Charles a few things.
You do not need to be in the US to read a Google Book. There is a thing called proxy or super proxy or something of that sort, which will mask where you are, and thus allow anyone to read a book as if they were in the US.
Secondly I like the idea of asking Google Books to specify what sort of citation THEY would like a person to use. In lieu of that, there is a standard form of citation to include the repository in which you found the item, as well as the item itself. I think though, 99.34% of our writers probably will continue to use the simplest form possible. In fact we have a robot just to help fill out bad citations. When I find them, I tend to make these citations fuller myself, but it's a never-ending task.
Will
2009/9/5 WJhonson@aol.com:
Charles a few things.
You do not need to be in the US to read a Google Book. There is a thing called proxy or super proxy or something of that sort, which will mask where you are, and thus allow anyone to read a book as if they were in the US.
That is probably illegal, though.
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/5 WJhonson@aol.com:
Charles a few things.
You do not need to be in the US to read a Google Book. There is a thing called proxy or super proxy or something of that sort, which will mask where you are, and thus allow anyone to read a book as if they were in the US.
That is probably illegal, though.
Or at least a violation of the Terms of Service.
I dislike such advice that takes the form of 'oh, that's not a problem, just <do technically involved thing> to bypass an issue'.
Yes, and we could defeat any DRM just by randomly guessing the encryption key or hand-soldering a chip we fabbed ourselves to fool the protocols; does that mean we shouldn't worry about things like DRM because there's always some way to work around it? Or heck, we could just disable editing entirely - that way anyone wanting to edit will have to exploit a buffer overflow or remote server hole before they can modify the SQL tables; this will guarantee that only those people who really want to edit will edit, and isn't that a good thing? Clearly the Foundation's expenditures on user-friendliness are a waste.
Technical possibility is not real possibility. The differences between these humorous examples are ones only of degree, not kind.
2009/9/5 Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com:
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/5 WJhonson@aol.com:
Charles a few things.
You do not need to be in the US to read a Google Book. There is a thing called proxy or super proxy or something of that sort, which will mask where you are, and thus allow anyone to read a book as if they were in the US.
That is probably illegal, though.
Or at least a violation of the Terms of Service.
Contract violation *is* illegal. (Assuming a website ToS is a binding contract - has that ever been tested in court?)
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
2009/9/5 Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com:
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
2009/9/5 WJhonson@aol.com:
Charles a few things.
You do not need to be in the US to read a Google Book. There is a
thing
called proxy or super proxy or something of that sort, which will mask
where
you are, and thus allow anyone to read a book as if they were in the
US.
That is probably illegal, though.
Or at least a violation of the Terms of Service.
Contract violation *is* illegal.
Sort of. If I go broke and fail to pay my mortgage, would you say I did something illegal? I'm not sure it's fair to refer to a mere breach of contract as "illegal".
(Assuming a website ToS is a binding contract - has that ever been tested in court?)
Personally I've taken to the argument that a ToS is a license. It solves the problem that the other party need not explicitly agree to it (but if they don't agree to it they have no right to access the website), and it solves the problem that minors are not bound by contracts. But in that case violation of a Terms of Service might actually be illegal, and *not* just a breach of contract (similar to the way violation of a software license might constitute copyright infringement and not just a breach of contract).
Not that it's likely you're going to get in any trouble for bypassing Google Books restrictions through proxies. To get back on topic, I don't think there should be a link to Google Books at all. The reference should be the book. If you want to mention "accessed through Google Books", fine. But the link should go to a generic page which potentially works with more sites than just Google Books, like [[Special:BookSources]].
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Contract violation *is* illegal.
Actionable != illegal. The big difference is that you could walk into a police station and tell them that you broke a contract or terms of service, and they'd tell you to have a nice day. Likewise, copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal one. The police do not pursue the matter, the allegedly infringed party does.
Steve
And I'd like to add contract violation *may* be illegal, there are loopholes large enough to swim an elephant through, which is why lawyers like contracts. No such thing as an unbreakable contract.
You may have heard about these lawyers that are suing mortgage companies because they didn't explain the mortgage clearly enough ? An interesting point, most websites, don't actually make you read the license before you start using the site. I'm not even sure where on Google Books I would look to see what my allowed uses are.
-----Original Message----- From: Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Sep 8, 2009 7:33 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Google Books class action lawsuit
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 6:17 AM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Contract violation *is* illegal.
Actionable != illegal. The big difference is that you could walk into a police station and tell them that you broke a contract or terms of service, and they'd tell you to have a nice day. Likewise, copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal one. The police do not pursue the matter, the allegedly infringed party does.
Steve
_______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Gwern Branwen wrote:
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 3:35 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/9/5 WJhonson@aol.com:
Charles a few things.
You do not need to be in the US to read a Google Book. There is a thing called proxy or super proxy or something of that sort, which will mask where you are, and thus allow anyone to read a book as if they were in the US.
That is probably illegal, though.
Or at least a violation of the Terms of Service.
I dislike such advice that takes the form of 'oh, that's not a problem, just <do technically involved thing> to bypass an issue'.
Yup, there is a reason the WJhonson@aol.com mails still have a killfile chez moi. Managing to miss the point that if a link appears broken to anyone in the world it might simply get removed seems a fundamental error. It wasn't about whether I'm deprived of the info, but what form of citation is good to have on Wikipedia for this patchy service.
Charles
"1. Do we have an approved and sensible citation style for GB?
The point is that some people simply paste in the very long GB URL for a page. I tend to do the other thing, which is to treat it no differently from a book I have open in front of me."
You do both.
As I understand it , the standard way at WP of citing anything from GNews and the like, which I think applies to GBooks also, is to cite the actual published work as an ordinary book, including the page number, and then add the link as a convenience link in the for [http: whatever Google Books]. The cite books template also has a place to do it.
The rationale is that it is absolutely essential to give a source that can be used in a library by anyone to obtain the book either there or via interlibrary loan. It's also necessary though to say where you actually found the reference--hence the link to GBooks. All such refs to the Googles and similar convenience links, such as Proquest and Lexis and JSTOR ) need to be checked and if necessary upgraded.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
gwern
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I forgot to mention that the G Book interface has a list of links on the left , headed: Get this book. First it lists commercial sources, and then it almost always lists: "Find this book in a library". That link takes you to the record for the book in WorldCat. You can use the necessary part directly, or:
The WorldCat interface has at the top under the search box "Cite/Export" giving a choice of formats--I usually pick Turabian. The proper reference will appear, except that you need to add the ISBN from the main record also.
Probably this can be automated.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 4:26 PM, David Goodmandgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
"1. Do we have an approved and sensible citation style for GB?
The point is that some people simply paste in the very long GB URL for a page. I tend to do the other thing, which is to treat it no differently from a book I have open in front of me."
You do both.
As I understand it , the standard way at WP of citing anything from GNews and the like, which I think applies to GBooks also, is to cite the actual published work as an ordinary book, including the page number, and then add the link as a convenience link in the for [http: whatever Google Books]. The cite books template also has a place to do it.
The rationale is that it is absolutely essential to give a source that can be used in a library by anyone to obtain the book either there or via interlibrary loan. It's also necessary though to say where you actually found the reference--hence the link to GBooks. All such refs to the Googles and similar convenience links, such as Proquest and Lexis and JSTOR ) need to be checked and if necessary upgraded.
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
gwern
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l