<story><title>What does it feel like to be stupid? An anonymous Quora user explains.</title><url>http://garrysub.posterous.com/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid-an-anonym</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alanh</author><text>Meta:&lt;p&gt;This, to me, is a fundamental problem with the Posterous culture.  Here we have a post on a Posterous blog &lt;i&gt;made by a Posterous co-founder&lt;/i&gt; which copies, &lt;i&gt;in its entirety&lt;/i&gt; and with no significant commentary, a work published elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;It’s attributed with a link to the source — barely, in lowercased, tiny font, at the bottom. The headline is a link to the Posterous page, not the source (unlike Daring Fireball “linked list” items, for example).  How many people will actually follow the link?  Why is this Posterous blog entry #1 on HN when a permalink to the original source on Quora is readily available?&lt;p&gt;Let’s be clear.  This is not “fair use.”  It’s not &lt;i&gt;plagiarism,&lt;/i&gt; as Garry doesn’t claim he wrote the anecdote; but it’s a violation of copyright. It’s publishing without permission of the copyright holder.†&lt;p&gt;My first submission to Hacker News was an original item I posted to my own website.  It got quite a few reads — but a lot of people were re-tweeting a link to a full copy of it hosted on &lt;i&gt;someone else’s Posterous.&lt;/i&gt;  That user didn’t add much (A sentence expressing “me, too”).  I was conflicted: Glad people found my writing interesting enough to duplicate and share, but disappointed that they were reading it on someone else’s site for no good reason.&lt;p&gt;I see now that if the company’s own bloggers consider copyright a joke, if they believe posting other people’s articles verbatim is kosher, well, can we be surprised their users do, too?&lt;p&gt;(Postscript: This differs from Tumblr’s “re-blogging” in one important way: You only re-blog other Tumblr posts. “Re-blogging” is part of the Tumblr system. You expect it there if you post there. You don’t “lose” anything by it. I have no problem there.)&lt;p&gt;† I don’t know if Quora’s terms of service mean that consent is implied, but honestly, in this case and this case only (the case of a Posterous employee), it doesn’t matter, because it’s about setting precedent for the community.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dchest</author><text>&lt;i&gt;Quora&apos;s Licenses to You&lt;p&gt;Subject to these Terms, Quora gives you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to re-post any of the Content on Quora anywhere on the rest of the web provided that the Content was added to the Service after April 22, 2010, and provided that the user who created the content has not explicitly marked the content as not for reproduction, and provided that you: (a) do not modify the Content; (b) attribute Quora with a human and machine-followable link (an A tag) linking back to the page displaying the original source of the content on quora.com (c) upon request, either by Quora or a user, remove the user&apos;s name from Content which the user has subsequently made anonymous; (d) upon request, either by Quora or by a user who contributed to the Content, make a reasonable effort to update a particular piece of Content to the latest version on quora.com; and (e) upon request, either by Quora or by a user who contributed to the Content, make a reasonable attempt to delete Content that has been deleted on quora.com.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/about/tos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/about/tos&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>What does it feel like to be stupid? An anonymous Quora user explains.</title><url>http://garrysub.posterous.com/what-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid-an-anonym</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>alanh</author><text>Meta:&lt;p&gt;This, to me, is a fundamental problem with the Posterous culture.  Here we have a post on a Posterous blog &lt;i&gt;made by a Posterous co-founder&lt;/i&gt; which copies, &lt;i&gt;in its entirety&lt;/i&gt; and with no significant commentary, a work published elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;It’s attributed with a link to the source — barely, in lowercased, tiny font, at the bottom. The headline is a link to the Posterous page, not the source (unlike Daring Fireball “linked list” items, for example).  How many people will actually follow the link?  Why is this Posterous blog entry #1 on HN when a permalink to the original source on Quora is readily available?&lt;p&gt;Let’s be clear.  This is not “fair use.”  It’s not &lt;i&gt;plagiarism,&lt;/i&gt; as Garry doesn’t claim he wrote the anecdote; but it’s a violation of copyright. It’s publishing without permission of the copyright holder.†&lt;p&gt;My first submission to Hacker News was an original item I posted to my own website.  It got quite a few reads — but a lot of people were re-tweeting a link to a full copy of it hosted on &lt;i&gt;someone else’s Posterous.&lt;/i&gt;  That user didn’t add much (A sentence expressing “me, too”).  I was conflicted: Glad people found my writing interesting enough to duplicate and share, but disappointed that they were reading it on someone else’s site for no good reason.&lt;p&gt;I see now that if the company’s own bloggers consider copyright a joke, if they believe posting other people’s articles verbatim is kosher, well, can we be surprised their users do, too?&lt;p&gt;(Postscript: This differs from Tumblr’s “re-blogging” in one important way: You only re-blog other Tumblr posts. “Re-blogging” is part of the Tumblr system. You expect it there if you post there. You don’t “lose” anything by it. I have no problem there.)&lt;p&gt;† I don’t know if Quora’s terms of service mean that consent is implied, but honestly, in this case and this case only (the case of a Posterous employee), it doesn’t matter, because it’s about setting precedent for the community.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>You know what, you&apos;re absolutely right. So, let&apos;s provide the link to the original article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid/answers/157939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-stupid/ans...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It actually is simply a violation of copyright. Anything over 15 lines cited iirc.&lt;p&gt;edit: fixed the link tx Alan!</text></comment>