Disappointing: DMCA Being Used To Make Feynman Lectures On Physics Less Accessible
from the too-bad dept
I'm going to assume that many of you are familiar with Richard Feynman. If you're not, please get out from under the rock you've been living under and go learn something. While he's probably most well-known in the public for his (not always 100% truthful) collection of stories, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, folks of a geekier persuasion are much more aware of his contributions to science and, in particular, the famed Feynman Lectures on Physics. It took way too many years to get those lectures online after (you guessed it) a fight over copyrights. However, online the lectures went and now it appears that publisher Perseus is unfortunately using the DMCA to block attempts to make the works accessible via Kindle or EPUB formats.Eric Hellman posted the story at the link above, with this being the key part:
Vikram Verma, a software developer in Singapore, wanted to be able to read the lectures on his kindle. Although PDF versions can be purchased at $40 per volume, no versions are yet available in Kindle or EPUB formats. Since the digital format used by kindle is just a simplified version of html, the transformation of web pages to an ebook file is purely mechanical. So Verma proceeded to write a script to do the mechanical transformation – he accomplished the transformation in only 136 lines of ruby code, and published the script as a repository on Github.You can see the DMCA here as well as the counternotice, which notes that the software doesn't contain any copyrighted materials (though there's some confusion over who owns the copyright, Caltech or Perseus). Hellman, while admitting he's not a lawyer, further suggests the DMCA takedown is invalid because it's just code... but then further notes that the Feynman Lectures website has put in some code to block the script -- and that Verma has coded around this:
Despite the fact that nothing remotely belonging to Perseus or Caltech had been published in Verma's repository, it seems that Perseus and/or Caltech was not happy that people could use Verma's code to easily make ebook files from the website. So they hauled out the favorite weapon of copyright trolls everywhere: a DMCA takedown.
In the meantime, the Feynman Lectures website has taken some steps to break Verma's script. For example, instead of a link to http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_28.html (my favorite chapter), the table of contents now has a link to javascript:Goto(2,18). This will take about 10 minutes for Verma to work around. In addition, the website now has a robot exclusion (except for Googlebot).Of course, that introduces a new (and unfortunate) problem. As problematic as it is, the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, 17 USC 1201 makes it against the law to get around any "technological measure" no matter how stupid or weak, and thus the effort by the website to block it may introduce a new problem, though likely different than what Perseus initially claimed in its takedown.
Making things even more convoluted, the editor of the Feynman Lectures, Michael Gottlieb, jumped into the fray and made things even more confusing and misleading:
The online edition of The Feynman Lectures Website posted at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu and www.feynmanlectures.info is free-to-read online. However, it is under copyright. The copyright notice can be found on every page: it is in the footer that your script strips out! The online edition of FLP can not be downloaded, copied or transferred for any purpose (other than reading online) without the written consent of the copyright holders (The California Institute of Technology, Michael A. Gottlieb, and Rudolf Pfeiffer), or their licensees (Basic Books). Every one of you is violating my copyright by running the flp.mobi script. Furthermore Github is committing contributory infringement by hosting your activities on their website. A lot of hard work and money and time went into making the online edition of FLP. It is a gift to the world - one that I personally put a great deal of effort into, and I feel you are abusing it. We posted it to benefit the many bright young people around the world who previously had no access to FLP for economic or other reasons. It isn't there to provide a source of personal copies for a bunch of programmers who can easily afford to buy the books and ebooks!! Let me tell you something: Rudi Pfeiffer and I, who have worked on FLP as unpaid volunteers for about a decade, make no money from the sale of the printed books. We earn something only on the electronic editions (though, of course, not the HTML edition you are raping, to which we give anyone access for free!), and we are planning to make MOBI editions of FLP - we are working on one right now. By publishing the flp.mobi script you are essentially taking bread out of my mouth and Rudi's, a retired guy, and a schoolteacher. Proud of yourselves? That's all I have to say personally. Github has received DMCA takedown notices and if this script doesn't come down pretty soon they (and very possibly you) might be hearing from some lawyers. As of Monday, this matter is in the hands of Perseus's Domestic Rights Department and Caltech's Office of The General Counsel.This is icky on multiple levels. First of all, Gottlieb is engaging in slight copyfraud in overclaiming what his copyright enables him to block. Further it is not necessarily the case that anyone, let alone "everyone" is "violating [Gottlieb's] copyright" merely by running the script. There are plenty of legitimate reasons why running that script may be perfectly legitimate, and legal cases that have suggested place and time shifting content is a legal fair use would certainly come into play here. Furthermore, the argument that Github is somehow contributorily liable is highly questionable, and Gottlieb really ought to talk to a copyright lawyer before making such a leap.
Michael A. Gottlieb
Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics New Millennium Edition
www.feynmanlectures.info
www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu
But from there to shift into how important it is to make the work available to the world... just seems strange. If that's the case, why is he freaking out so much?
Either way, the whole situation seems unfortunate, but once again, that's what you get with our crazy copyright law and the DMCA takedown process.
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, physics, richard feynman
Reader Comments
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huh?
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Its SCIENCE!!!
Real weinners they are!
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________________________
Why doesn't Gottlieb go and do something productive rather than trying to position himself between learners and the actual teacher and mooch off being that barrier?
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Get some wooden shoes so you can throw them.
"Go Away Or I Will Replace You With A Very Small Shell Script"
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A real gift doesn't have so many strings attached.
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Michael A. Gottlieb
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Re:
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THese must be the coffee table editions of PDF!
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Re:
This is a war on efficiency, which proves this isn't a gift. It's a limited trial designed to get in the door, then be just annoying enough that people will pay to upgrade.
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you pretty much hit the nail on the head
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Re: you pretty much hit the nail on the head
you *are* an idiot...
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Raping? RAPING?!?
Michael A. Gottlieb, you are a miscreant and a fool for misusing the DMCA - but worse - you are an absolute asshat for trivializing rape.
Jackhole.
Makes me wanna distribute EPUB / MOBI versions now.
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Re:
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Re: Rape has many meanings
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Feynman's Lectures
FWIW, I did purchase around 2000 both of Feynman's "Six Easy Pieces" and "Six Not So Easy Pieces" in book/CD format. A great way to spend a bit of time driving to work (with the audio version at least)!
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Re: Feynman's Lectures
Perhaps Mr Gottlieb could rent you some sunlight to read the lectures he feels entitled to sell to you and give away to others.
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WWFD?
First, he would bitchslap this asshat Michael Gottlieb for having the unspeakable gall to stand in the way of knowledge, education and science. Why don't you try to lock up Einstein and da Vinci, Newton and Hawking while you're at it?
Second, he would seed the entire collection (in HTML and PDF and EPUB and MOBI formats) in a torrent.
Third, he'd fold his arms in quiet satisfaction and silently dare any onlooker to do something about it.
Since Feynman isn't here, it appears that someone must do this for him.
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How did Feynman's copyrights fall into the hands of Gottlieb and Pfeiffer?
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A Gift To The World?
A gift to the world so long as you hold the gift while we read it? A gift is something GIVEN, not something loaned. If this is a true gift, package the sucker up DRM-free and let us just download it. Anything else is nothing less than an indian-giver control-freak.
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Re: A Gift To The World?
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Re:
Are you 5 years old? "I'll take my ball and go home unless you play with it THE WAY THAT I SAY".
The actual cost of defending the copyright is zero, because it's a complete unnecessary exercise in self-righteousness and arrogance, performed solely to satiate your outrageous sense of entitlement and your bloated ego.
Feynman does not belong to you. Feynman does not belong to Perseus. Feynman does not belong to Caltech. None of you are worthy of that privilege, as your own words clearly demonstrate. You are little men with little minds, focused on your own self-importance instead of making sure the fruit of Feynman's genius and hard work is available to everyone.
Maybe you should have paid better attention to Feynman and tried to understand his passion for teaching. I did. And I know that he would never sanction this nonsense: if he was here in 2014 observing what you'd done, he'd be the first to pirate his own work.
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Re: Re:
this guy reeks of entitlement and the arrogance of ownership of SOMEONE ELSE'S works, who would admire *what* he was doing to his works, but NOT *HOW* he is doing it...
i'm hating on the guy already, and if i can find a way to make his life more miserable, i'll take the opportunity...
'quality control' my ass, it is ALL about control, period...
another gatekeeper who is doing this ALL for the childrens... *snort*
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Re:
Should they have asked you before throwing something like that out? Yeah, probably so, however, the fact that they bothered to go through the trouble to throw it together indicates a strong interest in the subject matter, so I'd say they likely would have been willing to listen and work with you had you approached them with a reasonable offer to work together on it, rather than just trying to get it pulled.
Filing what for all intents appears to be a bogus DMCA claim(unless you're going to claim that you have the rights to the script in question, then it would appear you lack the valid claim needed to file to have it taken down) first just indicates a willingness, and eagerness, to go legal, rather than take a more measured approach.
Now, as to the last point, while your concern there is certainly valid, again, you almost certainly would have been better off getting in contact with the developer of the script, explaining your issues regarding quality and the worry about it possibly being pulled, and asked them to work with you, or at least explain your concerns and ask them to stop, rather than going legal so quickly.
People and companies these days seem to bring out the lawyers way too quickly, when often a more measured, reasonable and personal discussion would be far more productive, both in getting things done, and on the PR front.
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Re:
So anyone who doesn't do things your way gets the law thrown at them?
Best is the enemy of good enough.
So because they didn't act like adults and ask you for permission, you threw the law at them? Sounds more like you want them to act like children with you being the authoritarian parent. Since you espouse being a responsible adult, why didn't you politely contact them and explain your desires for the conversion effort and see whether you all could work together, or whether it made more sense for you each to try your own approaches and see what end-users prefer?
That's an easy one: don't bring legal action against people writing the script. No legal costs. This isn't a trademark issue where one has to defend it or lose it.
But somehow if you make and release a free version for portable use it won't run into these problems?
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Reverse course!!
My, how quickly the party line shifts when Ms. Streisand shows up. What happened to all the raping? Now we're supposed to believe that you stooped to legal threats primarily over "quality control"?
A responsible adult, who happens to be a much more talented programmer than the authors of flp.mobi, wrote to me and asked permission if he could make an ePub from our HTML. I told him about the various attempts to make FLP ePubs, why they had failed thus far, and invited him to do better. And he has!! So now he is working with us. If we publish his work he'll, of course, be paid for it. That's what you get for asking :-).
Oh wait, now you're back to "Everyone has to pay us!"
Ok, I think your true motivation is coming through clearly now.
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Re:
That's just it fella, you didn't write that script so you don't get to tell the writer where they can and can't publish it. Whether or not you like/approve of what it does is irrelevant, it's not yours. Now, if you want to try to track down someone using it on the site and hit them for going around you're blocks that's your prerogative as the copyright holder of the material the script downloads. Since you do not own a copyright on the script, sending them a DMCA takedown notice on the script itself is illegal.
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Who the HECK are Gottlieb and Pfeiffer, anyway?
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_90.html
and John Preskill's 9/21/13 Quantum Frontiers blog posting, "Free Feynman"
http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/09/21/free-feynman/ .
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Re: Who the HECK are Gottlieb and Pfeiffer, anyway?
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Re: Re: Who the HECK are Gottlieb and Pfeiffer, anyway?
are those idiots going to maintain that feynman would have wanted it done THEIR way, INSTEAD OF SETTING THAT INFORMATION FREE ? ? ? bullshit...
SO WHAT someone makes a 'pirate copy' that has errors, etc, SO FUCKING WHAT: THEN they will 'reject' that pirate copy and go to your super-high quality version, won't they ? ? ?
EXCEPT THEY WON'T, because the 'low' quality will be GOOD ENOUGH for 99% of the people 99% of the time...
YOU GUYS ARE THE ROADBLOCKS, NOT THE FACILITATORS...
no, these kreeps got their talons in something far greater than themselves, and are riding those dead coattails as THEIR EXCLUSIVE JOB, not anyone else's...
...the proof is the over-reaching and immediate repressive instincts... dicks
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flp.mobi is coming down
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Re: flp.mobi is coming down
It appears to be time to liberate Feynman's work, and fuck Caltech, fuck Perseus, and especially fuck Gottlieb.
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Re: flp.mobi is coming down
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Re: flp.mobi is coming down
#! /bin/bash
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_toc.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc_sc.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_toc_sc.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc_sc.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/buy.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_copyright.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_copyright.html"
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_copyright.html"
for i in {01..52}; do
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_""$i"".html"
done
for i in {01..42}; do
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_""$i"".html"
done
for i in {01..22}; do
wget --limit-rate=1000k -nc --wait=5 -e robots=off -p -U Mozilla "http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_""$i"".html"
done
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Gottlieb the Terrible
_______________________
You sound like a real jerk, which is funny since you are depending on folk's good will to feed you.
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bill gates
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copyright resurrection
That said, I think Caltech can generate tremendous goodwill by being as liberal as possible with their licensing terms.
IANAL, but a functioning brain is all that's required.
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Unfortunate
Mr. Gottlieb has clearly failed to recognize pure opportunity due to a misguided sense of ownership entitlement to works that are not his own. A far, far too common stance by those that would believe that the rent is more valuable than the work. Greed and self-interest is what that is and this while hiding behind the espoused virtues of protecting the creators, protecting the creations and protecting an income unearned.
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^ Nerds are dicks.
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Got any other feet you wanna shoot?
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disgusting comments
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Re: disgusting comments
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Re: disgusting comments
You're going to have to take this tired old argument to someplace where people are as tired and old as you are.
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Re: disgusting comments
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Just wget and cut to compile a list of URL's for "images" and "Pages"
#!/bin/bash
while read line
do
while read image
do
wget -rmkEpnp -U Mozilla/5.0 --referer $line $image
done < images
done < pages
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