Plop in the Ocean

Experts Exchange, Google, AllFAQ.org and misappropriation of copyright.

2011-01-19T21:50:45Z

Opinion Piece

I was googling (as a verb) and came across a rather peculiar message at the bottom of Google's search results:

In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.

Interesting - never saw that before!

Following the link to Chilling Effects shows a copy of the complaint which has some interesting text in it.

Experts-Exchange makes a detailed itemisation of their registered Copyrights, none of which I find objectionable, however, the complaint then goes on to list several issues against the Defendant, the first and most egregious of which is:

a direct "copy and paste job" lifting the content of Plaintiff's question and answer forums and inserting them onto AllFAQ's website. AllFAQ's question and "Solutions" are verbatim to Experts-Exchange's questions and "Accepted Solutions;"

From this Experts Exchange is accusing allfaq.org of Copyright infringement against Experts Exchange owned Copyright.

At first glance, this might seem fully justified - but look at what they are claiming copyright on. Experts Exchange are assuming copyright ownership of content that you, and I, and all their users create by asking and answering questions on their web site.

I looked at Experts Exchange's Terms of Use and could not find any agreement that users were assigning their rights and copyrights to Experts Exchange. The relevant paragraph is:

"5. Content License

EXPERTS EXCHANGE enables Members to post problems or questions, proposed solutions or answers, information, comments and other content ("Your Content") to its Site. When you post Your Content to the Site, you understand and agree that Your Content can be viewed and used by other Members who visit the Site with or without attribution.

You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to Your Content and that use of Your Content by EXPERTS EXCHANGE and its affiliates will not infringe upon or violate the rights of any third party. Before you use EXPERTS EXCHANGE Services to post any information or content that is protected by intellectual property laws, you shall have acquired the legal right to do so from the owner or authorized licensee of such information or content.

By registering with EXPERTS EXCHANGE and posting Your Content on the Site, you hereby: (i) grant EXPERTS EXCHANGE a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, transferable, fully sub-licensable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, distribute, display, reproduce, perform, modify, adapt, publish, translate and create derivative works from Your Content in any form, media or technology, whether now-known or hereafter developed; (ii) grant EXPERTS EXCHANGE and its affiliates and sub-licensees the right to use the Member Name that you submit with Your Content for purposes of attribution; (iii) authorize EXPERTS EXCHANGE to assert and prosecute claims against any third-party making any unauthorized use of Your Content, including any use that violates this User Agreement ("Third-Party Claims"); and (iv) appoint EXPERTS EXCHANGE as your attorney-in-fact for the purpose of asserting and prosecuting Third-Party Claims. If you do not wish to have Your Content attributed to you, then you must notify EXPERTS EXCHANGE at customer_service@experts-exchange.com.

Experts Exchange acknowledges that the copyright belongs to the author as "Your Content" and that by posting you are granting them extensive licenses to use that content. You are not assigning your copyright to Experts Exchange.

Now I am glad that their ToU does not attempt to wrest copyright ownership from its rightful owner, that is right and proper.

allfaq.org is demonstrably guilty of screen-scraping the Experts Exchange web site and I do not condone those actions at all. However, looking at what they copied - it was the Title, Question and Accepted Solution text - the copyright of 100% of that is with the original authors, and not Experts Exchange.

Thus, in my opinion, this complaint against allfaq.org is without merit and should be dismissed.

It would also appear that Experts Exchange has also abused the provisions of the DMCA in forcing Google to remove the content. Google should restore the links.

And finally, Experts Exchange should implement some technical measures to prevent automated scraping. Find better ways to improve your search ranking, and if your competition beats you don't ask your own members how to do better SEO; be told by them that you have no Copyright Claims on the content; and then proceed to file DMCA take down notices when you know you have no (copy)right.

The O2 Joggler - A first hack.

2010-04-14T22:06:47Z

If you were not aware - O2 last week reduced the price of the O2 Joggler from ~~£149.99~~ to ~~£99.99~~ to £49.99. Nothing remarkable in price reductions, however what is remarkable is what you actually get for your money.

The O2 Joggler is a silent 7" touchscreen device with Intel Atom Z520 running at 1.3Ghz, 512Mb ram, 1GB internal flash storage with additional storage available via an external USB port. What makes the device really exciting is that it also has a 1GB ethernet (Realtec 8168) and Wifi.

Looking at that - I know you're all thinking "linux box" - but conveniently, the default operating system on it is based on Ubuntu 8.04 and busybox, The frontend is a custom flash driven UI developed by OpenPeak (makers of the Jogger which is rebadged by O2).

There are plenty of clever individuals over at http://hackthejoggler.freeforums.org/and in the #mer channel on freenode who are working to allow the Joggler to run other Operating Systems such as Android, Ubuntu Netbook Edition, MID, even Windows and OSX.

However, the standard OS supplied is also pretty powerful and allows significant customisation. You can enable telnet just by turning it on with a custom USB stick plugged in. To do some of the things I'll be describing here you will need to have started with that.

Once you can telnet in, the world opens up and you can do lots of things that you would expect* to be able to do in a linux system. (* except run a web browser.... at this time - we don't have web access with the stock OS due to the custom flash GUI interface.)

Lets install some useful utilities, how about perl, terminfo, irc clients, bit torrent, rsync, ssh/scp ? Yes, I know what you're thinking - overnight silent downloads - no need to leave PC on... nice...

I've built several of these utilities with installation instructions and uploaded them over here:
http://pgregg.com/projects/joggler/

Feel free to download, examine, install etc. Read the README on the download page - it explains how to do it. Most of the packs include an install.sh script that will provide an installation safety net - it won't overwrite existing files or libraries.

Usual disclaimers apply - you try these applications at your own risk. I accept no responsibility if you manage to brick, fry or otherwise trash your joggler.

Comments, suggestions for other applications are always welcome.

Update: Thanks to NP - seems I was a little too brutal with the library stripping to keep the download sizes small and I missed some required libraries (that I mistakenly thought were in the standard Joggler distro). I have rebuilt the following packages as they were missing some libs: rtorrent, rsync, sudo,ssh
The screen package has been rebuilt too to add one final tweak (to the installer script) so it can be used by non-root users - the only difference you need to do is run the command: chmod 666 /dev/ptmp /dev/tty

Is BT still collecting usage data?

2010-03-31T07:30:00Z

After the recent scandal over BT using Phorm (see here and here) is it still possible that BT is still covertly collecting data profiling its user's internet usage?

I have, as part of my home BT Total Broadband package, a HUAWEI Mobile Connect 3G Modem. This is a USB dongle that provides internet service. I rarely use it, but because of the storms last night my internet connection has been very unstable, therefore I plugged it in today.

When I started the "BT Connection Manager" software, it informed me that there was an update to the service and would I like to download it? Yes, ok, and a couple of minutes later it began to install itself. Then popped up the obligatory EULA which contained the paragraphs:

"Installation of this Software will automatically apply a unique identifier to the Software, this identifying feature will only be used in accordance with the BT privacy policy which can be found at www.bt.com.

This software automatically collects session and client parameter Information for all connections made via this Software. This information is automatically transmitted to BT at the start of each session where Internet access is available. This session information will only be used in accordance with the BT privacy policy which can be found at www.bt.com."

BTConnectionManagerEULA.txt

I also note that the software package uses the Open Source packages libCurl, openssl and sqlite. Combined they enable the package to record "session and client parameter Information for all connections" in the database (sqlite) and to encrypt (openssl) and transmit the data via a web request (libcurl) back to BT.

At this point I am unable to confirm if such a transmission is taking place as I declined the EULA, but would welcome feedback or comments from others that are able to investigate this more fully.

Update: Even though I clicked "Cancel" to reject the EULA - it did update the application and actually started it up before I exited the installer. Guess I have this privacy invading feature now.

Borland, Farewell my sweet.

2009-05-06T14:31:36Z

Today, May 6 2009, marks the day that Borland, that once great master of all software development has finally recognised there was no other recourse but to up and sell itself off in order to survive.

Back when I was a teenager, in the early 80s and personal computing was coming to the fore - I, and many others, aspired to work for that great company Borland. It was the pinnacle of language development and development tools and we wanted to work there. However, based in Ireland it was never to be.

Also, once upon a time I happened to be working for a very promising young company with a fantastic product line called Segue Software, based in Boston, MA. Segue also had its troubles but a new CEO saw its fortunes turn and it was climbing to success. This success was noticed by the aforementioned Borland as it tried to re-invent itself as an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) company. The same day it was announced that Borland was acquiring Segue, it also announced it was selling its developer tools division (that's Delphi, JBuilder, and later Delphi for PHP, 3rd Rail line of products).

This was such a bitter-sweet time for many. I was overjoyed that I was going to work for Borland (childhood dream) - it didn't matter I wasn't going to work with the developer tools, working for "Borland" would just be cool. Sadness also because our little 200-man company was being consumed by a 1200-man behemoth (relatively) and no-matter which way you looked at it, people were going to lose their jobs. Pretty much the entire US East Coast staff (Segue Head Office) lost their jobs and the office was closed. Product development labs and Technical Support survived, simply by virtue that it was the product and product skills that were purchased, not the G&A functions - they could go.

I 'lived the dream' for the next 2.5 years in the IT department. Despite being remote, I loved working with the rest of the Borland teams as I was intimately involved in the merging/migration of Segue's systems into Borland's. I also had the pleasure of working with several departments to architect and deploy several new platforms (such as product downloads and licensing via Intraware, and the companies Salesforce.com, SFDC, deployment). I'll treasure the time I spent at Borland.

Of course there were several WTF moments. Most significantly, for me, was the company "hanging its hat" on BMS (Business Management Solutions) which ultimately proved to be a hatstand made of jello. Very few, outside of management and that product team, believed in it. Another significant WTF for Borland was, If you plan to be the Application LIFECYCLE Management company - why divest yourself (for a paltry $27m) of two of the world's major AppDev toolsets (Delphi and JBuilder). You've just removed the feeder market and upsell opportunity into your ALM business. Finally, and internal WTF to get off my chest, on what planet does the IT department belong as a subdivision of the HR department?

Borland will live on in the hearts of many of us who knew what she used to be. I think I left Borland a better place than I found it (as long as you don't look at the stock price ;), and I made some good friends. At the end of the day, there isn't much more you can ask from your tenure.
It is sad that today if you ask a typical Software Engineer if they know who Borland is, they'll respond "Who?" which typifies the company's slide into obscurity.

I wish the best of luck to my former colleagues, who I'm sure, will be wondering what is to happen next. I also hope that the new owners, Micro Focus International (who?), have good fortune with their ALM drive. Perhaps the Borland name might live on as a brand for a suite of ALM products - who knows what they'll do.

In the immortal words of Dr. Seuss "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."