The Return of Eric Weisstein's World Of Mathematics 210
Many readers (like this Anonymous Coward) have written with the good news that "Eric Weisstein's World of Mathematics, a free, online encyclopedia of mathematics was taken off the web thanks to a lawsuit by CRC Publishing. After much legal wrangling, it returns today stronger than ever. See it rise from the ashes at http://mathworld.wolfram.com."
Thank The Heavens (Score:2)
Re:Thank The Heavens (Score:1)
I am _buzzing_, I'm so happy.
Now you've got to remember that the encyclopaedia is still taking shape - get contributing guys and gals! (I'm gonna give the factoring algorithms a face-lift, methinks.)
FatPhil (feeling particularly fat
Mixed blessing, Read this before celebrating! (Score:5, Informative)
The short of it is, they caved to CRC and if you want to be a contributor, but retain all your rights, you can't be a contributor. 8^(
Re:Mixed blessing, Read this before celebrating! (Score:2, Interesting)
so sad...
boilerplate data (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesn't give them exclusive rights to anything at all. Now wasn't that what the original hassle was about, them trying to grab exclusive rights?
Of course this is not exactly like the GPL either, because it is just a license to them, not the whole planet.
Now that would be a good idea, to GPL the site.
Re:Thank The Heavens (Score:2)
I also hope that the slashdot outage was because the T1 couldn't handle the load, and not because of the servers, because then they are probably blaming it on me now.
I miss you all!
CRC (Score:1)
Re:CRC (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:CRC (Score:2, Insightful)
Couldn't mabye some of the other people who contributed to the site before they made a book out of it sue CRC Press, since they probably never got signatures from all of the submitters? a few hundred mathematicians bringing lawsuits against them might teach them a lesson.
Good Math Sites (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good Math (Score:2, Funny)
Tell that to the NASA Mars program.
Re:Good Math (Score:2, Funny)
Why? Will they beat him up for suggesting that math is unimportant to the computer industry? You specified the Mars program, are they known to be more violent than other divisions of NASA? I am working on my M.S. in Mathematics, what sort of initiation can I expect if I want to join their gang? Would I have to kill an English major on the pretense that he was disrespecting me?
and yet.. (Score:1, Funny)
Right when it comes up... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Right when it comes up... (Score:2, Funny)
This seems to work. (Score:4, Informative)
too obvious, /. 'ed (Score:1)
Slashdotted already . . . (Score:1, Redundant)
I hope whatever license agreement they had to work out to get the site back up isn't "per hit."
Re:Slashdotted already . . . (Score:1)
Up from the depths of lawsuit hell, (Score:1)
I was able to check out a bit of this site; looks like it'll be pretty interesting once it gets done being hammered. Though I must say, it's great to see that someone who was truly screwed by the copyright fascists receive justice in the end. Score one for the good guys.
I'll celebrate it being back up... (Score:1)
I can't help but wonder... how much time until "slashdot effect" becomes a mainstream word?
Re:I'll celebrate it being back up... (Score:1)
I can't help but wonder... how much time until "slashdot effect" becomes a mainstream word?
It already is. [techtarget.com]
Re:I'll celebrate it being back up... (Score:1)
See the jargon entries for Flash Crowd [tuxedo.org] and Slashdot Effect [tuxedo.org]
the essence of mathematics (Score:1)
From Georg Cantor, Ueber unendliche, lineare Punktmannischfaltigkeiten, Mathematische Annalen, volume 21, in 1883.
The context of which Cantor extended the natural numbers to infinite ordinal numbers, with addition and multiplication defined on them.
Es ist, wie ich glaube, nicht nöthig in diesen Grundsätzen irgendeine Gefahr für die Wissenschaft zu befürchten, wie dies von Vielen geschieht; einerseits sind die bezeichneten Bedingungen, unter welchen die Freiheit der Zahlenbildung allein geübt werden kann, derartige, dass sie der Willkür einen äussertst geringen Spielraum lassen; dann aber trägt auch jeder mathematische Begriff das nöthige Correctiv in sich selbst einher; ist er unfruchtbar oder unzweckmässig, so zeigt er es sehr bald durch seine Unbrauchbarkeit und er wird alsdann, wegen mangelnden Erfolgs, fallen gelassen. Dagegen scheint mir aber jede überflüssige Einengung des mathematischen Forschungstriebes eine viel grössere Gefahr mit sich zu bringen und eine um so grössere, als dafür aus dem Wesen der Wissenschaft wirklich keinerlei Rechtfertigung gezogen werden kann; denn das Wesen der Mathematik liegt grerade in ihrer Freiheit.
babelfish [altavista.com] at will.
wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't finished reading it yet, but it is pretty interesting so far. Shame the article submitter neglected to put this link in his story..
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:1)
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:1)
Personally I find the idea of something that has been under constant development since the early nineties (I remember when it had next to no graphics, back in 1993!) being 'derivative' of something that was published in 1999 pretty darned absurd.
However, I'm not CRC.
FatPhil
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:2)
Walt
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:1)
And now CRC gets the rights to everything else put up on the mathworld site (see towards the bottom of Eric's commentary). Clearly mathworld is now tainted.
Maybe an open source effort is needed here. Have to reinvent a lot of wheels though.
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:2)
Absolutely agreed. I think we owe it to MathWorld to show CRC that they are really big losers. I vow to carefully check publishing companies on all books and to avoid purchasing, whenever possible, any books listing CRC or any other publisher under their parent company, Information Holdings, Inc. Get enough of the book buyers boycotting them, and they'll suffer....
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:1)
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:5, Informative)
here's some free advice (Score:2)
How much sympathy do you have for someone who runs unsigned email attachments? That's how much sympathy you should have for Eric Weisstein.
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:1)
Your shiny direct link is also
Why hasn't anybody who's seen the site got the sense to HELP THIS GUY OUT by telling us what legal turn got him back up.
Here's what I know, though I don't know the final chapter: Gentleman sold publisher a book based on his website. Publisher continued sponsoring the website for some time, then turned around and said they held the copyright to the website. Website came down.
So what's the last (or latest) chapter? Somebody who's seen wolfram.com, let us know, and get us off wolfram's back!
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:3, Interesting)
Settling the Case
We eventually concluded that there was no real business discussion possible. CRC was simply incapable of listening to or evaluating an actual business proposal. So we weighed the costs of continued litigation against the costs of giving CRC some of the cash for which it appeared so hungry. The cash approach won.
In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.
There are a few other consequences of the settlement which are of interest to MathWorld readers. The first is that a copyright statement "© 1999 CRC Press LLC" (in addition of the © 1999-2001 Wolfram Research, Inc. notice) now appears at the bottom of MathWorld entries that have a corresponding article in CRC's printed shapshot. Despite the fact the I (or volunteer contributors) wrote these entries, that CRC Press did nothing to support their creation or the creation of the web site in which they appear, and the fact that they existed in the website long before they ever appeared in the printed version, the tail has truly come to wave this dog, and this copyright statement will henceforth be a constant reminder of this fact.
Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the website. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the website unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions on-line to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:2)
Cut and Paste of Eric's Commentary (Score:1)
Here it is:
What Happened to MathWorld
It is no secret that one consequence of the explosion in the popularity of the internet and related electronic technologies is that many battles will be fought over how information is created, stored, and accessed. It is equally clear that we all have a stake in how these battles are decided.
Below is an account of one such battle--the lawsuit served on me and Wolfram Research in the spring of 2000 by CRC Press, a publisher that generations of scientists used to know as the Chemical Rubber Company. This lawsuit was instigated by CRC Press after I had contracted with them to print and distribute a "snapshot" of my math web site in book form. My goal in recounting how that contract went awry is to give others an opportunity to learn less painfully what I have learned--especially about the deep cultural divide that appears to be opening up between most, but I hope not all, book publishers and their potential customers and authors. In particular, many publishers seem unable to understand a new generation for whom dynamic web sites are rapidly becoming a primary medium--sometimes co-equal with books, sometimes preferred over books--for gathering, extending, and sharing knowledge.
In this account, you will find links that will take you to extensive documents containing all you could possibly want to know (and probably more) about the lawsuit that took this web site off the internet for more than a year. What happened to MathWorld will happen again elsewhere. But I believe and hope that the lessons learned from my experience can reduce the frequency of such events in the future.
The following detailed summaries are extracted in part from an even more detailed exposition of the history of my web site contained in my affidavit in response to CRC's motion for an injunction against MathWorld.
How MathWorld Came to Be
I began collecting the material now found in MathWorld when I was in high school, and then continued the project as a college student in the late 1980s. As I collected them, I stored my notes on my state-of-the-art MacPlus personal computer and started sharing my collections of math and science facts with friends. "Eric's Treasure Trove of Mathematics," the predecessor site to MathWorld, first went online in 1995 when I was a graduate student in planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.
As the site became more widely known and used, dozens of contributors offered new entries. Hundreds of others from around the world offered technical advice, criticism, and kind messages. The web site was in a constant state of evolution. It was a hugely rewarding experience. The growing volume of comments and submissions from the diverse community of users made clear that what had started as a labor of love for me was becoming a major math and science resource for thousands, just as I had hoped.
The Book: A "Snapshot" of the Evolving Web Site
As the web site grew, I came to believe that a snapshot of its contents in printed form could be useful. I myself do not always have a computer at my fingertips. A book would also make the material accessible to pre-college educators and people less comfortable with (or without access to) the Internet. (For some of you it may require some imagination to conjure up the dark ages of 1995, when web browsers were in their infancy and email was hardly the mass phenomenon it has since become.)
Although new material was being added daily, I felt that the Treasure Trove had become comprehensive enough (and sufficiently polished, due in large part to helpful suggestions from critical readers) that a snapshot of it would constitute a useful reference book. So in February, 1996, I began seeking a publisher to print and market such a snapshot. I presented a nearly complete paper manuscript to several publishers of scientific and technical books, including CRC Press.
Tales of warm friendships between famous authors and their longtime editors are legendary. I imagined that publishers must have a natural interest in retaining the good will of their authors, especially authors of works likely to be revised and reissued in new editions. When CRC agreed to publish the book, I therefore gave limited scrutiny to the "boilerplate publishing contract" they provided--especially since my editor, Bob Stern, characterized the contract as "very straight forward and easily understood." Its language and terms were standard in the publishing business, he assured me. So I signed it.
Lesson #1. (Where have you heard this before?) Never sign a contract until you feel that you understand and agree with, or at least accept, every clause in it. If you are not sure of the meaning or implications of any phrase or provision, find a lawyer experienced in your kind of project and take her advice! (This Lesson to be read repeatedly and committed to memory.) Also consult with authors organizations and make use of helpful on-line resources such as Wilfred Hodges' mathematical copyright webpage, a public page devoted to copyright issues in mathematical publications.
CRC's contract defined the "Work" with which I was contracting them as "approximately 1400 camera-ready manuscript pages and includ[ing] approximately 1200 camera-ready illustrations to yield a completed work of approximately 1408 printed pages[.]" I understood this to mean that I was assigning to CRC the right to publish the typeset camera-ready text I had offered them.
The Web Site and Its Relationship to Book Sales
In late October or early November 1998, as the book adaptation neared final production, I received a phone call from Mr. Stern. Throughout this pre-publication period, my web site had been receiving a great deal of attention. I had posted on the web site an announcement of the imminent appearance of the CRC book; that announcement appeared to be generating a significant number of pre-release sales for the book. I thought things were going very well.
But now Mr. Stern was on the phone asking me to remove portions of the web site content in order to create greater incentives for online users to purchase the book.
I had always assumed that there would be at most a modest overlap between the set of people who were users of the web site, and the set of people who would want to own a printed reference book created by formatting a snapshot of the web site contents. It had been gratifying to discover that people in that intersection seemed enthusiastic about buying the book.
So I told Mr. Stern that I felt the web site was, on balance, creating sales for the book, not suppressing them. I was very reluctant to restrict free access to any contents of the web site.
However, in November 1998, against my better judgment, I began to comply with Mr. Stern's request. At first I did this by randomly choosing a set of letters of the alphabet each day and blocking all entries starting with those letters. That way, some inconvenience was introduced into use of the web site, but no material remained blocked for long.
From the start this struck me as a poor device for dealing with irresponsible internet users who might attempt to bulk-download large portions of on-line material. Taking arbitrary entries offline was inconveniencing all users who happened to need the blocked material. And happily, bulk downloading was an uncommon pattern of use according to my analysis of web site traffic.
If the problem was the user who wants to own a snapshot of the web site but, to avoid purchasing the CRC book, downloads major portions of the web site's content, then why not inconvenience only those exhibiting such patterns of use? So I began to improve my monitoring and access system. By mid-1999, I felt that the software I had written was able to detect and prevent attempts to download large bodies of material. So I removed the letter-based access restrictions altogether.
I was now morally certain that no online user could, in effect, get around CRC's rights to be sole provider of comprehensive snapshots of the web site. (In addition to the printed book, CRC had agreed to market a CD-ROM version--a snapshot with its own advantages and disadvantages compared to a book. I had prepared the CD-ROM; CRC duplicated it and promised to promote it.)
Eric Comes to Wolfram Research
In the meantime, a representative of Wolfram Research had invited me to visit its Champaign headquarters and speak about my mathematical web site. I traveled to Champaign in February 1999, presented my work, and shortly thereafter was delighted to be offered a position with Wolfram Research.
I had for some time admired Wolfram Research's support of long-term efforts to collect and disseminate mathematical knowledge on the internet through a collection of information-rich web sites. And I was enthusiastic about the possibility of working for what I knew to be the world's premier technical software company.
As my postdoctoral research at the University of Virginia neared completion, I purchased the "www.treasure-troves.com" domain name and moved my web pages from the university address at which it had resided to a commercial internet-hosting site. Throughout this period the math treasure trove was accessible to the public and free of charge.
I began work at Wolfram Research on June 1, 1999.
Stephen Wolfram and others suggested that the web site ought to give its users the ability to locate information based on a custom-tailored subject classification. A number of Wolfram Research staff joined me in developing an intuitive and powerful new graphical user interface that greatly enhanced the usefulness of the burgeoning content of the math web site.
In December 1999, Wolfram Research and I unveiled the enhanced web site, now renamed MathWorld and located at mathworld.wolfram.com.
CRC Fails to Promote the Book
When the book was first released, CRC promoted it with what I thought was some vigor. However, as the months passed I grew increasingly disappointed with their efforts. Less than a year after its release, the book ceased appearing in CRC mailings that I received, including special ones for its "Most Popular Math Titles."
I was also greatly disappointed that CRC had raised the price of the book twice within its first year, from the original $65, to $79.95, to $99.95. This seemed to undermine our original strategy of keeping the price low enough for students to afford.
And it appeared to me that CRC had done little to get the book into bookstores. In fact, to date, I have only seen the book carried in a single bookstore: the campus bookstore of my highly atypical alma mater, the California Institute of Technology.
Accordingly, on February 15, 2000, I sent a note to Mr. Stern:
"I've recently noticed a few signs which seem to indicate CRC is not doing an optimal job of publicizing the CRC Concise Encyclopedia of Math. I was hoping you could reassure me: (1) I just got the CRC "Best of Math" flier. To my surprise, my encyclopedia is nowhere to be found. (2) amazon.com has been listing the book/CD-ROM combo as out of print and back-ordered for about 4 months now... Would it be possible to have someone contact amazon.com and find out why they think the combo is on back order? (3) I never heard back from you about the color direct mail flier which was supposed to go out promoting the [CD-ROM--erroneously written as "book" in the original] (and on which I sent you comments last summer). Do you know if it ever went out, or did the flier just get dropped?"
Later that day, I received a phone call from Mr. Stern. He told me that (1) because the encyclopedia had been out for two years now (actually, it had been out for less than 15 months), it was not considered a very high priority and hence may have been "overlooked" when creating the brochure; (2) CRC had decided to discontinue the CD/book bundle, though he could offer no reason for this decision; and (3) promotional fliers for the CD-ROM and bundle editions had never seen the light of day.
CRC Sues Eric and Wolfram Research
At the end of this conversation, Mr. Stern changed the topic. He told me that he had heard that my web site was now located at a Wolfram Research web address.
I told him that this was indeed true.
Mr. Stern said that something would have to be done about that.
I replied that I did not understand why the shift from the old web site to the MathWorld site should be a matter of any concern. Mr. Stern simply repeated that it was, and that he would have to inform his superiors at CRC. I did not know what to make of this, so I asked him to contact an attorney at Wolfram Research who I believed would be able to clear up any concerns.
On March 8, 2000, I was greatly surprised when, after returning from lunch, I was informed that a sheriff's deputy was waiting for me in the Wolfram Research lobby.
I was even more dismayed when he served me with a document naming me and my employer as defendants in a Federal copyright violation lawsuit.
This was my first and only communication from CRC since my conversation three weeks earlier with Mr. Stern. For the interested reader, here is a copy of the lawsuit filed by CRC. A complete list of case documents is also available, many of which make interesting reading and give a good feel for the attitude of CRC Press. A set of FAQs about the case is also available.
How the Tail Came to Wag the Dog
In their lawsuit, CRC claimed that the existence of the MathWorld web site "competes with and interferes and impairs with [sic] sales of the Concise Encyclopedia."
They sought monetary damages from Wolfram Research. From me, they sought "not less than the advance and all royalties earned by Weisstein"--everything, in short, that they had ever paid me!
Apparenly impervious to irony, CRC at the same time acknowledged in its own court filing that the book was the company's best-selling mathematics title! (This, one month after Mr. Stern had "explained" to me that my book was a back list item that I should not be surprised to see dropped from its promotional materials.)
Arguments that the web site was hurting sales of the book, in CRC's subsequent motion to force us to shut down the web site, were completely contrary to the facts as I knew them and as I had tried repeatedly to explain to Mr. Stern.
CRC claimed that "anyone can download MathWorld", and that MathWorld "supplants" or poses "a formidable threat" to the book. As explained above, I had taken steps to prevent large downloads; I knew from monitoring traffic at the web site that large downloads were in fact not happening.
And CRC also claimed, with a straight face, that "
This argument, in particular, confirmed my worst fears that CRC's representatives had never understood the nature of my web site. They were blind to the interests of the thousands of you in our online community who had helped expand and improve it. They seemed completely oblivious of the fact that without you, there might not have been a book worth publishing.
Wolfram Research and I were confident that CRC's factual assertions about the web site had no merit. But the law takes copyright very seriously. Language in my contract with CRC (that I had never construed in the way that CRC now presented it) apparently persuaded the Court, on October 23, 2000, to grant CRC's injunction, perhaps to create a strong incentive for Wolfram Research and me to negotiate a settlement with CRC. (It was clear to all parties that that original contract had flaws; in such cases, the best approach is often for the disputants to reach an out-of-court settlement by writing a new, clarified, contract. In effect, that is what has, at long last, happened.)
I simply could not believe what was happening. The interests of thousands of enthusiastic users of the web site were about to be sacrificed to the misperceived commercial interests of the company I had brought in to provide a printed version to the comparatively few users who might want a book. What I had conceived as a minor side activity was threatening to destroy the core activity at which I had been working for more than a decade!
Some Comments about CRC Press LLC
As the shock wore off, Wolfram Research and my first instincts were to reason with CRC. We were certain, based on feedback from readers of the web site, that their assertions about it were unfounded, that in fact it was generating book sales for them, not suppressing sales.
But when we attempted to present these facts, we found that there was no one from CRC press even listening. During the course of these discussions, the heads of CRC's book publishing and electronic publishing divisions both left the company. We could not get anyone to listen to arguments actually focusing on the marketing of books. CRC responses were overwhelmingly legal and contractual. When facts entered at all, they were simply repeated assertions that we were certain would not stand up to reasonable scrutiny.
We wanted very much to negotiate a settlement that would allow us to bring the web site back. We proposed what we thought were attractive arrangements that would benefit both companies. Our proposals were ignored.
For months, I could not imagine why CRC was behaving as it was. Why would a technical publisher not listen to one of its best-selling authors, and to his employer, the world leader in mathematical computation? Why treat us, instead, in a way almost guaranteed to alienate us? It seemed insane!
I have had to conclude, to my sorrow, that CRC--perhaps like many other publishers in our era of wild corporate acquisitions and conglomerations--is no longer managed by people who understand and love books, authors, and readers.
The parent company of CRC, Information Holdings, Inc., appears unashamed to treat information as a commodity to be exploited for short-term bottom-line cash, with no concern for long-term strategic planning. The goal of the CRC representatives seemed to be monomaniacal: to squeeze from Wolfram Research and from me as much instant and short-term cash as possible, using the lawsuit as a lever.
How self-defeating in an era of rapid technological change! Apparently uninterested in looking forward, building good future business strategies, here are publishers focusing instead on how to squeeze greater quantities of immediate cash from old "properties."
I have come to realize how unusual it is to be working for a company that is run by people who still enjoy the core activities for which the company was founded. Very early in the lawsuit, a Wolfram Research response to the lawsuit mentioned that Wolfram Research has chosen to remain privately held in order to be free from the obligation to outside stockholders that appears so often to focus corporations inordinately on short-term financial results. Wolfram Research's principals believe that they can take the long and broad view of the corporation's mission, as they could not if they had to satisfy stock analysts and uninvolved stockholders.
The behavior of CRC's representatives this last year has been, for me, convincing evidence of the wisdom of Wolfram Research's strategy. The people at my company believe in what they do, make money doing it, and have fun along the way. I didn't see much fun being had among the CRC people we dealt with.
Settling the Case
We eventually concluded that there was no real business discussion possible. CRC was simply incapable of listening to or evaluating an actual business proposal. So we weighed the costs of continued litigation against the costs of giving CRC some of the cash for which it appeared so hungry. The cash approach won.
In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.
There are a few other consequences of the settlement which are of interest to MathWorld readers. The first is that a copyright statement "© 1999 CRC Press LLC" (in addition of the © 1999-2001 Wolfram Research, Inc. notice) now appears at the bottom of MathWorld entries that have a corresponding article in CRC's printed shapshot. Despite the fact the I (or volunteer contributors) wrote these entries, that CRC Press did nothing to support their creation or the creation of the web site in which they appear, and the fact that they existed in the website long before they ever appeared in the printed version, the tail has truly come to wave this dog, and this copyright statement will henceforth be a constant reminder of this fact.
Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the website. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the website unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions on-line to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.
Thanks
After a draining personal ordeal lasting more than a year and during which the site was unavailable to readers, MathWorld is now back. We've even taken the opportunity to add a new streamlined graphical design, and also added a new feature in which important breaking mathematical news will be announced and described. I hope this will be useful to readers of the web site as a means for keeping tabs on what is happening in the mathematical sciences. Please feel free to contribute new results to news@mathworld.wolfram.com so I can pass the word along to others!
Wolfram Research and I have been and remain steadfastly committed to supporting the development of MathWorld. Wolfram Research has committed considerable resources to defend MathWorld against the threat of being permanently removed from the internet--an outcome CRC Press has repeatedly told us would suit it just fine. I am personally grateful for the support of Wolfram Research, and for the fact that MathWorld will not be relegated to an electronic trashheap. If you want to show your appreciation of the stand Wolfram Research is taking, please visit what I can do to help web page.
Finally, I would like to extend my sincerest thanks for your patience and support over this past year. I invite your continued partnership in my efforts to expand and improve MathWorld, as well as to support other efforts to gather and present educational information free of charge over the internet. Let's continue to together spread the wonder and beauty that is mathematics!
Regards,
Eric W. Weisstein
Encyclopedist
Wolfram Research, Inc.
November 6, 2001
Champaign, Illinois
Re:wee bit 'o whoring: (Score:5, Informative)
From that page, here is the meat of the settlement, which is far from a "win" by Wolfram and the site's creator:
In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.
There are a few other consequences of the settlement which are of interest to MathWorld readers. The first is that a copyright statement "© 1999 CRC Press LLC" (in addition of the © 1999-2001 Wolfram Research, Inc. notice) now appears at the bottom of MathWorld entries that have a corresponding article in CRC's printed shapshot. Despite the fact the I (or volunteer contributors) wrote these entries, that CRC Press did nothing to support their creation or the creation of the web site in which they appear, and the fact that they existed in the website long before they ever appeared in the printed version, the tail has truly come to wave this dog, and this copyright statement will henceforth be a constant reminder of this fact.
Another important change is that, as part of the settlement agreement, CRC Press will now be given permission to create editions of the printed book based on future snapshots of the website. As a result, CRC insisted that broad reproduction rights to all contributed material be secured. Furthermore, if we are not able to secure such rights, then Wolfram Research and I, at our own expense, must rewrite the entries in question from scratch for CRC to reproduce. This makes it extremely difficult for us to include any new contributed material on the website unless we first secure permissions using CRC's boilerplate permissions form. This form is endorsed by neither Wolfram Research nor myself, but as part of the settlement agreement, we are required to ask contributors to sign it. Since our goal is and always has been to provide your contributions on-line to the worldwide math community, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or imposition this CRC-mandated form may cause you.
I understand not having the financial resources to fight such disastrous suits, but I really wish more light was shed on this issue BEFORE the settlement. There is a whole world outside Wolfram Research, and perhaps such a fight would have been possible if more people knew it was necessary.
Question(s) (Score:2)
Were the copyrights to the original contributions by various people signed over to Eric somehow? How were they assigned to CRC? Could those contributions still be the property of the contributors? Could they be contributed elsewhere?
Re: (Score:2)
Finally, some Good News! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Surely we are not entitled to this website, after all, are we ??
Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:3, Funny)
It strikes me that if this in fact what happened, then the CRC was crassly trying to remove free-as-in-beer competition through a frivolous lawsuit, by claiming to own a copyright on the basic physical and mathematical constants.
So, to answer your question, it does relate to your rights, because it's yet another story about how well-monied corporations try to restrict speech on the net by suing those who speak in ways they don't like, and hoping that the financial burden of pursuing the suit will cause the speaker to give in.
If that doesn't make it clear for you, then I suggest you put up a large and well-documented website devoted to exposing abuses of corporate power by some large and litigious corporation (Walmart, Sony, any of the big names will do), and see if you feel empowered when you get the first letter from their lawyers.
OK,
- B
Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:2)
Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:1)
Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust me, if you ever want to publish in dead tree format something you maintain online you need to read this guy's story.
Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:1)
Re:Why is this under "Your rights online" ? (Score:1)
If you believe that Eric Weisstein was the rightful owner of the Mathworld 'work' (copyright-law term), not CRC, then his right to publish his work was being violated. This is the stance I've had all along, but CRC seemed to view Mathworld as a derivative work of the Encyclopaedia, and thus Eric would have no such right, as he would no longer be the owner of the work.
FatPhil
(not a lawyer, nor an American, but interested in such issues.)
Oh NO! (Score:4, Funny)
(this is humor, I'm not slighting math as I think it's the most important subject, especially in early education, but that article is rather confusing to anyone who hasn't been working with that level of stuff for several years)
Re:Oh NO! (Score:4, Funny)
I totally agree. We need resources like this, since 3 out of 10 North Americans have trouble with basic math...that's like, what, 60%?
I'm Psyched (Score:1)
Great To have MW back (Score:1, Redundant)
Specifiacally for this created
my 0.02 $ on that topic (not that's a big deal
but anyway).
MathWorld is great resource, one of the most
useful and easy to understand. Really missed it
while it was closed down. At least somebody takes
time to organize the mathematical knowledge in a
down to earth way (and give it out for free).
Strong it is with the force, but not that strong.. (Score:1, Redundant)
Not quite strong enough to stand a slashdotting however.
dreaver
Stronger than ever? (Score:1)
Dang! (Score:1)
Oops... (Score:1)
And see it's fall back to earth 20 seconds after this story is posted, as the Slashdot Effect carves another notch in it's weblog.
This is a happy day for all. (Score:2, Informative)
But what the heck, knowing my luck, by the time I finish typing this and hit the submit button, there will probably already be 150 posts saying the same exact thing as this and I'll get moderated as redundant... I promise this at least was a unique and original post when I first clicked the Reply button!
Re:This is a happy day for all. (Score:2)
The whole story (Score:2, Redundant)
Yay. Eric's is back (nearly) (Score:2)
It's a great example of what web publishing can do, and we are lucky that this has not become another example of old media squashing new media. This gives me some hope that the battle for unhampered digital music and film is not lost yet (although not much, all the math publishers together do not come close to a single record label).
As an aside, it's slightly unfortunate that Eric's return from the dead of copyright law is so closely followed by death by slashdot.
Anyway, welcome back Eric, and Thanks.
not_cub
Check your contracts BEFORE you sign them. (Score:5, Informative)
If my job doesn't depend on something from CRC Publishing, I'm NOT buying it anymore.
Boycott CRC (Score:5, Informative)
There's a mirror here [memphis.edu]. My apologies, Eric
A short synonpsis might be: Eric spent from high school to present of his life creating this wonderful resource. One day he returns from lunch to find Sherif's Deputies waiting to serve him with a federal copyright violation lawsuit for publishing his work on the web. Now after more than a year of negotiations all of Mathworld belongs to CRC and Eric pays them so that he can continue working on it.
Print his story out and stick it in the CRC books of your local book stores.
Or contact CRC and tell them what you think.
CRC Press LLC Headquarters
2000 NW Corporate Blvd
Boca Raton,FL, USA 33431
Phone
1(800)272-7737 x6066
(561)994-0555
Fax -
1(800)374-3401
(561)989-9732
Re:Boycott CRC, but give them some feedback too (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.crcpress.com/us/custserv/cust_issues
Their Editorial contacts:
http://www.crcpress.com/us/Publish/edcontact.as
Chapman & Hall/CRC
Sunil Nair
Publisher
44-20-8875-4385 Mathematics
snail@crcpress.com
Bob Stern
(561)998-2549 Mathematics & Statistics
bstern@crcpress.com
Kirsty Stroud
44-20-8875-4386 Statistics
kstroud@crcpress.com
Electronic Publishing Division
Steve Wells
Director, Electronic Product Development
(561) 998-2557All CD and Web Projects
swells@crcpress.com
Re:Boycott CRC, but give them some feedback too (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Boycott CRC (Score:2)
It's sad. I don't fault him, but I wish he'd made better choices.
i don't see how this is a win (Score:1, Insightful)
A Familiar Theme? (Score:2, Insightful)
Next time: put the /. effect to good use (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a thought for future story submitters: since any posting of this magnitude will guarantee a rapid /.ing of any posted site, why not make the links point to the bad guys, like CRC in this case? If I'm going to /. some web server and still not read the story (which is mirrored in a post below, BTW, just before I was about to post it), then I'd rather /. a server of some guys who quite clearly Have It Coming, And How.
Congrats to Eric and Wolfram, so sorry to see that you had to give in and settle, but on the other hand maybe you made the right choice in order to get this invaluable resource up on the web again. And now we know that CRC is just as low as Gracenote and other money-grubbing "fencing in the commons" corporate scum.
People talk about "piracy" of intellectual property. Well, guess what: downloading a song from Napster isn't piracy. But using a limited right of publication in print form to destroy an entire online encyclopedia is the very definition of piracy. CRC essentially boarded and scuttled mathworld, and now they're selling it back to the rightful owners a piece at a time. So from now on, when Hilary Rosen blathers about piracy, remember: we know the real pirates by their actions. They are CRC, and Gracenote, and any other company that takes a publicly-generated free resource and tries to coopt that resource for their sole gain. It's a valuable lesson: it takes real money and a corporate seal to be a true pirate these days.
It's about time, but ... (Score:1)
the moral of this story . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Now you're probably looking at my sig and thinking "what a shameless plug by a sleazy lawyer trying to drum up business." But I am primarily a litigation attorney. I can (and do) make a hell of a lot more money representing one side or the other in protracted, expensive misery-inducing litigation than I could hope to make by doing three-hour book contract consultations for legally-naive techno geniuses, even if half the people on /. became my clients. But I feel this sense of grief and waste often, even in dealing with my existing clients - I wish I could tell them: "if you'd gotten legal advice at the outset of this situation, or paid heed to the legal advice you did get, you wouldn't be in this pitched battle today."
Please, please, take this case as an example. Cut yourself some slack, and consult an independent lawyer before signing any agreements. Don't count on your "editor" for legal advice. Listen politely when someone says you can ignore all the fine print in their contract because it's just "boilerplate" -- then say, "yes, I know all that stuff is legalese. So I'm sure you won't mind if I have a lawyer look at it, and get back to you." Any reputable company will permit this, and even respect you for it. On the other hand, if they raise a stink, that ought to tell you something right there . . .
Re:the moral of this story . . . (Score:2)
Re:the moral of this story . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
One likely reason that Weisstein failed to obtain legal advice in advance of litigation, when it actually could have helped him avoid this situation, is ignorance about what lawyers really do. Businesses and business people of all types, small and large, routinely obtain legal advice before entering into contractual committments. Hiring a lawyer to review a contract is not, as you suggest, a signal that one is going on the warpath, or a manifestation of hostility to one's fellow man. It is, rather, the equivalent of hiring a security consultant to attempt unauthorized entry to your system, and advise you of needed security measures - a prudent precaution.
Don't you want to know whether your network has holes in it like a sieve? OK then, why would you not want to know if your contract has holes in it like a sieve? And why do you consider it detestable to hire an expert to provide you with that information? It's prejudices like yours among the sci-tech crowd that render the Eric Weissteins of the world so vulnerable to this type of exploitation.
Re:the moral of this story . . . (Score:2)
Exactly my point: if there were no bastards trying to break into my system I'd not need to employ someone who's good at breaking into systems to tell me where the problems are.
he made a mistake in hiring them only after he was threatened with litigation.
In other words, he didn't need a lawyer until a lawyer was employed against him. My point again.
Does that make him a person from whom society should be protected,
No, it makes him a person who needs to be protected from society in this particular case.
I was getting at the irony that the best people to protect you are often the same type of people that you need protection from. Which you appear to agree with. But then arguing with people regardless of whether you agree with them is your job, right? I should be honoured that you did it for free.
Re:the moral of this story . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
And speaking of "blaming the victim," I hear an awful lot of that on Slashdot in other contexts. Aw gee, too bad you got rooted, shouldn't have had your ports open, etc. People here seemingly have no problem understanding that a security lesson can be learned from even the most malicious of system intrusions, provided the victim educates him/herself and takes appropriate precautions in the future. All I'm trying to do is show how that principle applies in the contractual context as well.
Oughtn't our laws protect good not evil? (Score:2, Interesting)
You claim, if not sympathy with Eric Weisstein, at least a share in the community judgment, to wit:
1. CRC is behaving despicably.
2. CRC's behaviour is perfectly legal.
With your own expertise in these matters, could you not propose an amendment to existing US legislation that would bring 'legal' and 'just' closer together in cases like this one?
I'm sure some hard-working US Senate staffer would love to find a practical fix available for perusal.
That's not a joke.
{bait}Or perhaps you'd rather leave things as they are, and cluck sympathetically at the victims whilst their fees line your pockets.{/bait}
Re:Oughtn't our laws protect good not evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nor did I ever say that CRC's behavior was "perfectly legal." It may well be that CRC egregiously breached the contract -- there are two sides to every lawsuit story. However, the best way to prevent such disputes from arising is to obtain a clear understanding of contractual language and the rights and duties it imposes prior to binding oneself, clarify any ambiguities with the other party prior to binding oneself, and document that entire process in writing. There is nothing mystical about this method, and many people are able to handle it without legal advice.
For those who feel less confident, legal counsel is widely available and not as costly as one might think. (You notice I don't publish my real name or even my email address here, so this is absolutely not a plug for my individual services.) Most lawyers charge less per hour than the scientific and technical consultants we hire to assist in our cases. And guidance on a simple contract would likely take only two to three hours of work.
For example, say a client comes to me and asks "I'm interesting in publishing a book based on my web site. Here's my book contract. If I sign it, can I still do my web site?" I'd briefly review the contract, determine what clause covered the rights being purchased, and draft a brief letter to the publisher along the lines of: "My client has a website. I understand Clause X.2(b) to confer only rights of printed publication, and thus that my client will remain able to operate his website without any payment to you. Is that also your understanding? If not, please advise." Many people are suprised to learn that a court looks not only at the contractual language, but also the parties' communications about the contract, to figure out what the contract requires. And you want to get these things nailed down before signing anything, so they don't come back to bite you later. The cost of legal fees for a simple letter-swap of this nature, customary in all types of business transactions, is miniscule compared to the cost of litigation if you fail to perform it. And, like I said, an informed person can handle this without any legal help at all.
Re:the moral of this story . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, I supposed I'm biased from the outset, because I consider lawyers to inherently be intellectual whores, but hear me out. Why is it that laws need to be so complex that you need to consult a lawyer in the first place? I mean, doesn't it appear to anyone else here that there's something wrong with that?
Re:the moral of this story . . . (Score:2)
Meaning they sell what they think? Sure. What do you sell? Plasma? ; )
Laws are complicated in large part because people are complicated. Given the number of people, their diverse desires and fears, the myriad (and often difficult to predict) consequences of their interactions, a diverse body of law is required to balance interests. A truly simple legal code would be "Might makes right." It's almost elegant in its simplicity. But it might not produce the sort of outcomes you want. (Yes, yes. The law usually favors the powerful, politicians are bought, and it will always be thus. It doesn't matter because a simple code is always worse for the weak. Look at the proponents of the "flat tax" for an example.)
My main beef is that many on /. assume the law is a useless construction. The legal stories on /. are either "Moron Patents Wheel" or "Brain-Sucking Law Department has Hacker Executed, Children Sold." But I think they lack any sense of nuance. Where is the "Attorneys Skillfully Craft Transaction Allowing Open Source Company Access to the Public Markets That, By the Way, Would Not Exist if not for Complicated Laws that let People Engage in Transactions With People They've Never Met Much Less Know" story? OK. The headline needs work but you get my drift.
Life is complicated. The law embraces that complexity and attempts to apply order to it. It doesn't simplify your life but it does provide a handle by which to grasp it.
Not Really usefull in the New Form (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not Really usefull in the New Form (Score:2)
so you're still allowed to contribute the same material to other sites, and/or sell it to others.
On a side note, CRC promises that this boilerplate doesn't apply to copies sold in martian markets, so that just proves they're not being overzealous.
Did you READ his account of things that happened? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end, he settles with the publisher for what I consider some outrageous terms. Like the publisher can publish a snapshot of the site whenever they want. The website has to cary its copyright, and the book publisher's. Submitters have to sign the book publisher's copyright form. Anything that the author can't certify has to be rewritten.
Hate to say it, but even though his site is still running, he got horribly screwed in the end. [apologies for the pun]
ugh.. (Score:1)
I just read the word "Mathematics". . Oh it hurts..
ahhh!
Not a good thing... (Score:1)
In addition to its "instant win," CRC will be paid annually for books they don't sell, according to a formula that both sides have accepted--although we continue to believe that any past or future failure to achieve projected sales is far more plausibly attributed to CRC's abysmal marketing efforts than to any abuse of the web site by people who want to have and hold snapshots of its contents. But in this life we do what we have to do--and what we are willing to do.
Continuing to purchase from CRC would be unthinkable, but as I read this, it appears that a boycott of CRC would actually result in Eric and friends just having to pay CRC more.
So either way CRC wins.
Talk about Viral (Score:2)
The contract eric signed with CRC Press gives them an ongoing print copyright to the current and all future version of MathWorld. Plus he has to pay the company for books that they *dont sell*. All this from a boilerplate publishing contract?
If you thought the GPL was viral, you obviously never tried to publish a book. It looks like MathWorld can no longer be built upon without paying cash and giving privledges to some arbitrary company. Its a sad ending for someone whos goal was to provide unhindered math info to as many people as possible.
Start Over Again (Score:1)
It seems to me that this settlement sucks. I'd rather see someone recreate all of the material without CRC's involvement. That's a tough hill to climb but who knows what CRC could do in the future? And who would want to submit new articles to Mathworld knowing that CRC gets your hard work for free?
How about an Everything2 for Math?
Re:Start Over Again (Score:2)
> material without CRC's involvement.
It's another example of how the Internet is
a vast resource, but not very deep.
Why is there only one resource like this?
Why aren't there dozens, or even thousands of alternatives? There have been far too many
good things that had a single point of failure
(OLGA, Napster, DejaNews...)
What if... (Score:3, Insightful)
It might nullify the contract between Weisstein & CRC, and lead to the demise of the book, but with an adequate number of mirrors - I think the wold is ready for the if-you-want-a-hardcopy-then-download-it-and-print
Proof that Mathematics doesn't work! (Score:1, Troll)
x^2 - 1 = x - 1
(x-1)(x+1) = (x-1)
divide both sides by (x-1)
x + 1 = 1
2 = 1 !
Proof by Godel (Score:2)
"This statement if unprovable."
Unprovable is defined as not being able to prove using the axioms of Hilberts formal system. This was just the beginning of incompleteness. Turing followed up years later with the Turing Machine. He wanted to automate the Hilbert process, and proved the same results as Godel, known today as Turing Incompleteness.
Math as many know it is not absolute or complete. Most mathematicians chose to ignore that inconvenience and still plug away with Hilbert formalism.
p.s. My first post was a joke. Unfortunately, my login name and the absurdity of the whole thing didn't sink in. Kids these days.
Re:Proof by Godel (Score:2)
"This statement IS unprovable."
I get stuck in american colonial style writing sometimes.
"Life, liberty, and the purfuit of happiness?"
"That's pursuit."
"Well all of your s's look like f's."
"It's the style, it's very in."
Is Eric doing the Wrong Thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a really, really sad story. Eric created something wonderful, was a little bit incautious in how he tried to use his material, and ended up losing ownership of his own work. The worst part is that he has lost ownership not only of what he did, but also of whatever he or others might add to it later!
I can see why WRI didn't want to foot the big legal bill for fighting CRC; they don't really care about who owns the content of the site, as long as they can keep it up it will drive people to the web site, which will help them sell copies of Mathematica (an awesome piece of software, BTW, too bad I can't afford a copy -- it's not priced for casual users like me).
However, at the end of it all, Eric and WRI are in a situation now where if they produce more material (or if they accept reader submissions), they're actually adding value to CRC Press' ill-gotten gains! And that really has to rub them the wrong way.
Wouldn't it make more sense for them to stop adding to it, and start another project whose ownership weren't in dispute? Sure, it would mean starting over, but I'll bet the whole thing could be reproduced in a couple of years, particularly if they were to GPL (or similar) everything to encourage submissions. According to the front page, it currently has just over 10K entries; if the project could convince a professor or two from each University in the world to submit a half-dozen entries, and if there were a little organization to keep them from overlapping too much the new site would soon eclipse the old.
Let WRI take down the current Mathworld and leave CRC Press with nothing but a set of dead pages to try to sell! Right now, according to Eric, CRC Press is shortsighted enough to find that an acceptable outcome. I suspect they'd change their mind over time, as the new site grew to eclipse the old and some competitor of theirs got to publish snapshots of the living, breathing #1 math resource on the web.
Time to fork the website? (Score:2, Interesting)
To me, this means that this website is now proprietary. This is like what happened to the cddb, or SSH. Maybe it is time to start the equivalent of freedb and OpenSSH, and to replace Eric's website. Produce a website under a publishing equivalent of the GPL or the BSD source license.
Or is time to fork?
I've been slowly coming to the conclusion that the web really doesn't maintain freedom of information even to the extent that copyrighted books do. Books, at least, have multiple copies made and websites such as bookfiner.com can find many very old and long out of print books that had only a small number of copies made. A website, in contrast, is rarely duplicated. If the author decides to shut it down, then *poof* it is gone for good. Or, if the web hosting service goes belly up and there are no backups, it is gone. Or, when the author dies, and their heirs don't care about it, it is gone. Or, the website uses lots of active pages, and the software breaks on a new release and the *owner* (not the surfers) don't one cares enough to fix it, it will be gone. Actually, it doesn't even have to have lots of active pages, just a few key ones.
There are many many books that you can buy today where the author, and everyone else, has found no interest in touching/updating for decades. These books may still be of interest to readers and historians though. That's ok, because books can just sit, but a website has to be maintained.
It isn't just copyright law that is the problem, the whole technology of the web is very centeralized and lacks redundancy. Even if it was declared tomorrow that you could freely duplicate any website you wanted to, few websites would actually be mirrored. And, of course, you can't really mirror the active web pages anyway.
So, what is going to happen when VA Linux (or whatever its name de-jour is) decides that /. isn't worth it and shuts it down? Sure similar websites may well pop up to replace it, but all the history that /. has accumulated will be gone. There won't be the equivalent of dejanews for /. to preserve the past.
CRC has told Eric that it really doesn't care if his website just drops of the net forever. One day, Eric and Wolfram are going to get tired of pay for it, and it will go away. It, and really most of the web, are just walking zombies. The web is worse that even ebooks because ebooks are at least duplicated and eventually (in 100 years or so), they may be able to be reporduced. Almost no website of today will still be here in 20 years.
In reality, Eric's website may well be one of the few that will exist 200 years from now because there will still be printed copies of CRCs books.
Boycott Not Companies But Individuals... (Score:4, Insightful)
We must remember that its not companies that ultimately screw with us, its people. Once people realize they cannot hide behind the corporate curtain, they will start acting more responsible. Granted, reading a contract is incredibly important but supplying a devious contract and calling its "normal, standard and harmless" is pure evil for an editor to do and unethical to the maximum. Rot in hell, Mr. Stern, you're name has been added to the list.
A proposition... (Score:2)
Reading Eric's Commentary about what happened to MathWorld - I can't help but think that in then end, he and his employer got screwed - and HARD. As part of the agreement between them and CRC, they have to continue to pay, and to allow other's information passed on, in one form or another (either original form in which the author agrees to CRC's boilerplate agreement, or in a rewritten form, which Eric or his employer must rewrite the submission) to CRC for future publication!
Which to me, is an outrage! It is like having to pay to have your own ideas, past and future, to be sold for a profit, but not EVER seeing the fruits of that labor.
Personally, if I was Eric - I would say "Fuck CRC", appologize to the math community - and PULL THE SITE. However, this really hurts all parties involved, because this has been a "labor of love" for Eric, and a valuable resource for the community. So, what could be done?
I haven't had a chance to see how big the site is, but from the stats written, I would imagine it is fairly hefty. He has software in place to keep people from downloading large chunks of it at once. I tend to wonder if there isn't a way to set things up to get the site rewritten, and put on another site, called something else, and then given back to Eric as a gift. I mean, if ten pieces were rewritten by one person, how many people would it take? Could this encyclopedia be folded into one of the "free" encyclopedias out there?
In a way, what I am proposing is kinda something akin to how tax dodgers work - setting up a front company, then disolving and moving the money to another new front company not affiliated with the first (or something to that effect). Could such a thing be done with information? What kind of legal ramifications would there be? If Eric and others rewrite the entire site - is it still the same site, legally? Something tells me yes and no.
CRC needs to be taught a lesson of the power of the internet - the reason it exists. It isn't for money, but for information, and the love and exchange of that information. If it is possible, we can make it happen.
It took mathworld's absence... (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong. Mathworld is a great resource. Eric did an enormous amount of great work putting it together. Unfortunately, being the work of a single person, it is and always will be limited in very important ways.
First off, all of the treasure troves always seemed very idiosyncratic. Since they represented only what the author felt was important / had access to / had time to write up, this was inevitable. Particularly amusing in the chemistry treasure trove which manages to be mostly useless to a college chemistry student while still bothering to include the mineral names of a great number of inorganic compounds.
The math treasure trove, by virtue of its sheer size, eventually escaped the worst effects of idiosyncrasy, but it still suffers from covering topics it varying levels of detail utterly out of proportion with their importance in mathematical study.
Despite all this, in its day, mathworld managed to be an enormously useful resource. However, even before it was shut down, it was beginning to totter under the effects of being (mostly) a one-man project. Despite the solicitation of "contributors," who did write a small fraction of the entries, Eric took a great deal of pride in having put the treasure trove together, and in his management of the treasure trove project, ensured that outside contributions would never be a substantial enough part of the project to threaten his claims to absolute control over it.
And absolute control was definitely one of his priorities. Mathworld was protected by some of the most stringent anti-mirroring measures I have seen. If the web server thought too large of fraction of the archive had gone to any IP or group of IP's, they banned the entire network. With a few rare exceptions, such bannings were without appeal. Yes, this meant that if someone else at your school attempted to mirror mathworld and got caught, you were banned from it until if and when your sysadmin managed to make nice with Eric.
I don't deny that Eric, being the author of almost all the material in the treasure-troves, had the right to do this. However, these policies forced me to reevaluate my opinion of him. Whereas before, I considered him a great altruist, I came to realize that offering mathword free to the public had no altruism in it at all -- it was simply a business decision to amass personal fame and publicity for his product, which he never intended to give to the public to use in any way he did not intend. Mathword, while originally free as in beer, was never free as in speech.
This is the great irony of mathworld's downfall: Because Eric never allowed anyone to have substantial collaberation in or to mirror the site, when it fell, the only way to get the information was off of a few illicit mirrors created from the CRC CD, and even then, Eric and Wolfram still shut down any mirror they became aware of. Again, I don't blame him for doing so -- it was his work. It just caused me to reevaluate the spirit in which the work was put together.
I now hold Eric Weisstein in about the same esteem as RMS. Both created a wonderful thing, but in time, their respective egos became one of the larger barriers to that thing acheiving its full potential.
What direction should mathworld have gone? What resources are there that attempt similar things in better manners?
First off, there is http://planetmath.org [planetmath.org], a collaborative attempt at becoming what mathworld should have been. All contributions are under a public license of sorts, so it is immune to what befell mathworld. It is, however, still in its infancy. Go there, contribute, and fix that.
Second, there is http://www.mathforum.org [mathforum.org], which has been bounced around from being a project of the Stanford math department, an independent dot-com, a subsidiary of WebCT, and now finally a not-for-profit sponsored by Drexel University. This is not an encyclopedia, it is a question and answer service for K-12 math questions. Because it is entirely volunteer-staffed, though, it actually answers whatever questions the volunteers feel like answering, and as a result, has amassed an archive of answers to math questions ranging from the most basic to graduate-level topics. In its current incarnation as a not-for-profit and with the site licnesed to print the authors' work with the author's retaining ownership, it should last as long as Drexel pays for the web space. I recommend that anyone who is interested volunteer as a Math Doctor to help enrich the site.
These two sites, I feel, far better embody the open-source spirit than mathworld, and in time their potential vastly exceeds anything Eric Weisstein will ever manage (mostly single handed). I bear no ill will towards Eric. I greatly respect his work. I just believe that the paradigm and motive it was compiled under are now obsolete, though it took the CRC morass to make me realize that.
Let's start demanding royalities (Score:3, Interesting)
Suggestion for new contributions (Score:2, Insightful)
crc = press * (sucks)^2, etc.
Just a thought.
Re:Bam! (Score:1)
Re:ERIC is the BAD guy this time!!!! (Score:2)
Walt