Important Announcement. Read Me First.
Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2003 7:12 pm
Dear Eunuch Archive members,
This is one of the best groups of people anyone could ever hope to work with. I feel like we are really a community here. Obviously when working together as a community sometimes the actions of one affect the group as a whole. And as with any community there are standards of accepted behavior and we do our best to conform to those.
Some recent events have called in to question some of the policies of the Archive, and there have been some rather questionable emails to Paolo regarding some of these happenings.
First and foremost I must ask you all to take it easy on Paolo. He does a ton of work on this site that you will never know about. He is passionate about this place, and while you might not like his tone or approach he is the person with the authority and even though his approach may differ greatly from mine he has my blessing and I never doubt his dedication to the Archive. That doesn't mean that we don't discuss things and that I don't give my input because I do and so does talula, but at the end of the day we have entrusted Paolo and won't be second guessing his handling of things. I won't be around this site forever and basically as things are now we have a group of people together that includes talula, paolo, Riverwind and others who help manage various parts of the Archive. The Archive has long surpassed being "mine" and when I need to leave it will be in good hands.
There are a couple of policy points that have been the subject of recent controversy, as I mentioned, that I intend to clear up now.
First, the pictures posted by Slammr to illustrate his most recent story. Since I haven't had time to correspond with him personally I won't get into the details, but in terms of policy it now stands as this:
The Archive either directly or through the message boards here will no longer host illustrations for specific stories like the thread referenced above. Any story illustrations will need to be hosted offsite through sites like Geocities or other web space providers. This is not a specific reference to Slammr or a reaction to anything he has done. This is a policy that we need in place now before a very bad precedent is set here. We are a text story archive first and foremost. I will try to put together a document listing various options for offsite hosting and how to put a picture page together.
The second issue is one of removing stories previously submitted to the Archive.
In addition to the technical difficulty of removing stories, and Paolo has noted, there are other compelling reasons not to allow stories to be removed once submitted.
I am sorry that some of you are now getting upset at this policy, but it has always been and shall remain the policy of the Eunuch Archive not to remove stories, even at the request of the author.
The reasoning includes:
The purpose of an "Archive" is to be a complete record of a body of information. The site is not a free hosting site or a revolving door. It is an Archive in the true sense of the word.
Because of the policy stated in #1 we have maintained a notice on our submission page clearly stating that submitting a story grants the Archive an irrevokable license to display your story.
We don't cull stories from other sites like usenet, etc. Our stories are author submitted according to the terms of the submission page.
We do our best to work with authors to address modifications to stories for their protection and for dealing with personal security issues.
Authors need to know before submitting a story that we will not remove it. More importantly, they need to know that with or without this policy it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle once something is posted to the internet. Do a Google search. See that link that says "cached page"? Even if we deleted the story it will still be available for searching and reading in it's original form from Google and any number of other caching services. Don't submit something you don't want someone else to see. Period.
The third issue is copyrights. In the course of this message board discussion there are times when people run across magazine or newspaper articles that are of particular interest to the eunuch community.
I want to make it clear to everyone here that any copyright issues are between the Archive and the copyright holders. Don't send any admins here emails, and don't post any messages here berating people for copyright violations. If the copyright holder wants to take it up with us, then we will refer it to our lawyers. It's none of your business, so please keep your mouth shut.
I openly encourage and ask members that are refering to news articles to post both a link to the news site AND the text of the article here on the boards.
The reasons are thus:
The posting may or may not be a technical copyright violation. That's not for you to decide.
The fair use doctrine is most broadly applied when the use is comment or criticism, such as we do here. While posting the entire text of an article stretches fair sue to its very limits, there is still some gray area. Ever listen to talk radio? People like Rush Limbaugh read the text of newspaper articles on their show every day as a starting point for discussion. That's fair use.
The monetary value in news is in the "scoop" factor. Once it's been published it's basically worthless. See Associated Press v United Press International.
The nature of the vast, vast majority of newspaper and magazine sites is so transitory as to make posting just a link virtually worthless. Links are often bad within a few days of the initial publication. That leave the message board with threads of dicussion and no reference to the source material. That makes no sense in the context of comment and criticism of the article.
When posting an article, please do post the link AND the text. Readers, always try to visit the link first so that the publication can reap any benefits is can from ad impressions, etc. But when the link is dead we still have the text of the article to refer to.
So that's it. Hopefully you guys can live with those policies. They are in place for what we belive is the best interest of the Archive.
Paolo is very often in the position of having to play the heavy, and I know that wears on him. He is the one that most often has to be the bad guy, and it's not his fault.
You guys need to be thanking Paolo for all he does for the Archive.
Bboy
This is one of the best groups of people anyone could ever hope to work with. I feel like we are really a community here. Obviously when working together as a community sometimes the actions of one affect the group as a whole. And as with any community there are standards of accepted behavior and we do our best to conform to those.
Some recent events have called in to question some of the policies of the Archive, and there have been some rather questionable emails to Paolo regarding some of these happenings.
First and foremost I must ask you all to take it easy on Paolo. He does a ton of work on this site that you will never know about. He is passionate about this place, and while you might not like his tone or approach he is the person with the authority and even though his approach may differ greatly from mine he has my blessing and I never doubt his dedication to the Archive. That doesn't mean that we don't discuss things and that I don't give my input because I do and so does talula, but at the end of the day we have entrusted Paolo and won't be second guessing his handling of things. I won't be around this site forever and basically as things are now we have a group of people together that includes talula, paolo, Riverwind and others who help manage various parts of the Archive. The Archive has long surpassed being "mine" and when I need to leave it will be in good hands.
There are a couple of policy points that have been the subject of recent controversy, as I mentioned, that I intend to clear up now.
First, the pictures posted by Slammr to illustrate his most recent story. Since I haven't had time to correspond with him personally I won't get into the details, but in terms of policy it now stands as this:
The Archive either directly or through the message boards here will no longer host illustrations for specific stories like the thread referenced above. Any story illustrations will need to be hosted offsite through sites like Geocities or other web space providers. This is not a specific reference to Slammr or a reaction to anything he has done. This is a policy that we need in place now before a very bad precedent is set here. We are a text story archive first and foremost. I will try to put together a document listing various options for offsite hosting and how to put a picture page together.
The second issue is one of removing stories previously submitted to the Archive.
In addition to the technical difficulty of removing stories, and Paolo has noted, there are other compelling reasons not to allow stories to be removed once submitted.
I am sorry that some of you are now getting upset at this policy, but it has always been and shall remain the policy of the Eunuch Archive not to remove stories, even at the request of the author.
The reasoning includes:
The purpose of an "Archive" is to be a complete record of a body of information. The site is not a free hosting site or a revolving door. It is an Archive in the true sense of the word.
Because of the policy stated in #1 we have maintained a notice on our submission page clearly stating that submitting a story grants the Archive an irrevokable license to display your story.
We don't cull stories from other sites like usenet, etc. Our stories are author submitted according to the terms of the submission page.
We do our best to work with authors to address modifications to stories for their protection and for dealing with personal security issues.
Authors need to know before submitting a story that we will not remove it. More importantly, they need to know that with or without this policy it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle once something is posted to the internet. Do a Google search. See that link that says "cached page"? Even if we deleted the story it will still be available for searching and reading in it's original form from Google and any number of other caching services. Don't submit something you don't want someone else to see. Period.
The third issue is copyrights. In the course of this message board discussion there are times when people run across magazine or newspaper articles that are of particular interest to the eunuch community.
I want to make it clear to everyone here that any copyright issues are between the Archive and the copyright holders. Don't send any admins here emails, and don't post any messages here berating people for copyright violations. If the copyright holder wants to take it up with us, then we will refer it to our lawyers. It's none of your business, so please keep your mouth shut.
I openly encourage and ask members that are refering to news articles to post both a link to the news site AND the text of the article here on the boards.
The reasons are thus:
The posting may or may not be a technical copyright violation. That's not for you to decide.
The fair use doctrine is most broadly applied when the use is comment or criticism, such as we do here. While posting the entire text of an article stretches fair sue to its very limits, there is still some gray area. Ever listen to talk radio? People like Rush Limbaugh read the text of newspaper articles on their show every day as a starting point for discussion. That's fair use.
The monetary value in news is in the "scoop" factor. Once it's been published it's basically worthless. See Associated Press v United Press International.
The nature of the vast, vast majority of newspaper and magazine sites is so transitory as to make posting just a link virtually worthless. Links are often bad within a few days of the initial publication. That leave the message board with threads of dicussion and no reference to the source material. That makes no sense in the context of comment and criticism of the article.
When posting an article, please do post the link AND the text. Readers, always try to visit the link first so that the publication can reap any benefits is can from ad impressions, etc. But when the link is dead we still have the text of the article to refer to.
So that's it. Hopefully you guys can live with those policies. They are in place for what we belive is the best interest of the Archive.
Paolo is very often in the position of having to play the heavy, and I know that wears on him. He is the one that most often has to be the bad guy, and it's not his fault.
You guys need to be thanking Paolo for all he does for the Archive.
Bboy