[FLORA.org HelpDesk] Please reply about your thinking on FLORA.org 2.0 (fwd)

[Russell McOrmond]

I just send out the following message to the primary contact address for
each site on FLORA.org. I have not yet determined a "due date" for when
I need to know what people are doing with their sites. This is just a
periodic request I am sending out.

I will now start to flag each information provider as to whether they
are adopting CC licenses. Those that indicate that they will be, like
Rosaleen Dickson and all her sites, will not be sent all the future
messages on this topic.
--
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Petition for Users' Rights, Protect Internet creativity and innovation
Canadian Election 2004: http://digital-copyright.ca/
Find out where parties and candidates stand on important Tech issues!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 14:26:32 -0400
From: Russell McOrmond <***@flora.ca>
To: ***@flora.ca
Subject: Please reply about your thinking on FLORA.org 2.0

You are being sent this message as the primary contact for:
Federation of Taxpayers who can Count
http://www.flora.org/taxpayer/

If you are not the proper contact, please forward this message to the
correct contact address and let me know who that person is.

Executive Summary:

I am wanting to get confirmation from each information provider that
they have read and understand the new policy for FLORA.org 2.0.
Specifically I am wanting to ensure that everyone understands the changes
around copyright of materials published.
http://www.flora.org/flora/legal.shtml

If you could let me know that you have already licensed your pages under
a Creative Commons (or equivalent) license, or when you will be able to do
so, let me know.

If you have decided to move your site to an alternate provider, let me
know so that I can help facilitate the move in any way that I can.

Longer summary:

As you probably know, FLORA.org will soon be a decade old. While I am
still excited to be host of FLORA Community Web and providing this service
to the community, my own priorities have changed. I now spend most of my
time dealing with areas of public policy such as Patents, Copyrights,
Trademarks, Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons, and
Open Access.

In order to bring FLORA.org to being more in-line with the other work I
am doing, some changes were required. In the past people were just
posting whatever materials that they found that was related to their
organization. Sometimes not enough attention was paid to the source of
the information, or whether the redistribution on FLORA.org would
represent an infringement of the copyright of the author. An example is
the many republished articles from the mainstream media that appear on
websites and in mailing lists.

I want to move FLORA.org to being more like an Open Access Journal.
This means that all the material posted on the site must be authorized by
the copyright holder, and must be licensed in an Open Access license such
as those from the Creative Commons.

There are many reasons to do this. The most obvious is that by having
this policy that FLORA.org can become host to groups that are very well
informed on issues surrounding copyright and Open Access, Creative
Commons, FLOSS and related movements. The other is that we will have more
certainty that the information published today can be legally distributed
and archived well into the future, without FLORA.org or any mirrors
needing to worry about legal issues.

If you have any questions about this change in FLORA.org policy, please
join the discussion in the FLORA.org Helpdesk.
http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

I have posted a number of messages over the past year about this change,
and these messages are available in the archives for review.


Russell McOrmond
FLORA.org Community Web
Founded some time before February 1995
http://www.flora.org/flora/help/flora-admin-help/1344
-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

[Krishna E. Bera]

is PERC included in this?
if so i will bring it to the Board.

Post by Russell McOrmond
I just send out the following message to the primary contact address for
each site on FLORA.org. I have not yet determined a "due date" for when
I need to know what people are doing with their sites. This is just a
periodic request I am sending out.
I will now start to flag each information provider as to whether they
are adopting CC licenses. Those that indicate that they will be, like
Rosaleen Dickson and all her sites, will not be sent all the future
messages on this topic.
--
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Petition for Users' Rights, Protect Internet creativity and innovation
Canadian Election 2004: http://digital-copyright.ca/
Find out where parties and candidates stand on important Tech issues!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 14:26:32 -0400
Subject: Please reply about your thinking on FLORA.org 2.0
Federation of Taxpayers who can Count
http://www.flora.org/taxpayer/
If you are not the proper contact, please forward this message to the
correct contact address and let me know who that person is.
I am wanting to get confirmation from each information provider that
they have read and understand the new policy for FLORA.org 2.0.
Specifically I am wanting to ensure that everyone understands the changes
around copyright of materials published.
http://www.flora.org/flora/legal.shtml
If you could let me know that you have already licensed your pages under
a Creative Commons (or equivalent) license, or when you will be able to do
so, let me know.
If you have decided to move your site to an alternate provider, let me
know so that I can help facilitate the move in any way that I can.
As you probably know, FLORA.org will soon be a decade old. While I am
still excited to be host of FLORA Community Web and providing this service
to the community, my own priorities have changed. I now spend most of my
time dealing with areas of public policy such as Patents, Copyrights,
Trademarks, Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons, and
Open Access.
In order to bring FLORA.org to being more in-line with the other work I
am doing, some changes were required. In the past people were just
posting whatever materials that they found that was related to their
organization. Sometimes not enough attention was paid to the source of
the information, or whether the redistribution on FLORA.org would
represent an infringement of the copyright of the author. An example is
the many republished articles from the mainstream media that appear on
websites and in mailing lists.
I want to move FLORA.org to being more like an Open Access Journal.
This means that all the material posted on the site must be authorized by
the copyright holder, and must be licensed in an Open Access license such
as those from the Creative Commons.
There are many reasons to do this. The most obvious is that by having
this policy that FLORA.org can become host to groups that are very well
informed on issues surrounding copyright and Open Access, Creative
Commons, FLOSS and related movements. The other is that we will have more
certainty that the information published today can be legally distributed
and archived well into the future, without FLORA.org or any mirrors
needing to worry about legal issues.
If you have any questions about this change in FLORA.org policy, please
join the discussion in the FLORA.org Helpdesk.
http://www.flora.org/flora/help/
I have posted a number of messages over the past year about this change,
and these messages are available in the archives for review.
Russell McOrmond
FLORA.org Community Web
Founded some time before February 1995
http://www.flora.org/flora/help/flora-admin-help/1344
-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

[Julien Lamarche]

Post by Krishna E. Bera
is PERC included in this?
if so i will bring it to the Board.

From my understanding, if it is then it implies many things, including:

- The PEN articles cannot be published on the web site unless licensed
under CC

- Contributors to the forum must agree to the license. They cannot
re-post entire work (newspaper articles for example) that are not
compatible with CC. I assume they can still post quotes or a few
paragraphs, that being protected under fair use.

- Information on Waste-line must be made available under CC.


The Planet Friendly forum also has a phpBB2 forum. I think they do
have re-post of entire articles. What are you going to do in that case
Russell?


À prochaine,

Julien

[Russell McOrmond]

Post by Krishna E. Bera
is PERC included in this?

PERC.ca is not on FLORA.org, so it is not mandated by the changes being
made to FLORA.org. While the hosting sponsor for PERC.ca and FLORA.org is
the same (FLORA.ca, AKA me ;-), the policy isn't the same.

That said, it would be beneficial for PERC to adopt this policy itself.
Many of the reasons why I am doing it for FLORA.org would apply to PERC.

Post by Krishna E. Bera
if so i will bring it to the Board.

Please do, but bring it up as a PERC policy decision, and not something
that PERC must follow.

[Marian]

Hi Russell,

Have I complied with your request to your satisfaction? I have put a CC
license on the homepage of the OFTP website but kept the copyright notice
for the logo and images, and for articles about which I have not yet
discovered the preferences of the author. I've been planning and making
changes to the site since I became the new website manager earlier this
year, and one of them relates to copyright. There are so many pages that
it's taking a long time and I'm not yet sure which articles need to be
removed, if any, but it has been my intention to verify permission and
remove any that were used without it. Do you need me to speed up this
process?

:-)
Marian
www.ontariohomeschool.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell McOrmond" <***@flora.ca>
To: "FLORA.org helpdesk" <flora-admin-***@flora.org>
Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 2:34 PM
Subject: [FLORA.org HelpDesk] Please reply about your thinking on FLORA.org
2.0 (fwd)

Post by Russell McOrmond
I just send out the following message to the primary contact address for
each site on FLORA.org. I have not yet determined a "due date" for when
I need to know what people are doing with their sites. This is just a
periodic request I am sending out.
I will now start to flag each information provider as to whether they
are adopting CC licenses. Those that indicate that they will be, like
Rosaleen Dickson and all her sites, will not be sent all the future
messages on this topic.
--
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
Petition for Users' Rights, Protect Internet creativity and innovation
Canadian Election 2004: http://digital-copyright.ca/
Find out where parties and candidates stand on important Tech issues!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 14:26:32 -0400
Subject: Please reply about your thinking on FLORA.org 2.0
Federation of Taxpayers who can Count
http://www.flora.org/taxpayer/
If you are not the proper contact, please forward this message to the
correct contact address and let me know who that person is.
I am wanting to get confirmation from each information provider that
they have read and understand the new policy for FLORA.org 2.0.
Specifically I am wanting to ensure that everyone understands the changes
around copyright of materials published.
http://www.flora.org/flora/legal.shtml
If you could let me know that you have already licensed your pages under
a Creative Commons (or equivalent) license, or when you will be able to do
so, let me know.
If you have decided to move your site to an alternate provider, let me
know so that I can help facilitate the move in any way that I can.
As you probably know, FLORA.org will soon be a decade old. While I am
still excited to be host of FLORA Community Web and providing this service
to the community, my own priorities have changed. I now spend most of my
time dealing with areas of public policy such as Patents, Copyrights,
Trademarks, Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons, and
Open Access.
In order to bring FLORA.org to being more in-line with the other work I
am doing, some changes were required. In the past people were just
posting whatever materials that they found that was related to their
organization. Sometimes not enough attention was paid to the source of
the information, or whether the redistribution on FLORA.org would
represent an infringement of the copyright of the author. An example is
the many republished articles from the mainstream media that appear on
websites and in mailing lists.
I want to move FLORA.org to being more like an Open Access Journal.
This means that all the material posted on the site must be authorized by
the copyright holder, and must be licensed in an Open Access license such
as those from the Creative Commons.
There are many reasons to do this. The most obvious is that by having
this policy that FLORA.org can become host to groups that are very well
informed on issues surrounding copyright and Open Access, Creative
Commons, FLOSS and related movements. The other is that we will have more
certainty that the information published today can be legally distributed
and archived well into the future, without FLORA.org or any mirrors
needing to worry about legal issues.
If you have any questions about this change in FLORA.org policy, please
join the discussion in the FLORA.org Helpdesk.
http://www.flora.org/flora/help/
I have posted a number of messages over the past year about this change,
and these messages are available in the archives for review.
Russell McOrmond
FLORA.org Community Web
Founded some time before February 1995
http://www.flora.org/flora/help/flora-admin-help/1344
-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

[Russell McOrmond]

Post by Marian
Hi Russell,
Have I complied with your request to your satisfaction?

You have more than complied with the request.

a) As discussed in other threads, the recent change applies to those who
are hosted on FLORA.org, not all the sites that I'm sponsoring. The
sponsored sites like http://www.ontariohomeschool.org/ that are on
http://newdelhi.flora.ca/ are of course encouraged to make the change, but
aren't required to as part of the changes to FLORA.org.

b) For those sites on FLORA.org (See list at:
http://calcutta.flora.ca/#servers ) they just need to indicate that they
have read, understand, and will work toward adhering to the new rules.
There may be articles or pages that they don't know the status of on their
site. They don't need to try to find all these pages right away, but be
willing to slowly clarify the status of pages, and be willing to remove
anything where it turns out that it is infringing copyright.

Post by Marian
I have put a CC license on the homepage of the OFTP website but kept the
copyright notice for the logo and images, and for articles about which I
have not yet discovered the preferences of the author.

" Logo, photos and articles copyright © 1996-2004. Please request
permission before using. Thank you!
Creative Commons License
The text on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License."

This note at the bottom is quite confusing. You may want to create your
own legal.html page that describes the process. A page can either be in a
creative commons license, or required to ask permission.

You chose Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike as a license which says
that you do not have to get additional permission to copy, distribute,
display, and perform the work in a non-commercial setting, and to make
derivatives as long as the derivative is in the same license.

Implicit in copyright is the fact that you need to ask for permission
for certain other uses not mentioned in the license but that are covered
under copyright. For instance, if someone wanted to include an article in
a book (a commercial use) then they would need permission from the
copyright holder. If they wanted to make a derivative work and distribute
under any license other than Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike then
they would need to get permission to do so. A license agreement does not
mean that these are the only things that can be done, but that these are
one set of permissions for a given situation - a different license can
always be granted by the copyright holder for other situations.

Post by Marian
Do you need me to speed up this process?

What you are doing is great. Thanks!

How many of the other teaching parents are aware of what you are doing?
Having peer-distribution and peer-production be something that teaching
parents know about (and thus their kids know about) would be great.

[Marian]

Hi Russell,

Thanks for your explanations. I'm still not sure how to combine the more
stringent copyright needs of specific page elements with the broader license
intended for informational text. On a page that just has an article by a
particular author, I can choose among the options according to what the
author prefers, but what about pages where the text is
distributable/copyable without permission but the logo and photo require
permission? Or am I misunderstanding the implications of the license and
should feel reassured that the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license
would provide all the necessary protection? The logo should only be used to
represent OFTP, and explicitly so, and the photos (of which we don't have
many yet, but will) shouldn't really be used at all except on our webpages,
since they combine a photo with the logo elements so as to tie in with the
webdesign of the whole page. (see www.ontariohomeschool.org/template1.html)
Would you have a suggestion about how to cover all that?

Post by Russell McOrmond
" Logo, photos and articles copyright © 1996-2004. Please request
permission before using. Thank you!
Creative Commons License
The text on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License."
This note at the bottom is quite confusing. You may want to create your
own legal.html page that describes the process. A page can either be in a
creative commons license, or required to ask permission.

Is the solution you're suggesting that I not use the CC license after all
but create something tailor-made instead, that would detail the logo, photo,
informational text, article differentiations?

Post by Russell McOrmond
How many of the other teaching parents are aware of what you are doing?
Having peer-distribution and peer-production be something that teaching
parents know about (and thus their kids know about) would be great.

In our last newsletter, I made a website manager's report to our 550 or so
members, in which I asked authors of articles to let me know which CC
license they might want on their page. I gave the link to
creativecommons.org and introduced the idea with the fact that this is "one
of the alternative choices promoted by our website sponsor, FLORA" -- and
encouraged them to find out more about Flora on your FAQ page.

It might be interesting to have a more detailed article on the issue itself,
as well. It would probably need an educational angle, or an approach that
relates to what kind of future our children will be entering. If you're
interested in submitting something, please feel free. :-) The time limit for
submissions for the next issue is September 17th -- send to Wendy at
***@ontariohomeschool.org. Let me know either way, in case I decide
to do something related.

Thanks again for your help
:-)
Marian
OFTP


-
Message part of the FLORA.org HelpDesk: http://www.flora.org/flora/help/

[Russell McOrmond]

Post by Marian
Hi Russell,
Thanks for your explanations. I'm still not sure how to combine the more
stringent copyright needs of specific page elements with the broader
license intended for informational text. On a page that just has an
article by a particular author, I can choose among the options according
to what the author prefers, but what about pages where the text is
distributable/copyable without permission but the logo and photo require
permission?

What type of activities are not permitted? One of the things that I
argue is that Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license is the default
license for the Internet. In fact, a license that required more
permission for Internet distribution would simply not work, and thus in
this case the work should not be put on any public website.

Post by Marian
Or am I misunderstanding the implications of the license and
should feel reassured that the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
license would provide all the necessary protection?

Protection from what? It is hard to understand the word "protection"
unless I know what people are trying to be protected against.

Post by Marian
The logo should only be used to represent OFTP, and explicitly so,

Sounds like you should register your logo as a trademark. Copyright is
an entirely different area of law.

Post by Marian
and the photos (of which we don't have many yet, but will) shouldn't
really be used at all except on our webpages, since they combine a photo
with the logo elements so as to tie in with the webdesign of the whole
page. (see www.ontariohomeschool.org/template1.html) Would you have a
suggestion about how to cover all that?

I don't understand what you mean, and how you want to "cover" these
things.

Are you claiming that any of the pages under
http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/ontariohomeschool.org/ or the image at
Loading Image...
are infringing your copyright?

If you believe that what archive.org (and google, and ...etc) are doing
is a problem, then the root of the problem is your publishing these pages
on the public Internet. Putting a copyright notice that says that
archives are not allowed to make copies while you continue to publish the
page on the public Internet is essentially not possible.

It is possible to use a "robots exclude" file that would advise search
engines and archives to not make external copies of your site. If you did
make your site semi-private, then that becomes a commercial site and
we would need to discuss sponsorship issues.

Post by Marian
Is the solution you're suggesting that I not use the CC license after
all but create something tailor-made instead, that would detail the
logo, photo, informational text, article differentiations?

I am definitely not suggesting that you avoid the CC license. I believe
what you need to do is clarify what uses you want to prohibit. I can then
help you determine if what you want to prohibit is even appropriate or
possible to prohibit on the public Internet. It is possible that you will
need to cease public publication of specific pages.

There are many times when materials cannot be published on the public
Internet at all, and need to be put into a private (password protected,
etc) site.

Post by Marian
It might be interesting to have a more detailed article on the issue
itself, as well. It would probably need an educational angle, or an
approach that relates to what kind of future our children will be
entering. If you're interested in submitting something, please feel
free. :-)

I write many articles, but I have never written anything for a youth
audience. Most youth I speak to informally are even more liberal about
copyright reform than I am. They think that "the man" (government,
police, etc) trying to disallow unauthorized music and movies to be
distributed via P2P is quite insane.

It is the older people who tend to have to be convinced about the nature
of the battle. Youth have bypassed the battle and largely think their
parents and the law are out of touch with modern times.

Post by Marian
The time limit for submissions for the next issue is September
either way, in case I decide to do something related.

I can help co-author something if that is of interest. I have a lot of
existing articles that may be interesting to look at to get ideas of what
to write about.

Two recent ones:

CIPPIC replies: Russell McOrmond (Webmaster for Digital-copyright.ca)
http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/view/428

I was not a candidate in the previous election, but I believe it would
be useful for people actively involved in technology law issues to
offer their own thoughts on the questions for parties and candidates
from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).

Abuses of Digital Rights Management (DRM).
http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/drm-abuse.html