I hate mice, officially.... and fair use online... :: The Life of the Traegorn

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I hate mice, officially.... and fair use online...
Posted Mar 22, 2004 - 19:06:31

Well, it's official: My parent's house now has mice. We think we figured out how they got in... now we just need to find a way to get them out.

Back in the day, when Andy was a younger cat, we never had this problem. But, as he's gotten older, and frankly has stopped caring about mice, the problem of mice has surfaced...

Geh.

Today we take a look at various legal tangles with libel and fair use online.

Let's start out with the sad tale of Mark Maughan. Mr. Maughan, a certified accountant, decided to go sue Google.com for libel because he didn't like the way a search on his name turned out. I don't get it... I mean, Google results are just samples from webpages, showing the query in partial context. This isn't rocket science, kids. If a website is making libelous statements, go after the website saying it - not the search engine that indexes it. It's like suing a map maker because you don't like the names of the streets.

In any case, the Associated Press wrote up a whole article on this fiasco, so you can read it for yourself.

In other legal internet news, the New York Times wrote an interesting article on domain names, which is definitely worth a read. They'll require you to register (which is free), but frankly - if you're not reading the New York Times online already, I'm very disappointed in you.

Finally, to finish off with some "What the hell is wrong with the world..." news, I'll link to an interesting article from Linux Today. Apparently, an online publisher has disallowed linking from Linux Today to their site. Information Week will let anyone BUT Linux Today link to their stories... which I really don't understand. From what I've learned, over the years, the appropriate way to cite a source online, in part at least, is to link to them.

Since Linux Today wants to keep things on the up and up, they have been linking to their references... well, apparently Information Week doesn't want to be cited properly? I don't get it. Linux Today can reference and use them as a source according to the rules of Fair Use, so I don't see what the whole linking deal is about.

Ah well. That's it for today. I smell dinner, and I think I'm going to eat some. Mmmmm... lasagna...
- Traegorn