Slashdot | The Return of Eric Weisstein's World Of Mathematics
Karsten M. Self
kmself at ix.netcom.com
Tue Nov 6 16:22:34 PST 2001
on Tue, Nov 06, 2001 at 05:29:03PM -0600, Jim Choate (ravage at ssz.com) wrote:
> http://slashdot.org/yro/01/11/06/2028252.shtml
Big Biz sues helpful guy, and somewhat wins.
Eric's side of the story is here:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/erics_commentary.html
Exerpts:
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 LLC, 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
coequal with books, sometimes preferred over books--for gathering,
extending, and sharing knowledge.
[...]
How MathWorld Came to Be
I began collecting the material now found in MathWorld when I was in
high school and continued the project as a college student in the
late 1980s. As I collected the material, I stored my notes on my
state-of-the-art Mac Plus 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 precollege 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.)
[...]
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 [38]publishing agreement they
provided--especially since my editor, Bob Stern, characterized the
contract as "very straight forward [sic] and easily understood." He
assured me that its language and terms were standard in the
publishing business. 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 the lawyer's advice! (This lesson
should be read repeatedly and committed to memory.) Also consult
with authors' organizations, and make use of helpful online
resources such as Wilfred Hodges's [39]mathematical copyright web
page, a public page devoted to copyright issues in mathematical
publications.
CRC's agreement defined the contracted "Work" 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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.
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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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!
Apparently 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 [43]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.
[...]
And CRC also claimed, with a straight face, that "[44] ...the public
will suffer no injury from a preliminary injunction because the
Encyclopedia will continue to be available without interruption,
from CRC Press".
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.
[...]
Settling the Case
[...]
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 web site 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 web site. 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 web site unless we first secure
permissions using CRC's [45]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.
Peace.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free
Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org
Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 232 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/testlist/attachments/20011106/077acd7d/attachment.sig>
More information about the Testlist
mailing list