ADMIN: A personal perspective on the move of the LF Forum to photo.net

[mottershead]

Tim, of course. But when the terms were not specified, what rights were being granted implicitly when someone posted content on public forum? Or do you think that Philip, Tuan, etc, were violating every poster's copyright by operating or moderating the LUSENET forum?

 

And I wouldn't be so sure that putting text up on such a forum, especially without identifying yourself clearly, didn't constitute putting it into the public domain.

[bob.]

Brian - to clarify: I do not think anyone necessarily behaved improperly in moving the forum to photo.net, (if photo.net were not an incorporated company, I suspect there would be no issues at all) merely that the option was not given within sufficent time for the community itself to decide where to move.

 

I know the possibility of a move has been in the air for some time, but a definitive "this forum will no longer be supported in 3 months (or whatever reasonable timespan) on LUSENET - where do you want to go?" would have been better - who knows, the majority decision may well have been "Photo.net, please...".

[david_goldfarb]

The LUSENET forum was not for profit and without advertising, so there was no need, for me at least, to think about pulling my content at will.

 

If photo.net were to become more heavily commercialized, as it may, or were to extend its concept of "a perpetual non-exclusive world-wide royalty-free license to modify, publish and reproduce that material for the purpose of operating, displaying, distributing and promoting photo.net" to include types of promotion and distribution that I didn't approve of, I would want the option of pulling all my content off the site.

 

That doesn't seem like a likely problem right now. The people here seem to be of good will, and the commercial content of the site is there mainly to support its continued existence. On the other hand, Tuan is correct to point out that as a for-profit corporation, photo.net is a commodity subject to sale, and I'm not comfortable with the idea of granting rights in perpetuity for anything to such an organization.

[_____133]

Brian

 

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, eh mate?

[mottershead]

David, I'm sorry I just don't get the huge distinction that people are drawing between "non-profit" and "profit" corporations. If photo.net were a "non-profit" (which has been discussed), this wouldnt stop it from doing things with your "content" (i.e. forum postings) that you wouldn't approve of; for example, it could merge with another non-profit that you don't like.

 

I don't think you need to worry about photo.net merging with a media conglomerate that decides to use your "content" in supermarket tabloids.

[sal_santamaura]

To refresh everyone on Philip's stated position, I've pasted below some posts from a thread which appeared last December. Note that, while no one else seemed to share my specific concerns back then, changes Philip incorporated didn't fully address them. All this took place long before he left for extended travel. Also, since these terms can be changed at will, what lasting value would they have to forum posters even if satisfactory wording were put in place now?

 

"Sorry about that legalistic thing. Rajeev and Lisa went and hired a lawyer when they started managing photo.net. This obviously wrong piece of verbiage was the result. I'm going to be editing it out myself this weekend. The users own the copyright to what they contribute but photo.net needs to have a license to publish it in perpetuity.

 

As far as photo.net and ArsDigita are concerned (above), the companies are separate and always have been. ArsDigita sold a minority share of its stock to some venture capitalists in April 2000. This set off a tedious and uninteresting chain of events, among which the highlights were my withdrawal from involvement with day-to-day affairs of the company (summer 2000) and my retirement from the world of business in June 2001. A few months ago ArsDigita decided that it was no longer interested in maintaining the free collaboration services at

greenspun.com. So all of the burden falls now onto my shoulders. And frankly I'm not really interested in fielding daily cell phone calls from confused or upset users of greenspun.com, esp. given that I spend most of my time these days without Internet access, either in a Winnebago or a Diamond Katana (single-engine trainer airplane),

and therefore couldn't deal with their problem even if I wanted to. (A typical phone call is from someone who is upset with a posting somewhere in LUSENET. I ask the person if he or she has contacted the owner/moderator of the forum to request removal of the offending item. The answer is sometimes "no", sometimes "what?", and oftentimes "it's your site, that's your job".)

 

So the bottom line is that I'm trying to move the photo stuff onto the photo.net server where it can be maintained, backed up, and customer serviced by the existing photo.net staff (3 full time people). And I'm trying to arrange an orderly shutdown/transition of the rest of the greenspun.com services into a financially self- sustaining cooperative

where the users and publishers pay the cost of hosting, sysadmin, dbadmin, programming enhancements, and customer service.

 

-- Philip Greenspun , December 21, 2001; 05:52 P.M. Eastern

 

 

 

Philip, thanks very much for all you've done for us and for taking the time to explain. Here's some input for your editing this weekend:

 

I would be happy with the language you intend as long as it includes a photo.net commitment that, when using its publishing license, it will always give attribution to the author of a post. I would be *very* happy if, in addition to attribution, photo.net agrees that any posts it publishes will be reproduced in their entirety, thereby precluding out of context quotations.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

-- Sal Santamaura , December 21, 2001; 11:11 P.M. Eastern

 

 

 

Well, here's what Philip came up with (i.e. what's currently on the photo.net "Terms of Use" page): "Ownership of Submitted Material. You retain the copyright to material that you submit to any of our forums, chat rooms, image critique areas, or photo sharing systems. However, by submitting the material you grant photo.net a perpetual non-exclusive world-wide royalty-free license to modify, publish and reproduce that material for the purpose of operating, displaying, distributing and promoting photo.net."

 

The worrisome aspect of this is that photo.net retains a license to *modify* our material. I'd be more comfortable if the language included a promise to give attribution and not alter posts.

 

-- Sal Santamaura , December 27, 2001; 12:24 A.M. Eastern"

 

 

[himalaya]

Sal, the reason that "modify" is in there is that sometimes a post is 95% fine, but there might be one sentence where the poster insults one of the other posters or says something else offensive. Some of the moderators will edit the post and put in an annotation that the post was edited. Other moderators just delete the whole thing, which is what all of them would be obliged to do if there weren't the right to edit a post.

 

I don't know of any publication that doesn't have the right to edit

material that is submitted.

[mottershead]

I would add that on LUSENET the moderators can edit posts.

[sal_santamaura]

That's all well and good with the current moderator and server ownership, but what if someone else down the road ("in perpetuity") has a different idea. The types of modifications Sophia describes could be codified in the terms of use while still prohibiting non-attributed, out-of-context practices that I wrote of.

[terry_dvorak]

I think photo.net is a good home. A very good home.

 

This forum can always pack up and leave if conditions become

hellish, but I haven't heard anyone complain about conditions

here and now, only about how the transition was handled and

about what "could" happen in the future.

 

I also think we might be slightly overestimating the market value

of our previous contributions to this site.

 

(P.S. to one poster somewhere above: you don't *have* to sign in

to access any of the thousands of pages on photo.net; you only

have to sign in if you want to add to a thread. Think of it as raising

your hand in a group setting before talking; those who wish to

only listen and learn are free to sit on their hands.)

[david_goldfarb]

I'm not worried about supermarket tabloids so much as Fuji or Canon or some company that could say "hey, this is a great idea. Let's buy it from Greenspun (he seems to like money), have the current people run it (they'll do it for free!), but put our logo on every page, add pop-up ads, and while we won't sell the subscriber list, we could use it ourselves to email special offers to photo.net subscribers."

 

Maybe that's not likely to happen this year or for the next three years, but photo.net is continuing to grow and become more commercial, so why risk it? The old forum had one purpose. Profit was not part of it. There is a difference.

[mottershead]

The reason your Canon/Fuji scenario is very unlikely is that,

being intelligent, they would realize that the photo.net

audience would flee if they did what you describe. This means

that photo.net is of no value to them for that purpose.

[qtluong]

That photo.net couldn't be sold to intelligent companies

leaves out the possiblility that it be sold to a not-so good one.

<p>

Andre, as I said in the essay, I accept the responsability

for failing to move the forum earlier. Of course, if all I was

interested is moderating the forum, the easiest for me

would have been to say "Yes" to Philip in December, and

save me a LOT of time. It's true that I did not act with a

sufficient sense of urgency, but again there was deadline

given to us at any point.

 

If someone else wants

to moderate or co-moderate the Forum, let me know.

I prefer to avoid accepting monetary contributions if this is

possible, and would rather have people contribute time.

[david_goldfarb]

Biggest photography site on the net? Killer domain name?--It may not be big enough for Microsoft itself, but a company with the Microsoft business model should snap it up.

[wayne__]

If we stay here for any length of time and then decide we must leave, it will be too late. I think if we want a permanent home elsewhere (and I vote for that option, no offense to p-net but being seperate is better IMO) we have to find it ASAP, otherwise it will never ever happen. Or it wont happen in a good way, and we will lose the community and continuity that made this forum great. We will be a forum divided. So my vote goes to getting set up elsewhere ASAP, or forever holding our peace. I presume that moving back here from somewhere else will always be an option in the future if another site doesnt work out

[sal_santamaura]

To follow up on Wayne's thoughts, what would a departure scenario be like? Although significantly reduced, traffic since June 2 has been (per Tuan's request) mainly at the photo.net venue. Would those new threads/postings be provided to Tuan for incorporation into the version he has downloaded, which could then be hosted somewhere other than greenspun.com? Would photo.net continue to run its own duplicate LF forum with its own moderator, retaining everything migrated on June 2 plus additions since? Inquiring minds want to know!

[mottershead]

<p>Sal, it is difficult to predict what will happen. I don't think anyone wants to see the forum "fork", as the open source community calls it.

 

<p>If the participants of this forum moved en masse to another site, and this forum became a ghost town, I don't think photo.net would have any particular interest in continuing to support it.

 

<p>If some members moved and others stayed here or the forum here was developing new membership when this scenario took place, then it would be more difficult to decide the proper thing to do, especially since our terms of use don't give us the right to do anything with photo.net postings other than to publish them on photo.net. If someone tried to copy all the postings, I guess they would have to answer to the people who own the copyrights, namely the people who made the postings. Just as photo.net will have to answer to anyone who wants his LUSENET postings to be deleted from photo.net.

 

<p>I can say one thing, however, if anyone else, <em>besides Tuan</em>, popped and said, I speak for the LF forum and I want to copy the postings someplace else, I know photo.net would not cooperate.

[qtluong]

Sal, this is an excellent question. Although most of the

value resides in the community, in my mind there is no

doubt that in the

case of a departure, photo.net

should at an absolute minimum remove from its archives the lusenet-area contents,

but let's hear what Brian thinks about that.

[mottershead]

I think I answered that question already in several ways.

First of all, I have said we will delete any LUSENET content

whose contributor objects to its being here, provided the person

making the request can establish that he is indeed the contributor.

 

Second, I have said that in the case of a departure en masse

where the forum here becomes dead or close to it, we would

probably stop operating it.

 

The only difficult case is where some people announce their

"departure" but activity continues in the forum.

[andre_noble3]

Quang, step 1: 20 guys at $50 a pop or 50 guys at $20 a pop = $1,000, Step 2) get trusted volunteer to use said funds and select components to put together a server. Step 3) Get another volunteer living in or close to a large metro area to host server (electricity/modem wise). Step 4 get programmer to load server with software and program for our site.

 

As LF photographers, we pride ourselves as "A through Z, seat of the pants capable" people. If we can help each other figure out how to get 8x10 film into a 5x7 camera, we can do this! I'm sorry I never was really interested enough to take up programming, so I can't offer any help right now in that area. But I can contribute $50, perhaps a little more, as others have offered.

 

Quang, perhaps our best chance is to get a small group committed to meeting in New Mexico at the end of June at the LF conference, to get together for a discussion about this LF internet site issue. But before we do so, lay it out right here on the internet, what we will need, so people can come to conference prepared with REAL offers of help. If you continue to plan for our independent site, DO NOT WORK WITH ANYONE BEHIND THE SCENES. That was a mistake, and that's why we are here at photonet today, instead of on our own site by now.

[qtluong]

Andre, step 1 to 3 are taken care of (as stated in the

conclusion of my article, I've accepted an offer for a

server far better than what we would have gotten with those).

Step 4 is much more than "loading the software", as Brian

here would tell you, but again efforts are underway by

the volunteers whose names I mentionned.

[mottershead]

Andre, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but posts like yours show that LF photography is one skill and running scalable, robust, database-backed web sites is another. As I said above, photo.net costs about $100,000 per year in ISP colocation and bandwidth charges alone. In addition to that is the cost of the hardware -- which has to be continuously upgraded. With support from partners and patrons, photo.net can afford to pay for this, provided it doesn't also have to pay any salaries. Accordingly, the site is now run entirely by volunteers, most of whom are PhD's from MIT, and Boston area software engineering types like me. That group of volunteers monitors the system around the clock.

 

While the LF forum is not the size of photo.net, at 250 to 300 postings per day, it still requires a lot more than what you get for $1k, unless you all are planning to get together only when someone's kid isn't playing Quake on the LF machine in someone's house. A bare minimum box that you would need to run LF would probably cost you at least $2-3K, and this wouldn't give you any redundancy. Then you have to start paying ISP charges. Or are you planning on turning it into a modem bulletin board service like people ran out of their homes in the eighties?

 

photo.net has been appealing for a while for people to subscribe at $25 per year and out of 150,000+ registered users, so far around 450 have subscribed. LF is a more cohesive community than photo.net as a whole, so you might get a higher percentage than that, but I wouldn't count on a lot more.

 

You guys have been enjoying the largesse of Philip Greenspun (and Ars Digita) for a little too long, and need to get real about what this sort of thing costs.

[tim_atherton2]

Brian,

 

"You guys have been enjoying the largesse of Philip Greenspun (and Ars Digita) for a little too long, and need to get real about what this sort of thing costs".

 

You really might want to start thinking about what you are saying and take your now, snarky, remarks elseswhere or moderating yourself a bit - the LF list has operated as a polite virtually self-moderated forum for a good number of years. Your comments seem to be taking it elsewhere. Not exactly the sort of thing that encourages people phot.net is a great place to be?

 

"While the LF forum is not the size of photo.net, at 250 to 300 postings per day, it still requires a lot more than what you get for $1k, unless you all are planning to get together only when someone's kid isn't playing Quake on the LF machine in someone's house. A bare minimum box that you would need to run LF would probably cost you at least $2-3K, and this wouldn't give you any redundancy. Then you have to start paying ISP charges. Or are you planning on turning it into a modem bulletin board service like people ran out of their homes in the eighties?"

 

there are already offers of server space and high bandwith connections if it is needed - for example from somone who already runs a number of groups that often run several hundred and more messages a day. As well as people who do know what they are doing. I happen to be involved in running a large online database of a few hundred gigabytes of information, contstnaly downloading and uploading large inmage files, as well as a government Oracle system - so I do know what is involved thanks. As do many others here.

 

I've also been involved in the photo agency business for a number of years and can tell you, as phot.net develops, builds up it's content -visual, knowledge based and otherwise, it is exactly the sort of target to be snapped up by someone, swallowed up and the content spit out in many different forms. So people are right to be concerned about the commerical future of the site,

 

tim

[adrian_tyler]

I skimmed through all the postings, but fail to share the preoccupations of the posters. It is good to do things well but perfection is very often the enemy of the good.

 

So if there is nothing SERIOUSLY wrong here why not just accept things as they are, sit back and enjoy, at the end of the day this forum is the best that there is. I am grateful for it.

[mottershead]

tim, I was responding to the notion that the LF forum should be operated with a $1k computer and modem out of someone's house. If another forum provider has volunteered his services, that is not the same, although since you don't identify this person/organization, I suppose it will have to remain a mystery why that site is preferrable to this one.