"Do your own homework"

screen shot, 12.45pm, 15th August

A number of news outlets have carried news of the lazy toad high school student who asked on Yahoo! Answers for someone to do a summary of DC Pierson’s novel The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To, and got a reply by the author, essentially saying "do your own homework". For example:

Student asking Yahoo Answers to summarise book he hasn't read for homework gets a response… from the author

A student has gained online notoriety after he tried to get away with not reading a book for a school assignment only to be caught out by the author himself.

The student took to Yahoo! Answers earlier this week, asking for a book summary of The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To by DC Pierson, admitting he had not finished the book.

By the next day the student, whose username was 'Idiot America', got a response from Pierson who was not impressed.

The author reprimanded the student posting: ‘I'm bummed out that you don't want to try and finish it, and not even because you think it's bad, but just because it seems like work instead of like fun.’

- Alex Ward, Daily Mail, 15th August 2012

Pierson's reply- click to enlarge

I'm more than a trifle suspicious that Pierson's reply to this Q&A - Can someone completely cover the book 'The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To' to me ? - is still extant on the Y!A site at the time of writing (12.45pm, 15th August).

There's a Y!A help section Is it okay to ask for help with homework? which is very explicit on this point:

Note: Responding to a homework help question with "Do your own homework" or "Read your textbook" is not okay.

Whatever one may think of the question and its lazy-toad asker, Pierson's reply (right) is clearly an extended "do your own homework". The question asked for a complete review of the book; it does not provide that, so it's a non-answer violation, and should have been deleted (along with the many other similar replies that made no attempt to answer the question).

It's hard to believe that it hasn't been reported, and if it was, as a first post by a new account, it would easily drop under normal circumstances. A suspicious person might conclude Y!A have flagged it as unreportable to preserve it for its publicity value.

Edit: as of some time this evening, the whole question has been deleted. It's unknown why.

- Ray

"This is for everyone"

I am not watching the Olympics - I think sport, and any celebration of it, is loathsome - but I did hear that the Olympic opening ceremony featured Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. For example, from CNET News, Berners-Lee, Web take bow at Olympics.

The opening ceremony of this summer's London Olympics obliged that sentiment, as Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee got the star treatment during the extravaganza.

A hip-hoppy dance routine featuring legions of fist-pumping club-types gave way as a stage-set suburban house rose from the ground to reveal a lone keyboard jockey surfing away in solitude.

None other than Berners-Lee it was, and with a flick of his wrist, he lit up the stadium with a grandly flashing tweet: "This is for everyone."

I recall that on a number of occasions, Sir Tim has (rightly, in my view) vigorously criticised the egregious practice of commercial organisations operating a 'legal chill' to prevent hyperlinks to their sites. For example:

It is difficult to emphasize how important these issues are for society. The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, for example, addresses the right to speak. The right to make reference to something is inherent in that right. On the web, to make reference without making a link is possible but ineffective - like speaking but with a paper bag over your head.
- Tim Berners-Lee, Axioms of Web Architecture / Links and Law: Myths, 1997

It's highly ironic, then, to see the terms of use for the London 2012 official website:

5. Linking policy
a. Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner. The use of our logo or any other Olympic or London 2012 Mark(s) as a link to the Site is not permitted.

So, as Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship comments at Free Speech Blog, "You’re only allowed [to] link to the official site of the Olympics if you’re going to say nice things about the Olympics."

- Ray