Wolfram Alpha Wants To Change Software [& Abuse Copyright]
InfoWorld recently posted an article about search engine Wolfram|Alpha entitled How Wolfram Alpha could change software.
Wolfram Research is claiming that each page of results returned by the Wolfram Alpha engine is a unique, copyrightable work, like a report or term paper. That makes Wolfram Alpha different not just from classic search engines, but from most software. While software companies routinely retain sole ownership of their software and license it to users, Wolfram Research has taken the additional step of claiming ownership of the output of the software itself. It’s a bold assertion, and one that could have significant ramifications for the software industry as a whole.
What a terrible, horrible, awful idea. Copyright protection exists, in large part, to provide an incentive for people to produce creative work. Were there no copyright, the argument goes, then people wouldn’t pursue artistic endeavors. Others would copy and cash in, making the time/energy/skill investment a waste. Granting and enforcing copyright protection, then, can be seen as society recognizing the value of such work and forcing a period of exclusive use to reward effort with an opportunity to profit.
Protecting automated results as creative output absolutely defeats the incentive mechanism, for then not only is the underlying software protected, but so too is that software’s output… even if all that software is doing is filtering and/or re-ordering and presenting others’ content.
Start allowing this sort of protection and an infinite loop is quickly created. Great for Wolfram|Alpha, terrible for everyone else.