unWavering

March 1st, 2015 at 11:42 AM ^

I can't speak for others, but IMO you should be able to share whatever you want (short of copying and pasting an entire article). The notion that you should have to keep information secret because it's behind a pay wall is odd to me. You now know the information, there's nothing immoral about sharing it.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 1:02 PM ^

you should just be able to pass along the entire value basis of his content, as long as you just don't copy his writing (which has exactly zero value)?

People here go through amazing justifications for stealing proprietary content. 

Wait for it to hit the twitters, ffs. 

So you have to wait another few hours or a few days. That's the price of not paying. There should be a price. 

MGoCarolinaBlue

March 1st, 2015 at 1:11 PM ^

Someone who sells information should have *zero* expectation that said information will remain secret or valuable after its sale. The flow of simple strings of 1s and 0s *cannot* be controlled, and that is just a practical fact regardless of what your moral stance on intellectual property is. The only safe secrets are those known to a single individual.

JamieH

March 1st, 2015 at 3:42 PM ^

You could use that argument to justify stealing almost ANYTHING today.  Music, movies, software, hell, my bank account is pretty much nothing but digital 1's and 0's nowadays too.  Should that just be up for grabs as well? 

 

I understand what you are saying, that trying to put a cap on information and say that someone can't share it is pretty much impossible.  But if you extend that argument out to ANYTHING digital, you get to a sitaution where you pretty much are giving yourself licence to steal whatever you want. 

wolverine1987

March 1st, 2015 at 5:48 PM ^

I then own that thing, whether it's a CD, Blu Ray, or piece of information about a QB. Once I pay for it fairly I should be able to do anything I want with it--lend the cd to a friend for burning, or pass the QB information along to someone else. I think it's ludicrous to call that stealing. I know legally the law is against me here, but in this case the law is an ass. 

bronxblue

March 1st, 2015 at 5:21 PM ^

I doubt he expects the information to be kept secret, but that doesn't mean this site should profit from it.  Brian and co. has made it clear that they don't share all of the insider information obtained from one of these sites, so that is the rule around here and should be followed.  By all means create your own site and do what you want.  But this "information should be free" argument on a private site is the exact same dumb argument people make about "free speech" around here whenever someone gets banned for being an idiot.  

House rules say you don't post anything more than is publicly available/reasonable.  If the poster can find a source the spills the beans for free, then link to that.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 1:22 PM ^

"hell if he knows." Nice. 

So this guy: http://furysfightpicks.com

A guy who depends on this for his livelihood, can't have a business. Nice. 

Because I've taken internet law, what Brian basically said was that the appearance of ignorance is better for his staff, because any moderation would suggest they are in the business of moderation, which means they actively chose to let something stand instead of just being ignorant to it. 

It's low. 

OMG Shirtless

March 1st, 2015 at 1:29 PM ^

How do you feel about Ace's recruiting articles? He regularly cites paywalled articles.

How do you feel about posting links to the online streams of games?

How do you feel about the torrents that get posted?

Just wondering where you draw the line.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 1:34 PM ^

be in the business of. 

In terms of Ace's stuff, hey it's their site and it's just my opinion. I assume most of the stuff he has in there has already hit twitter in one form or another, in which case, he's not the one making the proprietary opinions public. Where that's not the case, I've always thought it morally questionable. 

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 1:52 PM ^

weak argument. 

I never come here for new information. I happen to subscribe to gbw, and while I despise the people over at the rivals site, I respect their efforts to run a business. 

And as I said, once it's on twitter, it's everywhere. But I took issue with the post that stated, "(t)he notion that you should have to keep information secret because it's behind a pay wall is odd to me." 

I know this is an unpopular opinion. I'm absolutely shocked that people like free stuff. 

LSAClassOf2000

March 1st, 2015 at 2:00 PM ^

The general guideline has typically been pretty simple:

DO: share the link and a representative quote or summary so that the discussion can get started. I imagine a lot of people roll with that and don't go to the article.

DON'T: Paste the entire article for all to read right from the start. Out of respect for the work others put into things, those posts are usually cut down to something in the "DO" range. 

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 1:58 PM ^

and as I said, I would imagine 98% of what Ace puts in those posts have already hit twitter.

I take issue with the idea, however, that no information can exist behind a paywall. 

When it comes to recommendations and opinions, and where those are the main basis for any value provided, that's a lousy notion. 

panthera leo fututio

March 1st, 2015 at 1:56 PM ^

I dunno, man. I have a really hard time swallowing the notion of statements of fact about the world as property. Whatever the legal framework, items of prose seem to me to be qualitatively different from kernels of knowledge, and it seems to me that the latter can't properly 'belong' to anybody.

Granted, there's a collective action problem here; if everybody gets info for free, then nobody gets paid to collect it, and everybody gets less recruiting bits. But I feel confident in saying that the socially optimal level of recruit pestering is way lower than what goes on now.

panthera leo fututio

March 1st, 2015 at 2:33 PM ^

The 'certain definition of value' I referenced is the one that you presuppose: the one that centers entirely on the guy running the site. A piece of recruiting info also carries value for (at least some) of the people who absorb it, whether or not they pay. It also carries some (possibly negative) value for the players/coaches/families from which it was extracted.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 3:17 PM ^

follow what you said in that post to any logical conclusions? 

I didn't really find a lot in there to dig into. Saying that there's value in the news to the person lying inside a chalk outline or in the midst of completing a merger or whatever? I don't know what to do with that. 

Or that there's value to the information consumer? I suppose? And in some cases, it's expected that the information consumer will pass along what he or she reads to anyone who might find it interesting and in other cases, it's explicitly requested that this not happen. I don't know what to do with that. 

panthera leo fututio

March 1st, 2015 at 2:36 PM ^

With respect go the question of whether anyone would pay him a cent: possibly, though at the margin, certainly fewer. my broader, more tangential point: the world would not be a poorer place if some of these hypothetical guys were to empty their contact lists of 16-year-olds and go back to selling insurance or whatever.

unWavering

March 1st, 2015 at 2:04 PM ^

I would argue that someone who relies on subscriptions to his insider content has a poorly thoght-out business plan if he expects to sell information and not expect that people will talk about it.

How do you define "proprietary information?" I can give you the inside scoop of what kinds of Friskies my cat likes best, and slap a pay wall on it, and then is it a crime if you decide to tell someone about it? Once you divulge information to someone else, whether for free or by business agreement, it is now their knowledge and they can do with it what they please, unless part of the contractual agreement was that they not share the information. Even then, you have no way to enforce that.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 2:15 PM ^

No one cares what your cat eats, or cares enough to pay for that information. There is no value to any business, so I don't think this is a good example. 

A better example is the betting service I cited above. The guy's entire business is selling his fight picks and his strategies. That particular guy is not a scum bag, he's trying to run a business. These picks are not facts, they are proprietary opinions/recommendations. 

If what you say is true (that nothing, short of long form content, can be paywalled), he can't have a business. 

There are contractual agreements made for information like that, and while hard to enforce, they are certainly not unenforceable. 

The site uses the cover of imperfect moderation to allow the claim of DMCA safe harbor protection. 

 

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 2:56 PM ^

current reality, in my opinion. 

Any legal stuff is based, at its heart (as far as I understand) on the INS/AP case. 

Now the propositions being considered there are simply absurd in the internet age. That was a case about gathering information from like, European and Asian sources, simply because you were there, and then should the AP, who wasn't there, just be allowed to copy and republish the information. 

The issue being, INS was paying to have people stationed at these foreign outposts and the AP was not. INS lost the case, but the media as a whole has come to mutual understandings and accomodations (pool reporting, etc.) - there was a recognition that there was value to everyone in having people engaged in the expensive task of reporting foreign news. Today, news reported on any speck of dirt with an internet connection is instantly everywhere. 

You could say there is unique value in, say, having someone reporting out of Syria (although no one should go there to do that right now, imo), but the news business model evolved in a way that information is free, while content should have some cost. 

But there was a different business model that also sprung up along the way - the newsletter, pink sheets, etc. model. These relied on proprietary opinions having monetary value that subscribers would pay for. 

Mostly, they are fucked with the current laws and in the current internet era (at least to my eye). I'd like to ask the guy who runs that mma site I referenced what his strategies are for keeping his picks proprietary (I probably will ask him via twitter). 



The laws have not created any protection for the "newsletter business model" as of yet, and probably never will, because I don't think it's a powerful lobby. 

That does not mean there are not moral questions involved, however. 

GoBLUinTX

March 1st, 2015 at 1:55 PM ^

Fundamentally there is nothing different between a paywall site and a printed magazine or newspaper.  From your POV, if I bought a newspaper I could only discuss what is in the newspaper with those that also purchased the same edition.  Do you realize how ludicrous that sounds?

Would I be wrong in believing that you're one of those that has a paid subscription and thus think you belong to some club of secrets?

WolverineLake

March 1st, 2015 at 2:12 PM ^

  So, by your logic, I'm not allowed to share my newspaper with anyone or tell anyone about what I've read in the newspaper because they didn't pay for it.

  Similarly, I'm not allowed to have people over to watch the game at my house (unless they are already cable and/or satellite subscribers themselves).

  Sorry man, information wants to be free.  Cory Doctorow would probably like a word with you as well.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 2:20 PM ^

this is far from any area of expertise for me, but I believe the "hot news" doctrine is unsettled and more alive than some thought. 

The information in your newspaper probably appears in many other sources and in many other forms - you know that's not where the value added of your newspaper comes in. 

I think the television example is equally disingenuous. People gathering around radios first and televisions, subsequently, has always been part of that business model and part of your rights as a subscriber. 

I think the legal question is unsettled, but, for my part, the moral question is more easily settled. If it's out on twitter, it's public information. If it's not, and you're bringing over information that you know a website publisher has behind a paywall and would prefer you not disseminate - I think where that lands morally is pretty clear. But people like free stuff. 

bronxblue

March 1st, 2015 at 5:07 PM ^

The counter is that the OP didn't know this information until someone, on a pay site, posted it.  Someone who had to put in the effort, cultivate the sources, etc. in order to get it.  

Yes, it is information and he is, I guess, free to share it, but this gets to the whole "information is free" argument that leads to clickbait sites that basically steal content from other places and then regurgitates it without passing along that traffic/income to the original holder.  Or as I like to call it, Bleacher Report.

justingoblue

March 1st, 2015 at 5:38 PM ^

I think I'm missing something in your two posts here. Your last post encouraged someone like the OP to link to a site that passed off info as their own and then you point that out as the problem in your second paragraph here.

The two most important parts of Brian's policy (and the poster saying his policy is not having any moderation is dead wrong, premium info gets the mod edit treatment probably ten times more than an average post) are a) linking to the site and b) leaving value in the original site's reporting.

I don't subscribe to any of the pay sites so I can't comment on how much more info there is in the linked article, but from what I can see the OP followed MGoBlog's policy to the letter.

bronxblue

March 1st, 2015 at 6:16 PM ^

I agree the OP followed the rules of MGoBlog; my issue was with the poster who said he should have posted more information.

My point about linking to another site is that at least in that context, the person who generated the paywall information has someone he/she can reach out to regarding the release of information that was previously behind a paywall.  It's why (I suspect) Brian has a policy of limited "gist-ing"; if someone had an issue they could contact him.  But an anonymous person on this site posting paywall information via massive copy-and-paste jobs exposes Brian but without any real means to stop the original user beyond a banning.

Honestly, I don't pay for any of that insider stuff because I don't care; being first in line to learn about something that isn't immediately relevant isn't a driving force for me.  For others, having that access (or at least the perception of it) is.  But my background in IP law as well as software development makes me a little sensitive to the issues surrounding content distribution.

freejs

March 1st, 2015 at 6:55 PM ^

Yes, and I think I land on the side of this site perhaps fudging a bit too much on that question. 

Less really hewing to that principle, a little more what you see in this from Brian's "meta-premium information policy": "So what's the policy around here? Hell if I know, really." 

Would you explain, as well, what Brian meant by: "I think it's actually worse for us legally to pull certain threads for counterintuitive DMCA reasons." 

I didn't mean to suggest there was no moderation, but it sure sounds like a statement that an excess of moderator's discretion can lose you the Harbor - a key part of the DMCA Harbor is plausible deniability or just realistic deniability - you either don't moderate at all, or you make it clear that you can't catch everything, at least immediately. 



If everything had to pass, for example, through your vetting process before getting posted, iirc that would boot you outside of the safe harbor. 

But perhaps I misunderstood what was being said. Can you clarify the above for me?