KJ Costello no longer visiting?
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.
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.
One, it's disrespectful to people you should treat as colleagues. Two, the site gets page views for people bringing over proprietary information and is, essentially, reselling it as page views.
It's gross, but go ahead and TP it with your "everybody steals" ethics.
That his picks may also have zero value, and are essentially just his opinion.
I'd actually think about signing up if I could gamble legally online and if I could get past the hang up that - personally - I still don't have a good handle on betting mma events. Only sport I've ever lost money gambling on.
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.
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.
I always thought the law was with you on this. I could be wrong though, but I thought after you legally puchase something like that, you can do whatever you want with it.
Believe it or not, there are laws against even giving your movie away, you can see them at the end of credits, to prevent piracy
stealing deprives the owner of the original. copying does not.
equating copying with stealing has been a great PR success for the entertainment industry, but the comparison is not really valid.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
a lot of the info from this site and the boards come from premium sites, yet you still choose to read? Seems like your planned ignorance is working quite well for yourself...
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.
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.
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.
facts and recommendations/opinions.
There's a distinction.
I'm glad you recognize the logical outcome of value destruction being content destruction.
so, please, tell me whatever other value exists for the guy running the site that provides mma picks and betting strategies for a premium subscription fee?
Would anyone pay him a cent for his site if his opinions and recommendations were free?
I don't think any of that has any bearing on the question of should there still be some things that are published on the internet that can have recognized monetary value other than long form content.
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.
that you would prefer a world where the information from rivals,scout, and 24/7 does not exist to a world where this "information" (again, these are more informed opinions than facts) does exist because it is cultivated through their efforts? Please answer honestly.
but I really don't think that's true for the vast majority of people who read this site and I know it's not true for the very vast majority of people who pay for the pay sites.
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.
well played
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.
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?
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.
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.
is a perfect analogy, as is TV that isn't broadcast. Cable, satellite, and streamed TV are all perfect analogies as is XM radio. All of them are pay per view (information) sources. How are any of them fundementally different than an internet paywalled site?
There's a copyright on content, but not on news. It all gets out anyway. I'm just glad we have MGoBlog as a "one stop shop" for Michigan news.
this is explicitly not a copyright issue. To be clear.
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.
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.
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.
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?