[A2k] Re: How Wolfram Alpha's Copyright Claims Could Change Software

[Claude Almansi]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 5:47 PM, Richard Stallman<rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> Thanks. =C2=A0I agree this is nasty; I don't know whether US law
> supports his claim.

Errrh maybe we should suspend judgment until there is more than
McAllister's "How Wolfram Alpha could change software"
<http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/how-wolfram-alpha-could-change-=
software-248>
to go by: some of his affirmations - as pointed out in the comments -
are misleading, like: "Try cutting and pasting from the results page.
You can't".

Well you can't "cut" from other folks' web pages either. So maybe
McAllister actually meant "copying and  pasting"? But you can copy and
paste from the PDF you can generate from the Wolfram Alpha (WA)
results: there's a link for that and the PDF is unrestricted.

This leaves the odd claims in the WA terms of use, e.g. "Failure to
properly attribute results from Wolfram|Alpha is not only a violation
of these terms, but may also constitute academic plagiarism or a
violation of copyright law. Attribution is something we expect you to
give us in exchange for us having provided you with a high-quality
free service."

"may" is an important qualification of this statement. And it could
point to tongue-in-cheek humor:

- maybe some teachers went ballistic at the idea that students could
pass off WA results as their own research, hence the part on "academic
plagiarism" to ridiculef them with this ad absurdum way of apparently
pacifying them

- maybe Stephen Wolfram is also poking fun at folks who claim that
search engine results are "stealing their intellectual property".
During the WIPO SCCR in May, a French lady representing EU publishers,
who had very stridently opposed the WBU proposal of a treaty for the
blind, visually impaired and people with reading disabilities told be
afterwards that they would oppose ANY copyright restriction in favor
of ANY group because "Google News was stealing their intellectual
property".

Tongue-in-cheek seems more likely than Stephen Wolfram really
believing he has made a golem to whom copyright could be attributed.