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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: 2010-04-14 12:37 am (UTC)And when a person is banned from LJ, any posts they make in comms are auto-deleted, IIRC.
It gets murky with comms. I guess I'm a little naive but I can't imagine a mod saying "No, we own this content." I mean, really? I think that would be frowned upon if brought to the forefront. Ultimately the mod is just a person in front of a screen just like all of us, who says they have rights over my 500 word post about the dynamic between SailorMoon and SailorMars?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 01:07 am (UTC)Blogger Law.
I found it on the AbsoluteWrite writer forums.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 01:12 am (UTC)"But by including a terms of service which spells out that you will have a license in all content posted in the site and more specifically that you will not have a duty to modify or withdraw posts but you may do so if you choose, you can ensure that you have effective control over the user-driven content on your site even if you do not have actual ownership of the content."
I think this is exactly what DW and LJ do have, so they're pretty clear under this. (A license and them reserving for themselves the right to withdraw/delete postings)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 01:25 am (UTC)I find it hard to believe also, and also, technically they don't have such powers, IIRC, because you can always delete posts as the creator... although IIRC I recall that it can be tricky to delete them if they were locked and you're banned from a comm.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 01:29 am (UTC)However, I think that if a person is banned from LJ and owns a comm, the comm still sticks around, but it's modd-less (presuming there was only the one mod to begin with.)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 02:40 am (UTC)But being banned from a specific community won't remove the posts or comments unless the moderator (or person being banned) deletes them.