DISQUS

In other words, I think you're inventing the distinction between modified and derivative works. That's not a legal distinction, to the best of my knowledge.

There is, however (at least in the US), a distinction between non-transformative and transformative derivative works.

I'm no lawyer,but I've taken an interest in this sort of thing.

All of those cases are clearly derivative works, except maybe image 3. The Creative Commons tends not to view a picture in a page of text as a derivative work, where as the Free Software Foundation (with the GNU Free Documentation License) believes that would constitute a derivative work. Which of them is right has yet to be seen, and would depend on the theories being tested in court. Or so I've been told.

I don't see how there's any question as to whether a cropped image is legally a derivative work. I think the real question you're asking is about transformative use. I think there's a strong argument that image 1 is transformative, whereas it would be harder to say the same about image 4. Image 3, if considered a derivative of the original, is also clearly transformative.

This is pretty much the opposite of that Nick Carr, "Is Google making us stupid?" article. Very insightful.

I guess the question is... how to you measure the credibility of those rating the authors credibility?

I suppose their answer would be that it'll balance itself out in the end...

But what about controversial topics? Like, abortion or the Iraq war or something. With a service like Wikipedia, the aggregate result of a multitude of contributions is often a compromise, which is ideal. Is a compromise always appropriate for a credibility ranking? I mean, if there's a disagreement about an author's credibility, then sure, a compromise is a great solution, but if there's disagreement about the *beliefs* the author holds, is that something different than credibility?

I mean, can you disagree with someone and still consider them credible? There's a difference between someone being dishonest or having their facts wrong, and someone just coming to a different conclusion than you based on the same credible sources of information.

I have a bit of a hierarchical approach to remembering and sharing web pages...

If I like something in Google Reader, I'll share it. If I really like it, I'll share it and StumbleUpon it (though I just started using StumbleUpon this week). Then, if I *really* like something, I'll share it, StumbleUpon it, and post it to del.icio.us (and sometimes Facebook if I want my friends to see it).

What I find most useful about delicious isn't so much the individual bookmarks, but rather the sort of "streams" that are created. For example, I can link to http://del.icio.us/balleyne/copyright or http://del.icio.us/balleyne/music (or http://del.icio.us/balleyne/copyright+music) in order to share bookmarks with people, and I can grab the RSS from those streams to embed on my website, etc... I find I use that sort of functionality much more than I ever go back in search of any particular bookmark (the FF3 awesome bar is great for that).

So, *shrugs* to the redesign.

Yeah, just reading that post now. :)

But how are they reaping the benefits by pissing off Scrabulous users? The resounding cry from users in response to the lawsuit and takedown isn't "thank God there's finally an official version for us to play!" It's been, "screw you Hasbro, I was having fun."

It's not even a matter of compensating the Agarwalla brothers. It's a matter of making a smart business decision.

This is the thesis of the pirate's dilemna.

The Argarwallas found untapped demand in the market for Hasbro, they created something that renewed interest in the game and got people playing it again in a new way on a new medium. Why not hire these people who are obviously a valuable asset to the business? More importantly, why not buy Scrabulous so that it's *Hasbro's*? Rather than sue them, risk a lot of bad publicity, and risk the likely event that not many people will use Hasbro's version, make the switch to a company that sued their fun offline.

The Economist recently covered this: "in a recent book, “The Pirate’s Dilemma”, Matt Mason gives the example of Nigo, a Japanese designer who took Air Force 1 trainers made by Nike, removed the famous “swoosh” logo, applied his own designs and then sold the resulting shoes in limited editions at $300 a pair under his own label, A Bathing Ape. Instead of suing Nigo, Nike realised that he had spotted a gap in the market. It took a stake in his firm and also launched its own premium “remixes” of its trainers. Mr Mason argues that “the best way to profit from pirates is to copy them.”" [http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11750492]

It's certainly within their right to take legal action, but it's a bad business decision and no one wins (Hasbro would be better off taking advantage of Scrabulous).

uh... they'd*

It's cool that Weezer is building on the idea, but it would have been nice if they've given the BNL a shout out if that was part of their inspiration.

I support Facebook on this one, as long as they can work the issue out with Google.

How can they support user privacy if, in the name of openness, they allow any third party complete access to your data?

They're trying to strike a balance, to find a way to protect user privacy while making data portable. Give them a break.

... isn't UNIX a standard? Aren't pretty much all non-Microsoft operating systems based off that standard now, desktop or server? GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, BSD...

Isn't Microsoft moving to make its server more UNIX-like with more command-line utilities, playing nicer with free and open source software stacks, etc... and didn't Vista take some steps in a unix-like direction, at least regarding security and user permissions (it's access control thing was basically an annoying version of 'sudo' on Ubuntu, for example)?

I don't get it. What was standardized?