I understand that you think I haven't read and digested the information I've read - or that I can form an opinion on what I've read. However, I disagree with that supposition. If I have a brain (God I hope I do otherwise all my clients are in deep doo doo and so are the colleges that issued my degrees ) and I use it to come up with an independent thought that disagrees with your independent thought - you attack. You've done it over and over and over again. I've said the exact same thing as brizzie (different words, same meaning) - and you've praised him and derided me. I've said the exact same thing (different words, same meaning) as annie - and you've praised her and derided me. You may not realize what you're doing (at least I hope you don't) - but when my name appears next to a post, your brain turns off. Ask them if you doubt what I'm saying. Annie's said it a few times. I really didn't like the psychology class that I had to take at my liberal arts college - I'm not one for pussy footing around and making nice-nice talk. I like to get straight to the point instead and hope that I don't skip too many points. It's my writing style - as opposed to brizzie and annie, who can post long and eloquently. Just because I post my formed opinion and don't elaborate each step I took to get to that opinion, doesn't mean I didn't take those steps. I rarely post here - or anywhere - without doing background work to formulate my opinions. Would you like me to begin sharing some of the sites I visit while making my decisions? Would that help you to understand that my opinion differs from yours - and not because of something that I read in one place?
No, it's not your writing style. It's that I don't see informed opinions. I see knee-jerk defense of the party line, repetitive recitals of what someone else has told you or posted.
Let's play the game that usually is played by DMOZ editors. In what court, American, Canadian, French,....? If it is in USA then do you mean in state of California, Texas,.... or do you mean federal court? and so on and so on. Why all the editors avoid to discuss this question? Is it because they know that there is nothing to say and copyright laws clearly does not support their claims? However, the evidence in form of your previous postings support that supposition. That is a big IF and since the rest of your reasoning is built on a false assumption then it is also untrue. And after all those research and work, you always draw the conclusion that what ever DMOZ official policy is or orlady says, must be true. Why bother? Wouldn't be easier to always post, DMOZ policy and what ever orlady says is right. In reality, I don't think that there is anything wrong with your brain or intelligence, it is just your desperate desire for advancement in DMOZ that blinds you to any logic or reasoning.
Depends what you mean by "right". There is "right" as in what should be, and "right" as in this is the way it is. The former might make for a nice argument assuming you accept that others are entitled to hold different opinions without getting insulted for it; the latter is what is of relevance to anyone wanting to know how DMOZ actually operates and is of practical use. In this case there are only shades of opinion about the validity of the copyright AOL is claiming, no absolute right or wrong. On the other hand it is absolutely right to suppose that regardless of whether it would stand up in court AOL makes that claim. And it is pretty important to know that if you are thinking of challenging it. If imocr is promoted further (and she is an excellent editor who will no doubt be promoted further when the time is right), it will be on merit. Sycophancy, of which IMO she shows no signs, is, as far as I have seen over more than 3 years, more a bar to promotion than a qualification. It is possible to agree with an Admin, it has even happened to me from time to time. Sometimes opinions just happen to coincide purely by chance. On the other hand your continual attacks on good honest editors such as imocr are for what purpose? To enhance your standing amongst some posters here maybe? Ridiculing opinions that don't coincide with your own is a sign of the weakness of your own position - if it truly stood up on its own then it wouldn't be necessary to try and discredit alternative views through personal attack. And BTW, anyone who truly thought that the route to advancement was through agreeing with Admins without question would not be posting on a forum such as this with all the traps and twisted words.
Since her postings in 99.99% of cases are of the second type of "right" then don't you agree that her claim of visiting different web sites, doing research and trying to understand the arguments here doesn't make any sense? She can as well just cut & paste the official guideline, re-worded to best of her ability or as I suggested always post the same thing: "DMOZ and orlady are always right" .
Be fair, now, gworld. Military training isn't known for teaching people to be critical thinkers or to ask questions, is it?
The fact that you can't copyright some things, taken alone, does not mean that you can't copyright a work composed of many of those things. Beyond that, the descriptions of companies are created by people who assign the copyright to the ODP. Of course the whole completed product, FIXED whenever presented on the screen or distributed via feed, is copyrighted. Now, if you go and create your own directory, and start from scratch, it will cost you millions of dollars to duplicate. Perhaps that is why you want there to be no copyright protection? You do of course realize that you are arguing that nobody with a directory has copyright protection, right?
Did you read this thread? News flash- Many of DMOZ description are simply copy of the title and description of the web site listed, the editor who added the site to DMOZ has NO RIGHT to assign copyright to the ODP or anyone else for that matter. Directory structure is a modification of USENET directory structure, according to the same argument if AOL claim is valid then DMOZ is in infringement of USENET copyright.
I have said previously more than once that you can claim copyright for any original page content, like the DMOZ site titles and descriptions, assuming they aren't just taken from the webpage itself. You could also make a case for copyright of the specific collection of listings in a DMOZ category. That is a different matter than a generic category label. Yes, the WHOLE is greater than the sum of its parts. If you duplicate a page in its entirety, then of course you must give credit. That, however, does NOT mean that all the individual parts of that WHOLE are copyright. Again, look at my example of the color green. Obviously, you missed the entire point of this thread. Try reading it again from the start. If you need help with any of the big words, use the Google query define:word I am doing no such thing. Again, try actually reading the thread this time.
Two points: 1. Hard copy, real world, published directories are covered by copyright. And copyright is generally agreed to extend to works published on the internet. Upsetting DMOZ's copyright claims affects the copyright claims of all online directories. 2. This forum has numerous posts by people who claim their "directories" were ripped off and other people advising them to get the offending sites closed down for "copyright" violation.
They will run in to problem even when they don't copy the title directly from the web site thanks to DMOZ guideline. Do you remember the arguments about summer web site should be listed under her business name? What are they going to do, list her web site under her company name and then claim copyright on her company name?
See above. You can only copyright (1) the "whole" and (2) the original. The Yellow Pages can copyright (or trademark, or both) the name "Yellow Pages" and the content of their directory - they can't stop me from publishing a new directory using yellow paper, as long as I'm not trying to fool people into thinking that my directory is their directory. They also can't stop me from including in my new directory a category called "Psychologists and Psychological Associates" or "Physicians and Surgeons" or "Plumbers", etc., etc., etc., simply because they use that category name in their directory. That is a different issue, I believe. In many of those cases, the ones that I'm aware of, the issue was theft or failure to acknowledge the source of the script used to "power" the directory. That isn't at issue here.
Gworld, minstrel - guys, lmocr is one of the nicest people you will ever come across, and honest as the day is long. Not to say one of the best editors DMOZ has ever had. Personal attacks don't exactly add to the debate and if the reason is personal gratification of some kind, an intellectual superiority game, well that doesn't exactly add to the equation either. If you want to rip arguments apart that is one thing, attacking anyone personally is, IMO, unjustified and, more's the point, degrades any valid points you might actually have. Virtually all the editors who post here have and will post their own opinions regardless of official policy and sometimes they will disagree with official policy. Quite often they will agree with it though. Do you want a discussion or simply to humiliate editors?
No. As Grokodile stated, clearly and concisely: The fact that you can't copyright some things, taken alone, does not mean that you can't copyright a work composed of many of those things. AOL/Netscape's assertion of copyright protection for the Open Directory (including the right to distribute it and allow others to reproduce it if they give proper attribution) does not extend to the business names and trademarks included in the directory. Although I find it boring to repeat this (and others of you say you are nauseated by the repetition), I will yet again quote from the DMOZ license to illustrate this point:
Well both you and Grokodile are wrong, even if we forget that business name, short phrases,... can not be copyrighted, a derivative work can only have a copyright if you have permission of all ORIGINAL AUTHORS to include their work in your derivative work. For example I can not make a book including all Hemingway, Dickens books and then claim copyright on it. Take out all the category names that are common words or copied from USENET, take out all titles and description that are directly from listed web site, business name or through submission form with unidentified author and then look at what you are left with. It does not matter how many times you repeat DMOZ license, it is written by DMOZ which is a private company with no legal authority to make copyright laws. I prefer to rely on copyright laws according to government source as posted in the first post of this thread.
I can not speak for minstrel but as far as I am concerned, let's say that we agree to disagree. My opinion of her is not based on the fact that she disagrees with me, it is based on what I see as intellectual dishonesty. I don't think that my postings about her contribution in this forum has been personal attacks in anyway and more of realistic valuation of her "contribution". On the other hand, many of her postings has been personal attacks on me and the only difference is that while I do not whine about real personal attacks, she complains about imaginary one. If you need any more proof that this is indeed my honest and real position, you can look at my postings with ishfish. While I disagree with him on most things and from the opinion point of view, consider him many times to be an A*S, I usually praise him for his honesty and no BS style. I have no problem with opposite views or even stupid views, as long as it is accompanied with intellectual honesty.
Intellectual honesty? Gworld, you are an editor so assuming you actually edit you know this first statement is not true. Kinda makes the second one seem more than a bit hypocritical, don't you think?
Let's do a search in DMOZ with word CNN. http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=cnn Title in DMOZ: CNN.com---------->Title in the web site: CNN.com Title in DMOZ: CNN Food Central ---------->Title in the web site: CNN Food Central Resturants Title in DMOZ: Today on CNN ---------->Title in the web site: Today on CNN International Title in DMOZ: CNN - Europe---------->Title in RSS feed: CNN.com - Europe Title in DMOZ: CNN - Health---------->Title in the web site: CNN.com - Health Title in DMOZ: CNN - Black History Month---------->Title in the web site: CNN - Black History Month I wonder who are the geniuses who authored such an original work, DMOZ definitely deserve to have copyright on CNN web site, don't you think so?