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> It is a shot across the bow at the bloggers. > We knew this would come. I'm glad for it > because a citation trail is a very good > start to a web where innovation is recognized > and good ol' engineering is easier to reward > commensurately. Well, crediting your sources is all very good and honourable, but omitting to do so is hardly new. There is something of a modern obsession with audit-trails. I don't think Homer added a References section to the Odyssey, but does that detract from the power of the stories? Products need salesmen as well as inventors, and billboard adverts (or newspaper reviews) rarely mention either, but does that make the products any better or worse? Even in academe, where there is something of a conceit about priority, success can come from popularising the work of others, whether credited or not. > ... there is a lot of idea > theft going on among the cognoscenti. > The web is NOT an information space. It is an amplifier. Are these opposites? The signal-to-noise ratio may sometimes be lower than one would like, but that's hardly new either. Some believe that ideas can't be (private) property anyway [*], in which case they can't be stolen... Greg [*] Cf. this recent decision of the Canadian Supreme Court (which incidentally is important for its implications in copyright law): http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/2004scc013.wpd.html
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