RANT against Stealing Site Content

Textkit Community Open Board
1

My goodness! It’s terrible that you would do such a thing! Why, if somebody were to contact me privately by IM, I would not be able give them copies of, oh, say, Anabasis or Homer that I already obtained in this way, thus saving them lots of time, because > I > would never do anything so horrid!

I’ll be frank here, attitudes like this disappoint me. I’m not going to edit your comments because A. You’ve been on this board a long time and I respect you and B. because I’m not willing to even think for 2 seconds that I can actually control how people communicate. So if anyone wants to PM/IM/EMAIL Lex for free digital copies of Greek text - go for it because we can’t and won’t stop you.


But Here’s my long rant about why I feel strongly that this is not a good thing.

I recreated Textkit because I felt an obligation, almost a duty, to give back to the Internet what it had given to me. My entire career, a career that supports my family, was ONLY made possible by the thousands of people and hundreds of websites that for no other purpose other than to share knowledge decided to spend time answering questions in forums, writing tutorials and creating free software from which I could learn. I have never had a single computer class or purchased one technical book and yet I’m a web developer who has been lucky enough to work full time since I started 5 years ago.

Textkit was created because some very special stars all aligned.

  1. I had web skills
  2. I enjoy classical languages
  3. I could get free legal advice
  4. I’m fortunate enough to afford a production scanner. They are not cheap and I think some jaws would drop around here if you knew exactly how expensive this site was to create and operate. I don’t do this for money, I do it because I want to somehow validate my classics education and basically do to oi kaloi.

I’m usually very quiet about myself and the production side of things. This is because it’s in my nature to lead a private life. Yet, I’m being more open right now because when I see how others are without shame willing to admit to and share web site content that they have taken, I can’t help but have empathy for the lifted website because it makes me think about my own time and effort spent creating free content and how I would feel if others distributed Textkit content elsewhere.

I have no idea how expensive the Perseus project is but it’s fair to say that it’s not cheap. I’m willing to venture that it’s the most expensive classics site ever created. I’m pointing out that it’s expensive because the content is free and its massive collection of high quality content is simply stunning. Perseus is Rome. I pay it my respect by linking to them and encouraging visitors to explore their content. When Perseus arrived on the scene it was an epiphany. I felt, “So this is what the Internet can do!” My personal opinion is that Perseus hasn’t even seen its golden age - that is still yet to come. If we’re lucky, someday there will be a world in which every computer is small, cheap and with wireless high speed connections to the Internet. When that day arrives I’ll be learning Plato in the park from Perseus.

In the meantime, I do not take from others things that are not mine to take. And I do not give to others things that are not mine to give.

When you take a website’s content and share it with others you deny that site of its visitors. Visitorship is the very blood of websites. Without it project expenses are difficult to justify, with it they flourish. Textkit’s own guideline on the footer every page is “The redistribution of Textkit files and content is prohibited” You might think, “Why is that, these are public domain books.” The reason is very simple. We want site visitors. I could have just put all the PDFs in a boring file server – but how interesting is that. Not very. With visitors our site grows and things that are not possible today may become possible tomorrow.

So if you enjoy Perseus content this is what you do >> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/

Ok. I’m done with ranting. Perhaps my opinions are trivial to some, but I thank all for reading this and as always, thank you for visiting Textkit!


Jeff

2

Many others are very happy with this site and support you, Jeff.

So: perge quo coepisti!

3

Hi Lex,
First off, I’m VERY sorry for replying in your thread :blush: :blush: :blush: I thought this was my own. So if you need to restate your post please do so.
jeff


Hi Lex, yes we’re going to have to disagree.

No, that’s not the point at all with why it’s important to protect and respect site content. You’re right, copy Smyth’s Greek Grammar all day and it’s not going to harm me one cent. But if those copies make their way to other servers and other methods of distribution where the user could have just as easily come here to Textkit for it then then I’m absolutely wronged. Because a new visitor has been taken from us. Web content’s value is in the visitors it brings to the site everyday. With visitors so many things are possible like this very forum and still new site features that are yet to be.


I like to think that I’m reasonable and this sounds reasonable to me, so no I wouldn’t mind. I understand that not everyone can download a 40MB file and if access gets in the way of learning I would rather have CDRs floating around. But our distribution policy is really intended not for this scenario but instead to put would be content lifters on notice from taking anything here and posting it on another server. We have to be clear about how we wish our content to be used.

Back to that rather long rant about Textkit and why it came to be, I guess I said that because I want to make it clear how difficult and time consuming it is to create quality content. You obviously valued Perseus content enough to go through the Anabasis and Homer copying page by page - a task that probably took awhile. And this is where we’re different I suppose. When I look at other websites’ content that I like, I respect their hard work and I follow their guidelines. If I don’t like a website’s content then I don’t return.

Now, right or wrong and for whatever reasons, Perseus has guidelines about how to use their content. I can’t speak for them so I won’t. But it seems discourtesy to me to take their content and then offer to give it to others. Whoever uses those files will spend less time on Perseus and Perseus losses the chance to communicate with them.

That’s how I see it.

Jeff
(sorry for replying inside your post again :blush: .)

4

This is a difficult topic for me to discuss. I’m going to do my very best to post gently, but I ask you all right now for your forgiveness if I say anything that offends you, or say anything in a way that offends you.

I agree with Jeff. I agree with him completely and wholeheartedly. He and the others like him have put their time, their hearts, and their money into developing this site, and sites like it.

I probably misread you, Lex (in fact, I hope I did!) but are you saying that you don’t believe that intellectual property has no value? That copying it and redistributing it do no harm to the original author? Quite frankly, this attitude (if it is your attitude; again, I hope I misread!) terrifies and disgusts me. My entire life is built around this worthless intellectual property. Granted, I work in words, and Jeff works in-well, in whatever computer people work in to bring us sites like Textkit and Perseus. But the idea is the same. Are you saying that it’s okay for you to take the stories, articles and books that I write and copy them, even redistribute them, to anyone you want, without my permission and without compensation? If you copy my story, let’s say, and give it to someone, then someone has a copy who otherwise would have had to buy a copy, which would ultimately have benefitted me as the author. Jeff’s restitution are the “hits” (am I using that word right?) that he would have gotten if the person had visited his site and downloaded the content themselves. I call that stealing.

Is plagiarizing my work not stealing? I still have my original copy, after all. It’s not as though you’ve taken anything physical from me. But regardless of whether or not these things are physical or not, they are mine. I agree that these rights have been blown way out of proportion by large corporations, like the music industry, who are trying to line their pockets, but that doesn’t make your stealing (yes, I call it stealing!) right, nor does it justify it in any way.

Again, I am so sorry if I’ve offended anyone. I just feel very strongly on this. Intellectual property is property. Some of us live off of it.

And just to emphasize my point, that this is whole issue truly is important, Jeff, may I have your official permission to copy the lessons in Latin for Beginners and First Greek Book to my notebook?

Keesa

5

Lex, I think you have an interesting and defensible argument there, and no one is going to stop you from copying from other sites. However, I see it as extremely belligerent and ungrateful to say that you will continue to do this to Textkit when Jeff has just plainly asked you not to, whether you agree with his principles or not.

6

I’m a bit embarassed.
I agree that redistributing a web content is wrong, and I see why and how it can do harm to the web site. But why the post on how to get a clean hard copy(for personal uses) should be deleted?
Well, I think it’s because the process involves copy and pasting the contents to another electronical format which enables redistribution. But it’s a different issue from whether you do redistribute it or not.
Anyway, web-lifting is not a problem of technology; it’s too easy. It’s a problem of moral, and law(but I think it’s moral that keeps people from the web-lifting, that is, law cannot detect every secret web-lifting).
And Perseus has more value than providing the mere text of the classics. The powerful morphological tool cannot be copied and even if you have a hard copy of the text, you have to constantly visit the web site to refer to the tools. Not that it’s okay to steal the text. If only it enabled changing display and print font, this issue would have arisen in the first time. It was about getting a non-ugly hard copy.

7

I have wondered many times (out loud; to my wife), what makes Jeff create and maintain this site.
There seems to be nothing in it for him besides a lot of work and expenses.
Now I have a bit of an idea why.
I feel bad that there is no way that I can give back to textkit what textkit is giving me. All I can do is buy the few books I buy through the ‘support textkit page’.
Thank you Jeff and co.

8

I appreciate hearing that. It doesn’t feel like a lot of work - slow and steady. It’s also fun. And for expense, I’ll have to have my “Sale of the Century Booksale” someday. They only way I can justify buying all of these books is because I’ll sell them. So you can thank me then :slight_smile:

I’m happy to see signs that the project is shifting gears and expanding as more people find us and contribute their own unique skills and time. The ultimate goal is to have a site that produces its own content through the collective contributions of its members. This includes everyone who takes the time to answer questions in the forum. That last round of PDFs we posted were all sent in by visitors. The tutorials project is moving along well. There are only a handful of tutorials right now, but I don’t see why there can’t be hundreds someday. Also, I’m working too with Will on the study group project - his server admin and Unix skills will play a critical role in helping me get the mailing list software installed on the server.

Heck, I’ll just say it now, Textkit plans to provide free mailing list support for any group that conducts Greek or Latin learning. It’ll be commercial free so it won’t cost the group leader anything and there won’t be any banner ads in the mailings. We don’t expect anything in return. We’re doing it because both we can and it’s just another way to broaden our primary purpose which is to provide free Greek and Latin learning tools to anyone who wants or needs it. There are still yet more project ideas slowly simmering on the backburner.

But getting back to this thread, none of this is possible without traffic.

Jeff

9

Actually, I have never shared TextKit files with anybody else, since everybody I know who is interested in classical languages happens to be here anyway. However, if I did know somebody else who was interested in classical languages, and didn’t have a good high-bandwidth connection to the Internet, I would give him a copy on CDRW. I would also tell him to check out TextKit when he gets the chance (not because I feel obliged to, but because it is a worthwhile site).

It’s not that I am ungrateful or being belligerence for its own sake. It’s just that I don’t feel a moral or legal obligation to use a website in exactly the way the author intended. I’m sorry if that offends.

10

Oh, well. It seems enough people read my original response for them to be aware of the gist of the discussion.

Hmmm, how do I say this without people accusing me of being a male reproductive organ again? I understand where you’re coming from. And I personally would not make the PDFs you created available on another server, simply out of respect for you, and from the fact that I value TextKit. But I don’t believe that doing such a thing would “wrong” you, in any formal sense of the word. Since I don’t believe in intellectual property (IP), I don’t believe that you have the right to control what others do with the information they gather from this site. In other words, storing TextKit PDFs on another server would not be violating your rights.

I understand that. I program for a living myself. It’s just that, although I believe that “mixing ones labour” with something material (to use the Lockean phrase) does give one property rights to it, I don’t believe that applies to information. That being the case, I don’t believe I am morally obliged to honor a web site author’s wishes. I do so with TextKit, not out of a sense of moral obligation, but out of a sense of gratitude, and a desire for TextKit to stay around for a long while.

11

The fact that you didn’t concede to any point in Jeff’s argument led me to assume that you were not going to follow through on his wishes. I really don’t care about all these copyright and intellectual property details, but I think when someone asks and tells you not to do something with something he himself made, that you should obey his wishes if you do indeed respect him. If you are going to do this, then fine, but if so then you are not making it clear.

As for the morality of “copying” as opposed to “stealing”…
What would you think of a person who went to an author’s home and photocopied every page of a book he was writing and then published his version at the same time as the author? I think that is a pretty good analogy, since the producer still has the property and both copies are available simultaneously, with similar effects against the author.

12

Hmmm… I wish there was a “chagrined” emoticon. You’ve posed a loaded question, since you use the phrase “intellectual property”, which I believe is a nonsense phrase. So, I’ll rephrase. I believe that some information has value, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t bother to make copies of it.

That depends on what “harm” means. If Walmart opens up a store right across the street from Mom and Pop Finnigan’s General Store, does that harm them? Yes, quite possibly it would put them out of business. Does that violate their rights? No, I don’t believe it does. Walmart has no obligation to honor Mom and Pop Finnigan’s desires to obtain an income from all the work they put into their general store by not locating a Walmart branch across the street from them.

The same applies to web sites and copying site content.

I’m saying it would not violate your rights to copy and redistribute your words, without compensating you, because you don’t have property rights in the patterns of information (words) that you have generated. The fact that this harms you by reducing your income is, quite frankly, irrelevant to the question of whether doing so would be a violation of your rights.

I call it a poor business plan on your part.

No, it’s lying, which I personally consider dishonorable. Whether it actually violates your rights, I’m not sure. I’d have to give it more thought. My initial thought was “No, it does not violate rights”.

Well, I certainly understand your point of view, even though I don’t agree with it. And vice versa, I am sure. All I can say is, as a person who makes a living by generating patterns of information, you need to be aware that there are other out there, like me, who disagree with you, and whether they are ultimately right or wrong, they have some philosophical basis for their position. So you might want to consider how you can change your business plan so that you can obtain income from these people as well, without using legal retribution against them (which tends to turn away repeat business). :wink:

I’m not offended. As you already know, I actually enjoy weird philosophical debates like this. I’m a strange man. :blush:

13

I might give a CDRW of (unmodified) TextKit PDFs to another person (which Jeff has already said he’s not terribly bothered by). I would not make the files available on another server, but not because I feel obliged not to; just because I like Jeff, and don’t want to be a complete jerk.

Well, that ignores the fact that the person violated the author’s real property rights by breaking into his home to obtain the copy.

14

Well, that ignores the fact that the person violated the author’s real property rights by breaking into his home to obtain the copy.

Maybe they were friends

15

The use of the term ‘right’ here bothers me.

i think that ‘Rights’ will not necessary, if the treatment of strangers would be the same as well known people. you see, lex, it doesn’t matter whether the right has been violated. the right doesn’t suffer. the person suffers from the violation, and i think that anyone should be regarded as one of the people you like.
if someone you hate would make a site similar to textkit, would you then do all the things you stated you don’t do out of respect to jeff?

i will try to some it in a sentence:

i don’t want to have a right to be respected; i want to be rsepected.

16

If I have the original D’Ooge book, is it illegal to give some one a printed version rather than the lovely but slightly fragile book, whilst telling them of the site whence I firstly became aware of the book, and where they may learn great things courtesy of jeff…

Not that I have or any one whom I know would want the D’Ooge book :slight_smile:

17

Say the author lends a pre-release copy of a book to somebody to get his opinion, without making that person sign a contract stipulating that he does not copy it?

In that case, while it would be dishonorable, it wouldn’t be a violation of property rights.

18

I’m use the term “right” to mean something that others are legally obliged, upon threat of force, to honor. This is to distinguish between what I think people should be obliged to do or not do, and what is honorable or nice. I think it’s a very important distinction. Otherwise we would have the Nice Police running around arresting people and throwing them in jail for not being nice. Now that’s scary.

I’ve tried to make clear that I will honor Jeff’s wishes with regard to TextKit PDF files. But not because I feel obliged to.

Things happen that make people suffer, but which are not rights violations, all the time. We have to learn to deal with them. It’s part of growing up. I suffered the last time a girlfriend broke up with me. Does that mean she was obliged not to? No, of course not. That’s why I distinguish carefully between cases where I feel a person is legally obliged not to do something (where the act would violate another person’s rights), and cases where the suffering caused is not a violation of rights.

Maybe.

Well, doesn’t everybody? Iesu Christos, do I have to agree completely with Jeff’s opinion on intellectual property in order to respect him?

19

Kalailan wrote:
The use of the term ‘right’ here bothers me.


I’m use the term “right” to mean something that others are legally obliged, upon threat of force, to honor. This is to distinguish between what I think people should be obliged to do or not do, and what is honorable or nice.

I think Kalailan was right to be bothered by the term. Your definition is not everyone’s definition (as mine is not everyone’s definition either). It’s a difficult word as people can and do use it differently.
If you are legally obliged to do something I would not call that ‘right’, because in my vocabulary that word is reserved for what is morally right. A government can make a law that says all citizens demonstrating against the government must be shot. That is a harsh example, but a soldier would be legally bound to shoot someone demonstrating, and you would say he would have acted right, where as I would claim him to have acted wrongly.

20

Another similar case would be like this. I have a copy of Smyth’s Greek Grammar I bought from Amazon. It is a copyrighted version. Let me suppose I made a backup PDF(instead of downloading the copyright extinguished version from Textkit) for an unexpected damage to the book. And a friend of mine also has the book. If he wants the backup for the same reason and he can’t make the backup for himself. So he ask me to give a copy of the backup file. Is it wrong to give it to him?