Talk:Jacobsen v. Katzer/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

assessment

I saw the announcement over at wikiproject law that this article was added to the project. This article has multiple issues with content, structure, and grammar. I agree with the assessment that this article does not have a NPOV. It provides a great deal of attention to the bickering between the litigants and ignores the more significant aspects of the case such as precise ruling of the appellate court. The outcome is what is important here. The play by play of the lawsuit is meaningless because this sort of thing happens in most cases in America today. The article also gives too much attention to the amicus briefs and describes them in seemingly glowing adoration. Amicus briefs are merely the opinion of a non-litigant who may be of assistance to the court. The opinion itself should determine if the amicus briefs are of any importance. If it comments on them heavily, then their influence is clear. If the opinion is silent on the briefs, they might not be as significant as the article seems to indicate. The article also quotes from several blogs that give an opinion on the case, notably the "fairly thin copyright" qualifier. Perhaps if the court characterized the claim as "fairly thin" it should be included. The blogger's opinion is irrelevant because the only opinion that matters in a lawsuit is the finder of fact, in this case, the judge. If you must put in the POV of these highly opinionated bloggers, change the wording to "One legal blogger characterized the claim as "fairly thing"" then comment on exactly how the court characterized the claim. My suggestion is to remove the POV praising some of the arguments and actions of the parties to the lawsuit or amici, to organize the article according to its more important elements such as the ruling of the court(s), and to edit the article for grammar such as subject noun agreement and spelling errors. Gx872op (talk) 15:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with much of what you say here, but I wanted to make one point. Wikipedia recommends reliance on secondary sources and explicitly discourages articles that are based solely on primary sources. So although the judge's opinion may be what matters to the litigants, the Wikipedia article should rely on secondary sources that report on and analyze the arguments and opinions. I do agree with you that we should make it clear who has made what assessments of the case. Thanks, Npdoty (talk) 06:19, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

What if the references section was broken into two portions, one for primary sources such as court documents and one for the secondary sources? There are only half a dozen or so secondary references in the article; it would help a reader navigate to those if they wanted to find further discussion of the case. VQuakr (talk) 18:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Changes to lead section

I recently revised a change by an IP editor to the lead section. The main reason for the partial undo was that it shifted the focus of the lead from the impacts on this case on FOSS license enforceability to a chronological narrative of the case itself. Minor factors also include unreferenced claim that the case addressed issues of antitrust law and libel and the regression of the style, with loss of wikilinks and formatting. Per WP:BRD, additional discussion on improvements to the lead is welcome. VQuakr (talk) 22:05, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

FEtrekkie to VQuaKR: Much better however, Your Summary Judgment statement is incorrect. The Summary Judgment happened in 2009, not in 2006. What you have edited is factual inaccurate. (The version you edited exhibited an accurate sequence of events). Jacobsen 2nd appeal happened before Summary Judgment. Since the case never went to trial, the only finding of law was the Circuit Court of Appeal order that “copyright infringement can be made by a breach of license”, and the District Court interpretation that a” FOIA request can be made against any government employee/contractor (The result of the Jacobsen libel argument decision has already been used by EFF in a case in California)”. What is unusual about this case is all documents on both sides are public thereby providing an insight into the court’s thinking. Because everything is public, an extra effort on your part as an editor needs to be made for detail and factual accuracy.

(Additional Food for thought): Example, Katzer counter sued Jacobsen over copyright infringement. The importance of this centered around “Fair Use”. Have you noticed within the past 6 months, an individual is required to log onto websites first before being able to download documents or retrieve information? If you read the license agreement of the site, you’ll notice terms like “all oral and implied” licenses are void? This is a direct result of the JvK case and Katzer’s counter suit over Jacobsen’s copyright infringement.

(Suggestion): Perhaps some “words smiting” is in order for the insertion you edited. However, this individual has experience he’s inputting into this article. Some of this input goes counter to your editing. You may want consider reversing out some of your edits in favor of the original insertion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fetrekkie (talk • contribs) 15:23, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Fetrekkie, I'd be very interested to see a source that described the change in web sites' terms of use as a direct result of this case (as per your "Additional Food for thought"). If we have a reliable secondary source, that would be a great addition to the article. Thanks, Npdoty (talk) 23:38, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I was not aware I had changed the date of the summary judgment; if I did it was an oversight. You have mentioned that you are no longer interested in editing this article (which is unfortunate), but if you could identify a section or line number that would be helpful in seeing where the problem is. While it might be unusual that both parties have published court documents on their personal websites, most of these documents should not be linked from the Wiki article. What this article needs more of, are sources from third parties about the case. There is certainly room for improvement in the lead, but again I think that changes should expand on the case's broader implications, not the details of the proceedings. VQuakr (talk) 06:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

OSS vs commercial vs proprietary

The case is of general interest because it has clarified the enforceability of licensing for all parties (open-source software and commercial software) under United States copyright law

Open source and commercial are not mutually exclusive. There is plenty of commercial OSS, for example Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The actual opposite to "open source" is "proprietary". I've changed the text to reflect this. Hairy Dude (talk) 13:52, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Patent claims

These sentences in the article in the 'Patent claims' section need to be re-worded or removed:

DigiToys Systems also noted WinLok released in 1998 which is not prior art.[42][48] This information

was provided to the file history of the '329 patent, by the two model railroad hobbyists,[48] which

is the parent of the pending continuation patent...

Why is reference 42 included? Reference 48 seems to contradict the first sentence. In the next sentence, who are the two model railroad hobbyists being referred to?Michael9422 (talk) 05:55, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

External links modified

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