Missing Folder

[dennisdixson]

I seem to be missing a folder. "Everything in Moderation." Any ideas

about what happened to it?<div></div>

[akochanowski]

Quite possibly because everything in it infringed someone else's copyright, like mine, for instance. You did not have my permission to use my photograph to make one of your ironic composites.

[root]

If that's the case, then the abuse department was a bit too quick. I know of one in the folder which does not fit this description.

[mottershead]

I deleted the folder. I sent you a mail message explaining why. Is the email address you have registered valid?

 

The reason I deleted the folder was not because of copyright infringement. Parodies are usually allowed under copyright law. However the photo.net Terms of Use are that the photos that you upload must be 100% your own work, and that rules our parodies created by photoshopping others' images. If you want to parody images you find on photo.net, do it by creating your own images 100% from scratch.

 

If you think about it, photo.net and its members and visitors are benefitting from people uploading their photos for others to enjoy. Allowing others to parody uploaded images without permission, such as you did, is not exactly a very fair thanks to the people who uploaded them.

 

So now you have some more censorshop to be chafed by.

[think27]

Awwh bummer... I understand the policy..but I loved the humor. It was fun while it lasted Dennis...

[dennisdixson]

Thanks for answering that question for me Brian. My email has not changed since I registered and I have received many emails from photo.net members there before. I did check it before posting this question.

 

As a matter of fact several people have written to me and stated they were flattered by the attention. As always I am always more than happy to remove any material that anyone deems offensive.

 

By your response I take it that you will also no longer allow people to download images and make suggested improvements to them as part of the POW discussion. That would be in effect breaking the terms of use agreement if I understand you correctly.

 

At any rate my own sense of humor is intact. Perpetual chafing allows one to develope a rather thick skin in these matters. I'm sorry to have caused you to take time away from more important matters.

[bobatkins]

Dennis - you said: "<em>By your response I take it that you will also no longer allow people to download images and make suggested improvements to them as part of the POW discussion</em>"

<p>

Perhaps you should actually <em>read</em> the Terms of Use?

<p>

<em>"...when commenting on photos in the photo Gallery, you may include a version of the photo under discussion in your comment, altered or marked up to illustrate your comments..."</em>

[root]

There is one image in the folder that Dennis shot himself . . . no 'borrowing', no parody. Please check you archives.

[dennisdixson]

Interesting Bob, I thought that's what I was doing to begin with.

[bobatkins]

Perhaps I should have said "read, understand and follow". Just reading isn't enough.

<p>

The Terms of Use state:

<p>

<em>The content which you submit must be Your work in its entirety. You may not submit content which is an amalgam of the works of several persons, even if You are among those persons, even if You are the principal creator, or even if the other authors have given You permission to use their work as part of the collective work. By submitting material to the Site, You are representing that You are the sole author of the content in its entirety, that You have the right to submit the material, and in the case of photos that you have obtained any model releases that may be required</em>

<p>

Which seems pretty unambiguous to me. It goes on to make one exception:<p>

<em>"...when commenting on photos in the photo Gallery, you may include a version of the photo under discussion in your comment, altered or marked up to illustrate your comments..."></em>

<p>

Again I can't quite see how that could be confusing.

[mottershead]

I didn't notice that one of the photos was an original. Even if I had, I probably would have deleted the whole folder anyway in the interests of time, since deleting them one by one is tedious.

 

If they had been posted as comments on the original photos, rather than as independent images in Dennis' portfolio, then they would not have been a violation of the Terms of Use. They then would have been horsing around with other's images, and it would have been for a moderator to decide whether that was on-topic and not abusive, on a case by case basis. However, personally I don't think this kind of thing is very fair to the original photographers, unless they are in on the joke.

[dennisdixson]

In the terms of use agreement you assume the right to do as you please without any explanation. As before, I would like to thank you for the additional comments you offered, though they do appear on the surface to be intentionally sarcastic and meant to demean my ability to understand what you have previously stated. People can understand or interpret something just about any way they want to as long as they specifically follow what is written in the terms of use agreement. From my perspective I think your actions were as much in violation of the terms of use document as you seem to think mine were.

 

I guess what is confusing (or amusing) is that on one hand you say that I may modify and upload a photo as part of the discussion as I �see fit� and then turn around and censor my comments because they do not suit you. Your definition of the gallery is sufficiently ambiguous for me to take the position that I can upload my response where I choose to as long as it is in the gallery which I choose to define as any part of the photo.net website that allows photos to be uploaded.

 

I noticed there were a few typing and or spelling errors in the terms of use document so if you ever find the time you might want to correct those so as to avoid any further confusion or ambiguity. Or you could just delete the whole thing instead because it is so tedious doing one thing at a time (sorry I couldn�t resist).

 

The purpose of my initial question was to ask if my folder had been accidentally or intentionally removed. That question has been answered, everything else was a bonus.

[Landrum Kelly]

Dennis, I didn't see the folder in question, but, if your own picture were deleted, then that would clearly be censorship. Parodies have always been problematic in a variety of contexts, such as literature, where a rewrite is one's own work. Here you actually borrowed other's work, and that seems to me quite different. I actually like parodies, and maybe we could allow them when the component photos are used with permisssion to avoid legal problems.

[dennisdixson]

I think the photo Carl is referring to is called "Art beneath the Wheels." Its value was primarily due to the comments left by Tony Dummett who explains the value of art and if preserving someone else's soon to be destroyed art in a photograph is proper and correct. I think the comments were of great value to the site but that is just my opinion. The original artist was not around so I did not ask his permission to use his artwork in my photograph. The pastel painting on the street was soon to be destroyed by rain and traffic. It was already partially obscured by tire tracks when I took the photo early in the morning.

 

I had previously removed all my other photos as a general housecleaning and thought about removing this folder as well but did not really see any other use for these photos because they would be too much out of context to make any sense to anyone. I did make an effort to direct viewers back to the originals because despite the fact that these are seen as parodies I admire the original work enough to spend time thinking about it and what makes it appealing. I would not really waste my time on something that I felt had no value to begin with.

 

I�m not trying to make a case for or against the subject of �fair use.� Surprisingly, I�m not that upset about the folder being deleted. I guess along with everything else it is just what I have come to expect. I�m sad to have lost Tony�s insightful comments along with others.

[root]

Unless I am mistaken, Tony's comment still exists. Purges of orphaned comments only happen periodically.

 

I'd like to see that image uploaded again; I'm sure there's a way for Brian to reattach Tony's comment.

[mottershead]

Dennis, we *do* reserve the right to do what we please on this site. That is the universal escape clause in the Terms of Use that lets the moderators and administrators rather than random people on the Internet passing through decide what happens on this site.

 

HOWEVER, this is not a case of that. In this case, you are not a stray person on the Internet, and this is not a case where we need to invoke the "Administrators can do what they want, and too bad" rule. There is a very specific rule stated in the Terms of Use which covers this case; namely, that what you upload must be 100% yours. We have banned well-known people on the site because they photoshopped in a cloud that was not their cloud. In fact, we banned two well-known people for the same exact cloud.

 

The Terms of Use are very clear: it doesn't matter whether you have permission from the other person who contributed to the image. It doesn't matter if it is a collective work and you one of the team of creators. It it not a question of copyright. The work may be a parody that courts would find a legal use of another's work under copyright laws. The constituents of an image may be things that have been released into the public domain or which are available royalty-free. But the rules in the photo.net gallery are that what you upload has to be 100% yours, and 100% does not mean 50% yours, no matter what the legal status is of the other 50%. You personally captured the image(s) that comprise the work, in its (or their) entirety, and you did all the manipulations.

 

There is one exception, which is spelled out, and that is when you are commenting on another person's photo, you can attach a marked up or modified version of that photo to your comment, in order to illustrate the comment. You didn't do that. You uploaded parodies of other photos as your own work. When you do that, you aren't home free, since comments must be on topic and not abusive, but the modification of the image under discussion is not in itself a problem.

 

There is nothing wrong or illegal with uploading parodies. Parody anything you want. However, they need to be 100% your own work, not produced by photoshopping the original image.

[dennisdixson]

I should stop and let Brian have the last word but how much fun would that be? We are mostly in agreement and I would have a similar policy if I were running a website where members submitted their photos for public display.

 

Yesterday I was running a fever and ran my responses to several people�s comments together which was no doubt confusing to everyone including me. That�s the nature of minor rants I suppose.

 

I would like to state again that it was never my intention to present the work of others as my own and that I went out of my way to try to explain the nature of the presentation in my comments on each photo. In addition to my comments several of the photos included the original photographers name as part of the photo. The trouble is that some people don�t bother with the details and get the wrong idea. Therefore it is wise (required) not to dabble in this type of composite submission to begin with. As I said before, I had actually thought about deleting the folder myself but I had not quite made up my mind whether or not it mattered or if anyone even takes notice of what I propose as entertainment. In effect, I had the least to loose and the most to gain by the folder being deleted.

 

Brian states we are free to submit parody as part of the discussion of a photograph. The fact is that these submissions will most likely be arbitrarily deleted (censored if you prefer) when submitted to the Photo of the Week discussion. Many of the photos in my folder were first uploaded to the POW forum where the original work appeared. To be totally fair, some of the photos still exist as a part of the original (POW) discussions where they belong (if they belong anywhere at all). My thinking was to gather the deleted and undeleted photos where they could be viewed together as a group. This violated the administrator�s interpretation of the terms of use agreement and it has been diplomatically pointed out that this is the only interpretation that matters. There was no sinister intent involved in the process.

 

I would really like to hear the entire cloud story sometime, that sounds like a classic. Thanks and apologies for allowing me to test everyone�s patience. I really do appreciate knowing that I am not a stray or random person on the internet.