writing. In effect, CRC Press maintains they bought the copyright not to just the book, but to the web site as well, and they don’t want the web site competing with the book.

First, the logic here is completely backward. The web site will only promote sales of the book. Since there is still no good way to electronically access reference materials consistently, its unlikely the existence of the web pages would have cut into sales the book (more likely fans of the site would have made up a substantial number of the book’s buyers).

Second, Weisstein apparently made a huge mistake by not making sure the web site wasn’t considered a derivative work before he signed his publishing contract. I mean I don’t know about you, but if Random House calls and tells me they want me to write a book about overpopulation based on my web site, the first thing I’d want is my lawyer and their lawyers coming to an agreement that the book contract wouldn’t affect the copyright of the web site.

In fact a couple years ago when I was contacted by a publisher who bought the rights to republish an essay I’d written for one of my web sites, I made darn sure that they were not purchasing the copyright as well and my future use of the essay would not be restricted in any way.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve stopped working for companies that wanted me to sign away more of the rights for my writing than I was willing to do. Some people I know have looked at me a bit skeptically when I’ve mentioned this, considering it an overreaction on my part. On the other hand it’s cases like Weisstein’s that show just how important it is to understand the legal ramifications of what you’re doing before you sign any sort of publishing contract.

Why the Sega Rumors Are Probably True

PC Gamer is just one of several game news outlets reporting rumors that Sega is going to manufacture a PCI card that will allow people to play Dreamcast games on their computers. A lot of people think this rumor almost has to be false since the Dreamcast uses a proprietary optical disc format (although the copy protection on it was hacked awhile ago).

Here’s why I think the rumors are probably true: this would be an incredibly stupid move by a company, Sega, that has a long history of making incredibly stupid moves. Oh yeah, I would want to buy a Dreamcast PCI card so I could play the Dreamcast port of Unreal: Tournament rather than the PC version. Or maybe PC gamers are dying to ditch The Sims to play Seaman? Such a move would be crazy given that the console and PC games really service different markets — which is precisely why I would bet anything the folks at Sega are seriously considering it (btw, I’m not a PC snob and own several console systems; it’s just that the console is very good at what it does and PC games are good at what they do, and the result is usually a waste of time and money when companies try to bridge the two).

More Death from Above

On Friday astronomer said they had identified a suspected asteroid that had a 1 in 500 chance of hitting the Earth in 2030, but today they apparently downgraded the risk saying that the object would actually miss the Earth by about 3 million miles and was no longer considered a serious threat.

After 2030, though, the picture might not be so rosey. For a 2071 flyby the risks of a collision could be as high as 1 in 1,000.

And just so you know how little we know about near earth asteroids — nobody’s even sure the object really is an asteroid. There’s apparently some suspicion that it might just be an Apollo-era booster rocket!

Information on the original announcement can be found in the IAU Technical Review Team Assessment on Asteroid 2000 SG344, and a followup news story on MSNBC, Asteroid threat downgraded sums up the aftermath, including a stinging e-mail message from a scientist wondering why the IAU went public so early on such flimsy evidence.

$1 Billion for After-School Programs?

The U.S. Census Bureau released a study last month suggesting that, in 1995, 2.4 million children under the age of 12 were left home alone either before or after school. Of course you know what Bill Clinton’s answer is — lets spend $1 billion funding government after-school programs. Instead, how about reducing taxes so middle class families can spend more time with their kids.

And make no mistake this is definitely a middle class problem. Eleven percent of the children left home alone came from families who were at the poverty level, while 22 percent of the children came from families with incomes twice that of the poverty level. Some analysts interpreted this as meaning that cost was not an issue but missed the point.

As the data from the Census report indicate, families in poverty were less likely to leave children alone largely because one or both parents were not employed or in school and were available at home to watch children after they left school.

Cost of after school child placement is not the only factor that goes into deciding to allow children to be home alone, but it certainly is one of them. Rather than spending $1 billion dollars, why not simply lower taxes so that parents could arrange shorter or alternative work schedules that would allow them to spend more of their child’s after-school hours at home?

That wouldn’t satisfy the government’s need to insert itself in almost every aspect of life, but it might do a lot more to strengthen families than shipping kids off to government after school programs.

Source:

Millions of U.S. students home alone. CNN, October 31, 2000.

Campaigning Under the Influence

For the life of me I can’t understand why George W. Bush did not reveal his drunk driving arrest a long time ago — given the current state of American politics I’m convinced it would have helped his efforts. All he had to do was wait until he had the Republican nomination wrapped up and then schedule a heart-to-heart interview with one of those insipid network types like Barabara Walters and reveal his pain. People love that stuff for some reason (look at Missouri where the sympathy factor has a dead man beating his opponent for a Senate seat).

Instead it comes as a surprise bombshell right before the election that makes people wonder a) why was he hiding the DUI for so long, and b) more importantly, are there other arrests and/or incidents Bush is hiding?

Bush’s campaign isn’t helping matters by calling the sudden reports of the arrest as Democrat Party dirty tricks, which sounds too much like Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “vast right wing conspiracy” line.