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> More specifically, the original has text like "Each collision releases a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles." while the quoted text on that site uses

by lutusp 12y ago

> More specifically, the original has text like "Each collision releases a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles." while the quoted text on that site uses the conditional mood "Each collision would release a burst of gamma rays and scattered particles." Check: the book contains the second form. Also, the end in the original is "A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests ..." while the blog uses "Major League Baseball Rule 6.08( b) suggests ..."; and the order of the baseball fusion zone images have been swapped. Check: the book contains the second form. To me, this suggests that the blog content was scanned out of the book and converted to text using OCR (except the images). I am not saying this is so, only that this is the appearance. > (However, had the material on that blog been identical to xkcd.com then I believe there would not be an infringement.) I agree, but before my initial post I had established that at least some of the text came from the book (I spot-checked a few passages from my copy). Again -- why would Houghton Mifflin release a book containing the content of a bunch of Web pages that are free to copy? The publishing business is difficult enough as things stand, even with fully protected content. > Could you check to see if that matches the book? I haven't compared the entire blog, but after the above comparisons I read more content than I had earlier. The first few paragraphs are word-for-word in correspondence with book. The graphics appear in the same order in both the blog and book, and are identical. Maybe the blog's author is confused, since the online content is free to copy. Again, I doubt that a bricks and mortar publisher would be willing to publish a book that has no copy protection. I am particularly sensitive about this, because until the past few years people would regularly scrape my Website's articles and either present them as their own or wholesale copy with attribution but with no pretense of commentary or other rationale. This is why there are hyperlinks, a feature of the Web people seem to have forgotten. Randall Munroe is in a unique and deserved position -- when people copy his articles, they want the origin to be known. I don't have that privilege. :)

dalke 12y ago
On my side, I didn't consider that it might be copied from the book, given that copying from the web site should be much easier than either OCR or copy&paste from some e-book. Your first posting didn't mention that you had spot-checked against the book, and I assumed that the infringement you were talking about was from xkcd.com and not from the book. Regarding a hypothetical Houghton Mifflin; I can conceive that Munroe is in a special enough position as to make special demands. (This is, in fact, not true - people on xkcd.com say that the e-books are DRM'ed.) I can also conceive of a mixed situation, where the book contains additional material not on the web site, and where only the new material was under a more restrictive copyright. (Another minor detail; the xkcd.com copyright license may be less restrictive than most, but it not free. There is still copyright protection on it.) I personally think the author doesn't much care about the matter. A review of the other book reviews shows they are more like digests, with many long, unmodified quotes and very little review or commentary.
- lutusp 12y ago
  > Your first posting didn't mention that you had spot-checked against the book, and I assumed that the infringement you were talking about was from xkcd.com and not from the book. Fair enough, I could have been more clear. > Another minor detail; the xkcd.com copyright license may be less restrictive than most, but it not free. That's an aspect of "free" and open-source that many people find confusing -- the person granting those permissions normally still wants control and fair attribution. > I personally think the author doesn't much care about the matter. A review of the other book reviews shows they are more like digests, with many long, unmodified quotes and very little review or commentary. Yes, or maybe he realizes nothing can be done, that it's a sign of the times. But I doubt that Houghton Mifflin's stockholders would go along if they were fully aware of what it implies about paper-book copyrights.

by lutusp 12y ago

dalke 12y ago

On my side, I didn't consider that it might be copied from the book, given that copying from the web site should be much easier than either OCR or copy&paste from some e-book. Your first posting didn't mention that you had spot-checked against the book, and I assumed that the infringement you were talking about was from xkcd.com and not from the book. Regarding a hypothetical Houghton Mifflin; I can conceive that Munroe is in a special enough position as to make special demands. (This is, in fact, not true - people on xkcd.com say that the e-books are DRM'ed.) I can also conceive of a mixed situation, where the book contains additional material not on the web site, and where only the new material was under a more restrictive copyright. (Another minor detail; the xkcd.com copyright license may be less restrictive than most, but it not free. There is still copyright protection on it.) I personally think the author doesn't much care about the matter. A review of the other book reviews shows they are more like digests, with many long, unmodified quotes and very little review or commentary.

lutusp 12y ago
> Your first posting didn't mention that you had spot-checked against the book, and I assumed that the infringement you were talking about was from xkcd.com and not from the book. Fair enough, I could have been more clear. > Another minor detail; the xkcd.com copyright license may be less restrictive than most, but it not free. That's an aspect of "free" and open-source that many people find confusing -- the person granting those permissions normally still wants control and fair attribution. > I personally think the author doesn't much care about the matter. A review of the other book reviews shows they are more like digests, with many long, unmodified quotes and very little review or commentary. Yes, or maybe he realizes nothing can be done, that it's a sign of the times. But I doubt that Houghton Mifflin's stockholders would go along if they were fully aware of what it implies about paper-book copyrights.