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charmianBig old disclaimer: IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), and so if you see me saying something which is definitely not legal or just plain crazy in a legal way, feel free to tell me.
I've been talking to an anon who has some interesting thoughts on the whole ONTD+LJ situation in the last entry
One thing which interested me was the whole situation of LJ requesting that a permanent account holder put ads on their permanent account as a condition of continued service. Obviously, they can and have done that, and no one really disagrees with LJ's decision. I wonder, though, if this sets a precedent. Now that LJ has established that if an account is disruptive enough to LJ's servers, even if no bots or other malicious usage is occurring, their usage of LJ may be threatened. Perhaps it would be good if LJ established this as an overt policy. (I wonder about DW? Obviously they would not do ads, but if a comm or individual journal grew large enough to the point where it began to place a huge burden on the service, as ONTD has done...? If this were to happen, they would probably see it coming, so I am sure a policy would be created to address the matter.)
The other thing is, whither the 'ownership' of ONTD? Who 'owns' a community on LJ? According to Brenden, the new Editor of ONTD, "when I was approached last month - it was IMPLIED that LJ owned ONTD" (from this comment). Not knowing the actual quote, it's impossible to say what LJ really meant by this, but who really owns a community? What does it mean to own an LJ community?
Legally speaking, AFAIK, the individual content on a community is owned by the person holding copyright to it. AFAIK there is no implied agreement (legally) when posting to a community that you give up any of your copyright. (Could one be created, and if so, would it be legally binding? For example, if I made a post that said 'before joining this community, you agree that all content posted to this community belongs to the mods.') So if I make a post to a community, (if I understand correctly) I own the content of the post, legally speaking, and if you repost the content without my permission, you are violating my rights. The same is true with comments, I think.
However, is an LJ community=the sum of its content? I'm not sure. There's also the actual 'physical space' the comm is located at, i.e., its address on the internet, and the name of the comm itself, and any 'property' which it may own (say, icons... not that comms can use icons. But if they could!)
As for the address on the internet, if it is http://community.livejournal.com/YOURCOMMNAME, it can't be really said that the comm maintainer 'owns' it, but rather more like 'leases' it from LJ, and LJ is the true owner. If it were not an LJ comm, but some site SITENAME.COM, then that would be owned to whomever it was registered to. However, I doubt that the internet address is the same as the comm itself.
Then there's the actual name of the comm. However, I seriously doubt that anyone has trademarked the name of their LJ comm, if that is even trademarkable, given that you're not supposed to engage in commercial activity on LJ. I'm not even sure if McDonalds could file suit against me if I named my LJ comm "McDonalds," as long as I didn't claim that I was the official rep of McDonalds.
Well, however legally/philosophically one slices comm 'ownership,' the fact remains that maintainers have a lot of control over an LJ comm, even if they may not be the legal owners of it. Within LJ policy, though, this control is not absolute. If a comm is idle, LJ will under some circumstances get rid of the unresponsive maintainer and make a willing community member maintainer. This seems to argue that the maintainer's control, even in cases of them not being say, kicked off LJ or grossly abusing their power, depends on the will of LJ, and is not absolute. Perhaps this really argues that the comms do really belong to LJ, while the content belongs to whoever posted it/has copyright to it. (Does this policy, BTW, exist on DW? I couldn't find it in the FAQs)
(BTW, can I also break into say that I think this whole system where the maintainers can randomly remove each other is crazy? There needs to be an ultimate authority, IMHO)
I've been talking to an anon who has some interesting thoughts on the whole ONTD+LJ situation in the last entry
One thing which interested me was the whole situation of LJ requesting that a permanent account holder put ads on their permanent account as a condition of continued service. Obviously, they can and have done that, and no one really disagrees with LJ's decision. I wonder, though, if this sets a precedent. Now that LJ has established that if an account is disruptive enough to LJ's servers, even if no bots or other malicious usage is occurring, their usage of LJ may be threatened. Perhaps it would be good if LJ established this as an overt policy. (I wonder about DW? Obviously they would not do ads, but if a comm or individual journal grew large enough to the point where it began to place a huge burden on the service, as ONTD has done...? If this were to happen, they would probably see it coming, so I am sure a policy would be created to address the matter.)
The other thing is, whither the 'ownership' of ONTD? Who 'owns' a community on LJ? According to Brenden, the new Editor of ONTD, "when I was approached last month - it was IMPLIED that LJ owned ONTD" (from this comment). Not knowing the actual quote, it's impossible to say what LJ really meant by this, but who really owns a community? What does it mean to own an LJ community?
Legally speaking, AFAIK, the individual content on a community is owned by the person holding copyright to it. AFAIK there is no implied agreement (legally) when posting to a community that you give up any of your copyright. (Could one be created, and if so, would it be legally binding? For example, if I made a post that said 'before joining this community, you agree that all content posted to this community belongs to the mods.') So if I make a post to a community, (if I understand correctly) I own the content of the post, legally speaking, and if you repost the content without my permission, you are violating my rights. The same is true with comments, I think.
However, is an LJ community=the sum of its content? I'm not sure. There's also the actual 'physical space' the comm is located at, i.e., its address on the internet, and the name of the comm itself, and any 'property' which it may own (say, icons... not that comms can use icons. But if they could!)
As for the address on the internet, if it is http://community.livejournal.com/YOURCOMMNAME, it can't be really said that the comm maintainer 'owns' it, but rather more like 'leases' it from LJ, and LJ is the true owner. If it were not an LJ comm, but some site SITENAME.COM, then that would be owned to whomever it was registered to. However, I doubt that the internet address is the same as the comm itself.
Then there's the actual name of the comm. However, I seriously doubt that anyone has trademarked the name of their LJ comm, if that is even trademarkable, given that you're not supposed to engage in commercial activity on LJ. I'm not even sure if McDonalds could file suit against me if I named my LJ comm "McDonalds," as long as I didn't claim that I was the official rep of McDonalds.
Well, however legally/philosophically one slices comm 'ownership,' the fact remains that maintainers have a lot of control over an LJ comm, even if they may not be the legal owners of it. Within LJ policy, though, this control is not absolute. If a comm is idle, LJ will under some circumstances get rid of the unresponsive maintainer and make a willing community member maintainer. This seems to argue that the maintainer's control, even in cases of them not being say, kicked off LJ or grossly abusing their power, depends on the will of LJ, and is not absolute. Perhaps this really argues that the comms do really belong to LJ, while the content belongs to whoever posted it/has copyright to it. (Does this policy, BTW, exist on DW? I couldn't find it in the FAQs)
(BTW, can I also break into say that I think this whole system where the maintainers can randomly remove each other is crazy? There needs to be an ultimate authority, IMHO)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 07:44 am (UTC)In retrospect it might have been an interesting way to test the Dreamwidth servers to see how they would hold up to the type of traffic this got them.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 07:47 am (UTC)Huh, if it's that kind of traffic, I think maybe they might want to talk to Mark or Denise about that.
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Date: 2010-04-10 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 07:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-10 08:09 am (UTC)The separate but related comm I mod would be a bit tough to move to Dreamwidth.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 12:09 am (UTC)We can handle moderately high-traffic comms if their activity is spread out over time. For instance, we're OK with
We are set up in such a way that we can add additional server power pretty quickly if we need to. But we'd have to see a long-term need for it, not a single day/week -- if, say, LJ went down and the whole of ONTD decided to move here for a backup for one day or whatever, it's likely that the whole site would crawl for everybody for that one night. :)
(I should add, having gone back and read your earlier comments in the thread -- an entry/journal/comm getting a thousand comments in an hour would be just fine. It's when a comm gets a thousand posts in a day, each with a thousand comments, and with a hundred thousand members like ONTD has, that there starts to be a problem ...)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-11 06:40 am (UTC)