Thomson Reuters Sues George Mason University For Making Its Software Output More Useful
from the how-dare-they! dept
A bunch of folks have been submitting the news that financial information giant Thomson Reuters is suing George Mason University for the high crime of releasing some software that can convert the output of Thomson Reuters own EndNote software into a more open format. EndNote is software for creating bibliographies, from a variety of different databases. The George Mason software, Zotero, does the same thing -- but also will take documents saved in EndNote's proprietary format and save it in its own open format. In normal times, under normal laws, this shouldn't be a problem. Reverse engineering is considered a perfectly legitimate practice in most cases -- and, in fact, is considered an important part of the competitive market in driving innovation. But, thanks to the DMCA, when it comes to software, this type of behavior can be blocked within a license agreement. This is one of the worst parts of the DMCA, in that it's clearly not about protecting copyrighted material, but about preventing any sort of competition in the market place.If Thomson Reuters execs actually thought about this, they would realize that Zotero actually makes EndNote more valuable by making the output more valuable. As long as Thomson Reuters is willing to keep adding more and better features, then it should have nothing to worry about from Zotero, who only enhances the value of EndNote's output. Instead, Thomson Reuters is using the old claim of felony interference with a business model to shut down a university-produced open competitor. Thomson Reuters' claims make this quite clear, in saying that Zotero is "destroying the EndNote customer base." Back here, in the real world, most people call that competition and think it's a good thing, rather than against the law.
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Filed Under: bibliography, closed, copyright, dmca, license, open, software
Companies: george mason university, thomson reuters
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Never mind that this is a silly, contrived, anti-virtue and a loathsome restraint of trade business practice.
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Re:
Only if you have a very limited view of the value. It actually makes the software MORE valuable by providing more ways that the output can be used, making it more useful and, yes, more valuable.
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Hilarious
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"...Thomson's 3,500 plus proprietary .ens style files within the EndNote Software..."
What is an ".ens style file"?
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Agh!! Those bloody idiots!
Obviously, the ability to exchange libraries between both programs is of huge value and makes for a great synergy, but now, those morons at Thomson are screwing all up in a masterstroke of stupidity! >_
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Re: Agh!! Those bloody idiots! Part 2
Not that I could afford their overpriced software anyway (I use either a institutional licence or a *cough cough* pirate copy), but now I will gladly dump their stupid software once Zotero's Word integration gets a bit more polished, hopefully before I have to write up my thesis.
Congratulations on destroying your own customer base, morons!
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Re: Re: Agh!! Those bloody idiots! Corollary
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Corrections
The lawsuit is currently about violating the site licensing agreement.
Thomson Reuters alleges (incorrectly) that Zotero reverse engineered and/or decompiled EndNote. They (correctly) point out that one version of Zotero (the feature has since been disabled) could process EndNote's undocumented style files. These files have a .ens extension and instruct EndNote how to format a citation (so there would be one .ens file for the Chicago style, one for the APA style, one for how to cite articles if you are writing an article for Nature, etc.) They (incorrectly) allege that Zotero converts these files into the open CSL format. They (incorrectly) allege that Zotero distributes CSL files that were created in this way. Finally, they object to the "EndNote" trademark being used to describe how this is done.
This is a nuisance suit that is intended to spread FUD.
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Yes, we do in fact, have a partnership with Thomson (no p, btw). But why should that stop us from providing our analysis? Wouldn't you think less of us for changing our analysis based on who we work with?
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Ah. Quite interesting to say the less. So I wonder how it would work if a mod jumped in, took a public item to a private Insight Community (revenue-based) case. How would that would work? May be interesting for some. Costly for others.
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I have no idea what that even means.
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I dare say Thomson might; the kind of outfit that prefers dirty tricks and sabotage to improving their product when faced with competitors -ie just about bloody well everybody these days- tends to cut up very stroppy when called on it.
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That's their decision. But I assume that as long as we keep helping them make money, they'll keep the partnership in place.
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You keep making the same mistake
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Re: You keep making the same mistake
Reverse engineering is legal. So... what's the problem?
This is very much an attempt to play on the sympathy vote that their business model can't stand up to competition. I believe the original post was accurate.
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Re: Re: You keep making the same mistake
And calling the act of demonstrating damages "playing on the sympathy vote" is plain silly. If you want to be awarded an injunction and damages in a civil case you have to show damages. It's not a "play" on anything, showing damages is the meat of a civil case.
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Re: Re: You keep making the same mistake
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Re: Re: Re: You keep making the same mistake
It is neither clear that the professors of a University are bound to site agreements made by the University nor that what the Zotero team did even violates the license agreement (as they did NOT decompile or reverse engineer the EndNote software--they merely figured out how the undocumented style files work).
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Update
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