Dialectizer Shut Down

endisnigh writes: "Another fun, interesting and innovative online resource goes the way of corporate ignorance - due to threats of legal action, the author of the dialectizer, a Web page that dynamically translates another Web page's text into an alternate 'dialect' such as 'redneck' or 'Swedish Chef' and displays the result, has packed up his dialectizer and gone home - see the notice here."

Overlay not infringement

The dialectizer sounds a lot like the "Game Genie" device used to alter the play of video games. Inserted between a copyrighted work and the viewer, it causes the work to appear differently to the viewer. It does not modify the underlying work, and its display is only temporary, never (or not by the dialiectizer's doing) stored as a fixed copy. The 9th Circuit found that modification, if there was copying involved, to be fair use in Lewis Galoob Toys v. Nintendo of America [harvard.edu].

Here's a description from Micro Star v. Formgen Inc. [harvard.edu]:

*fn4 A low-tech example might aid understanding. Imagine a product called the Pink Screener, which consists of a big piece of pink cellophane stretched over a frame. When put in front of a television, it makes everything on the screen look pinker. Someone who manages to record the programs with this pink cast (maybe by filming the screen) would have created an infringing derivative work. But the audiovisual display observed by a person watching television through the Pink Screener is not a derivative work because it does not incorporate the modified image in any permanent or concrete form. The Game Genie might be described as a fancy Pink Screener for video games, changing a value of the game as perceived by the current player, but never incorporating the new audiovisual display into a permanent or concrete form.

As the site argues, the dialectizer only offers another means of viewing publicly accessible web documents. It uses its own rules to redisplay a public copy. What's next, an argument that all web browsers infringe because they don't follow HTML specs and so display the pages differently from the page authors' intent?

(I had these cites handy because I've been waiting to see the same misguided challenge raised against ThirdVoice [thirdvoice.com] or my poky annotation engine [harvard.edu] for offering web page annotation.)

Re:Translators

That brings up the question...

What if the dialectizer were a program that you ran on your computer that translated the pages?

It would be perfectly okay, right? Now what's the difference between that and running the program off of someone elses computer to be sent back to you?

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Translators

Does this mean something like Babelfish would be in violation of copyright laws? And dosen't copyright law allow for parodies of sites?

Hmm...

Just a thought, but wouldn't stuff like that be considered a parody, and thus fair use?

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Bullies

Our legal system has transformed from a mechanism for justice (if it ever was this way) to something that people with money use to get their way. Don't seriously tell me that these sites actually believe this is copyright infrigement. They just don't like having their pages translated into these "dialects", so they get out their wallets and have it shut down. Our legal system needs to be fixed to prevent this, but I honestly can't think of how. Maybe a loser-pays system would help. I dunno. Anybody have some decent suggestions on this?

Re:Translators - Let the dialectizer explain it

Really he says it much better than I can:

http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/dialectp.cgi?dial ect= redneck&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rinkworks.com%2Fdiale ct%2Fcopyr.shtml [rinkworks.com]

--
blue

Sites Give Permission for Caching via HTTP Headers

What then of Google and it's locally cached copies?

Web sites give or deny permission to cache via the facilities provided by various headers returned on HTTP requests. See RFC 2068: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1 [w3.org]

Re:Translators

What if the dialectizer were a program that you ran on your computer that translated the pages? It would be perfectly okay, right? Now what's the difference between that and running the program off of someone elses computer to be sent back to you?

That's the same issue as you cannot video tape something from television, and rebroadcast it, while showing it in your own home, for a small audience, is fine. Neither can you buy a CD and broadcast it over the radio without paying for the rights. Even if the CD was free of charge.

The difference is that rinkworks is serving (that is, they are publicating it) the translated pages, and not the original creators.

-- Abigail

Re:Translators

It makes sense to have a distinction between what you can do as a local user, and what you can do in a server and then retransmit to random people. In the first case, it's part of the browsing process; you browse with Netscape, your neighbor browses with IE, I browse with Lynx and my neighbor with w3m, and we're obviously allowed to, which pretty much amounts to setting up arbitrary filters between the incoming HTML and our screen. But if I grab a page from your server, modify the HTML, and send it along to another host, then I'm sending a derived work of your content, which is only OK by copyright law for a few situations. Parody is one of these situations, so (IMO, IANAL) the dialectizer should be OK as an auto-parodizer. But, say, a public access ad-stripping proxy might not be OK. For personal use and on your own computer, filters are just part of the viewing process, so they're always OK.

Quick Perl script that does this.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# Really simple dialectifying Perl script.
# Written by Christopher Thomas
#
# This can be transformed into a CGI very easily. Sample code for this
# has been included but commented out.
#
# This code may be freely used, distributed, and modified.
#

#
# Libraries.
#

# use whatever_cgi_library; # CGI
use strict;

#
# Translation tables.
#
# Make up a set of these tables for each dialect you want to produce.
# Remember that this is case-sensitive.
#

#
# Jar-Jar table.
#
# I've set this translation table up to mimic the "Jar-Jargonizer" that
# was featured in Quickies a while back.
# I've forgotten many of the suffix translations the original script did.
# No great loss.
#

# Translate prefixes of words.
my (%jarjar_prefix_trans);
%jarjar_prefix_trans =
(
);

# Translate suffixes of words.
my (%jarjar_suffix_trans);
%jarjar_suffix_trans =
(
"'re"=>"sa be"
);

# Translate whole words.
my (%jarjar_word_trans);
%jarjar_word_trans =
(
"me"=>"meesa",
"I"=>"meesa",
"you"=>"yousa",
"am"=>"be",
"I'm"=>"meesa be",
"are"=>"be",
"people"=>"Gungans",
"person"=>"Gungan",
"microsoft"=>"the Sith"
);

#
# Translation table hook pointers.
#

my (%jarjar_table);
%jarjar_table =
(
"prefix"=>\%jarjar_prefix_trans,
"suffix"=>\%jarjar_suffix_trans,
"word"=>\%jarjar_word_trans
);

#
# Master table indexing hook tables.
#

my (%dialect_tables);
%dialect_tables =
(
"jarjar"=>\%jarjar_table
);

#
# Utility functions.
#

#
# This function translates the specified list according to the specified
# dialect rules.
#
# Arg 1 is an array reference pointing to the text to modify.
# Arg 2 is a hash reference pointing to a dialect hook table.
#
# Returns 0 if successful and an error code if not.

sub translate
{
my ($text_p, $htable_p);
my ($prefix_p, $suffix_p, $word_p);
my ($errcode);
my ($this_line);
my ($index);
my ($key);

# Default to success.
$errcode = 0;

# Read arguments.
$text_p = $_[0];
$htable_p = $_[1];

# Sanity check.
if ((!(defined $text_p)) || (!(defined $htable_p)))
{
# Bad arguments.
$errcode = 1;
}
else
{
# Extract hook pointers.
$prefix_p = $$htable_p{prefix};
$suffix_p = $$htable_p{suffix};
$word_p = $$htable_p{word};

# Blithely assume that these hook pointers are valid.

# Translate.
for ($index = 0; defined ($this_line = $$text_p[$index]); $index++)
{
# Pad the string, to make life easier.
$this_line = " $this_line";

# Replace prefixes.
foreach $key (keys %$prefix_p)
{
# Take precautions against munching HTML tags.
$this_line =~ s/([^\w\])/$$suffix_p{$key}$1/g;
}

# Replace words.
foreach $key (keys %$word_p)
{
# Take precautions against munching HTML tags.
$this_line =~ s/([^\w\])/$1$$word_p{$key}$2/g;
}

# Remove padding.
$this_line =~ s/^.//;

# Store this line back in the array.
$$text_p[$index] = $this_line;
}
}

# Return the result.
return $errcode;
}

#
# Main program.
#

my ($target_URL);
my ($dialect_choice);
my (@page_text);
my ($hook_p);
my ($index);

# OUTPUT CONTENT-TYPE HEADER HERE # CGI

# Get arguments.

# CGI READING GOES HERE # CGI

$target_URL = $ARGV[0];
$dialect_choice = "jarjar";

# Get a table to the hook table for this dialect.
$hook_p = $dialect_tables{$dialect_choice};

# Sanity check.
if (!(defined $hook_p))
{
# No such dialect.
print "ERROR: Can't find dialect \"$dialect_choice\".\n";
}
else
{
# Try to read the specified web page.
@page_text = `lynx -source $target_URL`;

# Blithely assume that this worked.

# Translate the page.
translate(\@page_text, $hook_p);

# Dump the page contents to standard output.
for ($index = 0; defined $page_text[$index]; $index++)
{
# Don't add newlines; we've kept the old ones.
print $page_text[$index];
}

# Print a trailing newline, just in case the web source didn't have one
# and a human is viewing the output.
print "\n";
}

New dialectic?

I propose a new dialectic:

F*ck you!

Lawyer Translation: You are hereby ordered to cease and desist immediately under CFR 938.10 subparagraph b, which states: "No parody or other humor may take place via a purely online forum which modifies language without the consent of the people using said language". Furthermore, plaintiff hereby declares...

what does this mean for:

I saw this a couple of days ago, and this is just plain stupid. The U.S. seems to be filled with ridiculous legal threats simply to crush the little guy who is not doing anything wrong, but can't afford to be legally in the wrong, and/or defend themself when they are in the right.

What does this mean for:

Google's WML converter [google.com]?
AskJesus.org [askjesus.org]?

--

Re:Bullies

I think that's a bad Idea, a very bad one, actually.

I posted about this in another post, but I guess I'll do it again.

Imagine you write some code. And Microsoft steals it. Now, you don't know whether or not MS stole your code because you can't see it, but your pretty sure they did. Would you really want to try to sue them, if it meant you would have to pay Microsoft's legal fees?

Or imagine that some company dumps toxic waste in a poor neighborhood, Corps do this occasionally, and sometimes the win the suits. Do you think that the poor community could afford to pay Generic Megacorps legal fees when they loose? Probably not. The bad guy isn't always rich, and the Good Guys don't always win.

BUT, Generic Megacorp, or Microsoft could still threaten to, and actually sue whenever they wanted. After all, they have tons of money, and could afford to take the risk of a loss. All this would do would make it more difficult for people without money to sue, without really impacting people with money. And that's exactly what we don't want.

Re:Bullies

I agree....

How about this...

If the plaintif loses or his case is dismissed
with prejudice, the the defendant should be able
to bring suit against him for legal fees (for
both suits)

Allow the judge or jury to make the determination
based on the income of both and whether the
original plaintif (now defendant) had a semi-valid
case.

Ie, if you sue microsoft and lose, microsoft
suffered no real hardship by the trial and has
no ability to sue.

If they sue you, and they lose, then you can sue
them for legal fees.

The idea here is to try to level the playing feild
and give the "Good guy" with little money the
ability to have equal legal representation of any
"Bad Guy" with lots of money.

Also the idea is to punish "bad guys with lots of
money" who bring about frivolous lawsuits. (bad
guys with no money have a hard time doing such
things).

Racism at the front door

I dunno about you guys, but I for one am glad to see this thing gone. Who wants "jive" speak anyway? Do you really think seeing "slap ma' fro" all the time is funny? Do you think that real people of African descent talk that way? I'm glad I wasn't raised on 70's blaxploitation films.

And what about "redneck"? Southern-Americans have it bad enough, what with the Yankess harassing them about the flag they flew in the War of Northern Aggression. I don't think making fun of the way that they say "y'all" is very proper.

And lastly, the Swedish chef. Can we really tolerate the amount of anti-Scandinavian bigotry which we are bombarded with daily in the media? Linus himself was of Swedish extraction, and it is no secret that his father was a chef. Granted, he had a tendency to throw chickens around wildly and make noises that can't quite be described as speech, but that's no reason to rub salt in old wounds.

Shame on you Slashdot, for supporting this monstrosity.

Bablefish isn't the same

Note: I am neither defending nor condemming the individual web sites which asked the dialectizer to remove them, or the guys decision to cut himself off entirely rather than continue to deal with the mounting number of "disconnect" requests.

Good point. Is this really any different than babelfish?

Or the jesus translator (sorry lost the link), or the candaianizer and all the rest (there are a LOT of these things).

Bablefish is probably the best example though, it is doing the same thing that this guys was.

The bablefish doesn't do the same thing this guy was at all. Though the technological process may be similar, the transformation of the work is completely different.

The bablefish takes a peice of text and changes the language that it is written in. The content, and more importantly, the context of the message is unchanged. A political rallying call in french is still a political rallying call when translated to english. A bunch of blond joke in spanish are still blond jokes in english. (though puns would just sound dumb). A health alert in english is still a health alert in portuguese. Ad nauseum.

But the entire point of these dialect "translaters" is to change, not preserve context. Any text read through it becomes a joke. A person who writes on political topics might be perfectly happy for people to read them in other languages, but annoyed to have them turned into a swedish chef joke by someone who isn't even creative enough to do the "parody" on their own.

Again, this is not a legal argument, so save those flames for someone else. But there is a reason that this guy has been flooded with requests to not link to people's sites while bablefish likely hasn't recieved any such requests. They aren't the same thing and people who have worked hard on a site know the difference. If you don't recognize that (possibly non-legal) difference, you won't understand the context of this announcement.

-Kahuna Burger

Obligatory "Open Source" Comment

But in all seriousness, releasing the code to the dialiectizer would allow us to enjoy it without putting rinkworks at risk of lawsuit, and without overloading rinkworks' server. Not having thoroughly examined their site, I don't know that they don't offer the code -- I just didn't see it upon casual inspection.
Alternatively, perhaps recoding it as a plug-in would be a good idea. Same benefits, plus it'd be seamless -- just click a "dialectize" button.
Christopher A. Bohn

Re:Translators

It makes sense to have a distinction between what you can do as a local user, and what you can do in a server and then retransmit to random people.

So write the dialectizer in Java, and run it on the client. Problem solved?

---

Re:Translators

In essence, a web browser is a translator. It translates HTML into something formatted. By claiming that Dialectizer or whatever it is infringes upon a copyright means that just going to their web site with a web browser is infringing upon their copyright.

Bank of America is *FUCKING* DUMB and here's why

So they're going to pay Lawyers $$$$, threaten freedom of speech, and look like complete idiots whereas they could have achieved what they wanted by just adding this line to httpd.conf:

Deny from rinkworks.com

Fucking clueless corporate bullies. Too bad stupidity is not lethal.

Re:boo

As everyone can see from the Swedish chef and jive posts that the dialectizer isn't actually shut down. It is still available, you can copy and paste text into it. You just can't aim it at a website. I bet half of the people here didn't read the notice and assumed that it's actually completely shut down. It does have decreased functionality, however, and I think it's a great injustice that he has to change it.

Squid illegal?

It makes sense to have a distinction between what you can do as a local user, and what you can do in a server and then retransmit to random people.

That would make all proxy servers illegal. Squid essentially does what you describe.

-John

Re:rednecks?

no, we get rednecks in the uk.

Fat, balding, drunk, slobbish, stupid, ignorant, Sun reading twats...

often seen abroad, wrapped in the union jack, getting the shit kicked out of them by the police, or foreign rednecks about half their size...

much to the amusement of all who are embarrassed by these losers.

Check out the news re Copenhagen today, for example.

Cultural note (and i use the term in its loosest possible sense) - the Sun is like a newpaper for morons - sort of like National Enquirer, but without the sense of humour. Its `reading age` was about 6, last i heard.

Fair use overview

Nolo's website [nolo.com] has a good overview of Fair use as applied to Copyright. I quote:

Uses That Are Generally Fair Uses Subject to some general limitations discussed later in this article, the following types of uses are usually deemed fair uses:

• Criticism and comment--for example, quoting or excerpting a work in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment.
• News reporting--for example, summarizing an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report.
• Research and scholarship--for example, quoting a short passage in a scholarly, scientific or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations.
• Nonprofit educational uses--for example, photocopying of limited portions of written works by teachers for classroom use.
• Parody--that is, a work that ridicules another, usually well-known, work by imitating it in a comic way.

• Seems like fair use under the parody clause but we all know that he with the lawyer and the money wins. Call the ACLU.

Re:Translators

The first amendment to the US Constitution bars the *United States Government* from abridging a citizen's right to free speech. This does not guarantee anyone the right to say anything they like. It *just* means that the Federal Government can't be the one who stops them.

Good post, but note that the 14th Amendment keeps other levels of Government from infringing your rights also - and USC Title 18 S. 241-242 provide for very stong penalties for anyone found guilty of conspiring to deprive you of those rights, even 'under color of law'. Up to and including death, if violent crimes are commited in the process of violating your rights.

It's rarely been used this way, because of the ridiculous precedent set in US v. Cruikshank. The Court managed to rule there that the 14th Amendment only protects those rights granted by the Government (like voting), not basic human rights (like speech, assembly, and, the court ruled, guns).

We need an Internet Legal Defense Fund

Ever hear of the CBLDF, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund? It's a fund to help comic book writers targeted by ridiculous legal action, mainly independent titles.

We need one for Internet sites facing this kind of bizarre legal harassment. We need an organization of people banded together (and taking donations, lets face it, it takes money), to help people fight this blossoming ridiculous legal activity.

My guess is lawyers are now engaged in preventative-and-predatory maneuvers, first strikes against any possible percieved threat no matter how bizarre or untrue. I've seen legal departments go on automatic before, and it seems this is happening more and more often on the net.

So, it's time to band together and fight.

Ah, the free Western World...!

POLITICAL RANT = ON

I live in Austria, Europe, a small country that has recently received a fair amount of flak on an international level due to the fact that the new government is considered too right-wing. The main point of concern was and is that one of the parties in the new coalition government has a rather poor track record with respect to political correctness. Numerous outside governments (including the US) made copious amounts of well-meaning and patronizing remarks about how the free world has to watch that the standards of democracy and free speech have to be upheld in Austria now that this new administration is in charge, and so on.

All of which is, of course, total drivel because said government was democratically elected and has so far shown not the slightest intention of altering the political system for the worse.

If something like the shutting down of Dialectizer had taken place in Austria, free speech advocates would probably already be spraying swastikas on Austrian embassies in some places. But if this takes place in the USA with its sacred legal system that leans towards corporate fascism, everything is all right. How very nice >:-)

Perhaps the citizens of the US should start giving some thoughts as to whether their own political and judical systems are still up to standards that allow them to preach to the entire world how things ought to be done...

Re:Bullies

I think a way that would work out well is that if the plaintiff loses the case, they would have to pay for all the defendant's legal fees, along with compensation for all the time they could have spent doing better things.

This could put a bit of a dent in all those big companies' pockets... suddenly the little people (who would have never had a chance before) get nice big expensive lawyers, win the case like they should, and the bill gets paid by the company.

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Re:Translators

Routers don't qualify. They don't keep the data long enough. I forget what case that decision came out of, and I'm not sure it applies everywhere (probably just one district). Not sure about the rest.

Re:Bank of America is *FUCKING* DUMB and here's wh

They could have done that.

But they are prolly running II