Ilaw: Wikipedia Assignment
Place your wiki page and thoughts here.
Ben Snitkoff: Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases
I chose to edit the Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases page, as it was covered in our third class.
March 16, 2008
I just finished editing the Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Cases page. First thing I'll say is that editing a wikipedia page wholesale like that is a lot harder then it looks. The markup is very different then anything I was used to, so I made quite a few errors in the markup, and probably one or two in text too. It's kind of like writing a short memo in word, but without the benefit of being able to see the formatting before you're done. Not pleasant.
March 31, 2008
David, from our class, edited my article, but only to correct a possessive and make "defendant" vs. "Defendant" changes. I therefore conclude that my legal analysis is beyond reproach. Or, at least up to the standards of wikipedia.
John Long: GNU GPL
I chose to edit the GNU GPL page after our discussion in class today.
March 20, 2008
12:00 AM. I was able to edit the page more easily than I thought, save for the markup. With extensive coverage already present, it was easy to pick out what I needed to get a quick first edit completed. I continue to believe that the GPL is one of the most restrictive licenses ever conceived. I also believe that it will eventually be found unconstitutional in the United States, despite prevailing recently in US courts. Wikipedia will not allow me to post my unpublished, baseless (and at the moment unprovable) criticism of the GNU GPL. I fault Wikipedia for that shortcoming.
March 20, 2008
6:49 PM. Nice. Somebody has already read the link I posted and added to my original entry.
April 5, 2008
I cited a source where the parties could not implement Sun's ZFS filesystem as a kernel module. It is not clear that either party (Sun or Linus) is at fault per se, but the license incompatibilities may require one of the licenses to change. Sun, meanwhile, patented the open source ZFS, which has chilled efforts to reverse engineer the code...(other examples of GPL subversion include trademark battles - I will look for that article in a later update)
April 30, 2008
Summary of Changes
March 20: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&diff=199561799&oldid=199559902
April 5: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&diff=203605447&oldid=203602444
Personal Identification on wikipedia
User: L0ngjc47 (when i remember to log in)
IP: 24.60.105.80 (when i forget to log in)
May 1, 2008
It is also interesting to see the Microsoft criticism grow against the GPL - they harbor a lot of disdain for a boiler plate license that they have no interest in using. Competing companies that have shifted toward Open Source (but not necessarily GPL), like Apple and Sun Microsystems, also retain a strong interest in controlling their hardware. It is not clear how MS will fare in the future without similar control now that we've entered another cycle apparently favoring integrated manufacturing. http://blog.linuxtoday.com/blog/2008/04/bill-gates-disd.html
Jason Langley: reverse engineering
I chose to mess with the reverse engineering page, specifically the legality section
March 30, 2008
20:21 PM. Added quote from Sega case. This section needs a bunch more work though, probably splitting it and specifically addressing copyrights and patents would be good.
John Nwosu: Economic and Financial Crimes Commission of Nigeria
I chose to update this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_and_Financial_Crimes_Commission There are some errors on the article and I think I will make it my duty to continually update it. I chose this article because it is something that I have personal interest in and also you have sort of mentioned, though in passing, about a lot of internet fraud activities emanating from Nigeria.
David O'Brien: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act
I edited several sections of this including the "Controversy," "Application," and "Section 230 and Fair Housing Act." I found some of the language in the "controversy" section to be a little restrictive, so I modified the language to be more objective and reflect the broadness of §230. The "Application" section had some formatting and parenthetical problems. I found most of the parentheticals weren't very helpful and would benefit from some additional information on the cases. And, finally, I added an additional paragraph to the "Section 230 and the Fair Housing Act section". This section had discussed the Craiglist case regarding discrimination claims in postings online, it hadn't been updated since the 7th Circuit Appeal came out in March. In addition to adding the ultimate holding, I pulled out a few quotes I thought would help illustrate the rationale of Judge Easterbrook.
Other Thoughts: I've done some wiki editing in the past, so I didn't have much trouble with the markup. I did most of my edits using a plain text editor. I had tons of ideas of pages that needed to be created/maintained for Internet/Cyberlaw topics, something to keep in mind for the future.
Wiki UserID: Revision1.0