The worst thread

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

This fread is a fucking toolbox. I was all "fair enough" until I had a think about it last night and you know what? GET A FUCKING GRIP ON REALITY!

This is shit we type on the internets. If you think you can make money on something you've written then go make some fucking money on it. Don't post it in a goddamn message board. Here's the deal - I will use whatever the hell I goddamn well please for #6 (permission or not) If you aint happy with this guess what - that's right you can go fuck yourself. Or grow the fuck up, one of the two.

I'm not planning on making money from it, you sure as hell don't seem to be. If someone else manages it then well fucking done that guy. You want to get all butthurt cos you never thought of it then be my guest but FFS we're not talking the great american novel here and if we are then save it on an encrypted hard drive an guard it with your life. Don't broadcast it in cyberspace, don't expect some joke hippy play on the word "copyright" to somehow protect you.

Are you serious? Are you seriously, for one thing, calling any and all creative works shared in whole or in part on this forum "shit we type on the internets"? Because a lot of it is, but a lot of the things people post are essays, stories, poems, art etc. that they did not write here, did not write for here, and are intended for later use in their own projects. If you want to reduce those posts to "shit we type on the internets"... well, I think that's unbelievably insulting to everyone who has posted an art or writing project out of a desire to share with/gain feedback from a community they care about and respect.

Are you really going to "I will use whatever the hell you goddamn well please (permission or not)"? Not only is that disrespectful in the extreme, it's illegal as hell. By law, everything I write, including this post, is copyrighted to me, and unless I release my rights by explicitly saying so, you can't legally reprint it. But the legal aspect isn't the one that bothers me... it's the complete and utter disrespect of that statement. Are you going to print Roger's rants without permission? Fred's art? Cain and Kai's essays? LMNO's fiction? If that happens, the inevitable end result of such a slap in the face is the end of this project and upheaval of this community.

You can consider everything you post here internet ramblings, discordian poop or whatever you want, but don't denigrate the efforts and contributions of people who take their writing more seriously, and happen to share some of it here.

Then you should mark all of your work Copyright, If every Nigel post says "Copyright by Nigel" then no one will accidentally think you meant it when you said Kopyleft and try to use your content without permission*.

If you are ever going to publish something like poems, stories etc... you should not post them on Internet Forums first. This opens up all sorts of issues and many publishers will not accept work that has been published on the net or posted on the net. Indeed, there is still a lot of questions surrounding the legal status of Internet Posts. For example, perhaps I have a copy of something you wrote here. Five years from now, PD.com is gone, the server blew up, there was no backup and all the data is gone forever. If I published your work as my own... you would have NO legal protection because you would be unable to prove your wrote it first. I wouldn't do that, cause I'm not an asshole... well, not in that way at least.

IF you really want to protect your Intellectual Property, make a printed copy, mail it to yourself, don't ever open it and store it somewhere fireproof. Then, if you ever go to court, the court will have a sealed, dated (from the postmark) copy to prove you wrote it at that time. Internet forums do not provide any real IP protection. 



* Except P3Nt, who apparently is gonna pirate the whole forum, turn it into the next Nobel Prize for Literature, not give any credit to anyone, then take the millions of dollars and sitcom guest appearances for himself.... he's a bastard.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So, Rat, I take it that you view anything posted anywhere on the internet as an "internet post", and therefore not worth worrying about intellectual property rights over?

How about "John Dies at the End"? That's an internet post.

It seems as if you're failing to recognize that there is a lot of work that gets posted in Bring & Brag or Or Kill Me that did not begin life as an "internet post". I've dug up old stories, essays and poems and posted them here before the I'll-publish-anything-I-see free-for-all, assuming that my rights as the author would be at least respected.

At the time there was no Intermittens, and certainly no talk of publishing for profit. Why would I, or anyone, assume there ever would be?

It's been well established for some time now that forum posts are the intellectual property of the author, and having proof of authorship in the form of a post with a time/date stamp is evidence enough to uphold copyright if necessary. Saying "if you want to retain your rights, don't post it on the internet" is naive at best, malicious at worst, and far from accurate.

[Rumckle]

If anyone makes a single dollar off of any issue of Intermittens I will eat a medium sized hat.

Sounds like incentive enough for me.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, Rat, I don't NEED to mark my work "copyright by Nigel" because the DEFAULT is copyright. If I want to release rights to my work, I have to specifically state as much, with each individual piece.

Some publishers do consider work posted on the internet "previously published", but that's COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. Also irrelevant to this discussion is how best to protect your copyright. What IS relevant is people within this community showing appropriate respect for the work of others, so that work continues to be shared.

If I KNOW this forum is going to become a battleground where I have to defend my right to have any input in how or where or which of my work is used, I'll simply delete everything and stop contributing, and I am pretty sure I won't be the only one.

[P3nT4gR4m]

So, Rat, I take it that you view anything posted anywhere on the internet as an "internet post", and therefore not worth worrying about intellectual property rights over?

No - it's the owner that does that. By posting it on the internet.

If you think you have a serious piece of literature that you're planning on making money off you should do what JK Rowling does with her Harry fucking Potter novels - that is not post it on the internets.

Moaning about someone gathering up shit you essentially threw away the rights to and making a buck out of it is tantamount to complaining about someone recycling your garabage - that was my point. Do I think some of the posts here could make money for the authors if published as a book or newspaper/magazine article? Hell yeah. Fact is they aren't - the authors have already thrown away that chance b y posting them here. Now either that was intentional or they are idiots. Since the ones complaining the loudest about Crams schemes seem to be claiming it wasn't the former I'm left with no alternative but to assume the latter.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I don't expect to make any money off of anything I write, and that's not what this is about. What this is about is the attitude some people seem to have that if they can see something, they can take it. YOU may think that posting something online is tantamount to "throwing away the rights" to it, but the legal system doesn't, at all.

If you really feel that way, why not scavenge Blogspot for some really good writing, and then publish it? I'm sure you'd get away with that...

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm out of this fread - it's getting on my tits. I've made my position clear regarding my "works" and I'm quite happy to respect anyone's wishes about theirs. (FTR: note I said "wishes" and not "opinions")

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm out of this fread - it's getting on my tits. I've made my position clear regarding my "works" and I'm quite happy to respect anyone's wishes about theirs. (FTR: note I said "wishes" and not "opinions")

So "I'll use what I damn well please, permission or not" is now "respect"?

If you can't concede to being wrong about the legality of stealing other people's work online, at least have the courtesy not to insult them to their faces.

[LMNO]

It seems insulting to me, that you appear to presume that Recognition, Respect and Fairness is measured in $.

Odd that you thought I was only referring to money.

At the beginning, the situation was framed a certain way... There were certain game rules we understood and accepted.  It was a free publication, we were grabbing what we thought was good, everything's on the level.

What happened is that someone posted as if they had decided to change the game rules, without consulting the rest of the players, and profiting off of it.

The issue isn't whether he had the "right" to do it due to Copyright, it's whether the prinicple involved was the "right" thing.

Sure, he could argue that he should/does have the right to sell what we freely gave him, and that he might even have legal standing, based on the "Kopyright authors" thread... But that doesn't make doing it JUST.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

So, Rat, I take it that you view anything posted anywhere on the internet as an "internet post", and therefore not worth worrying about intellectual property rights over?

How about "John Dies at the End"? That's an internet post.

It seems as if you're failing to recognize that there is a lot of work that gets posted in Bring & Brag or Or Kill Me that did not begin life as an "internet post". I've dug up old stories, essays and poems and posted them here before the I'll-publish-anything-I-see free-for-all, assuming that my rights as the author would be at least respected.

At the time there was no Intermittens, and certainly no talk of publishing for profit. Why would I, or anyone, assume there ever would be?

It's been well established for some time now that forum posts are the intellectual property of the author, and having proof of authorship in the form of a post with a time/date stamp is evidence enough to uphold copyright if necessary. Saying "if you want to retain your rights, don't post it on the internet" is naive at best, malicious at worst, and far from accurate.

Nigel, I just gave you an example of why it is not a good idea. A) Many publishers won't accept it. B) The Internets is not a work in stone and you MAY NOT HAVE a copy of "proof of authorship in the form of a post with a time/date stamp is evidence enough to uphold copyright if necessary". The server might die tomorrow and all that 'proof' would be gone in a *poof*.

So, Rat, I take it that you view anything posted anywhere on the internet as an "internet post", and therefore not worth worrying about intellectual property rights over?

For me personally? What I post on the Internet is stuff that I don't have a concern about IP over. I assume that if I put it on the Internet, other people might copy it.

For other people? I would say that IF they think their post has valuable IP, they should carefully consider if giving it away for free on the net makes sense... they should properly mark it as copyright (or under whatever license they choose)... finally, they should make sure to actually portect their IP by having actual evidence that their work is properly copyrighted.

I don't care if people think their posts are gold. That's fine... but they need to think about A) sticking gold on the net in a forum post, B) making sure their gold is clearly labeled as their gold.

Personally, I don't find munch in Intermittens to be all that applicable outside of the Discordian community, I think its value on the street is probably not what it would cost to print.

Let, say that Intermittens 1 is 35 pages. Let's say printing in full color on nice paper is $0.20 per page. That's $7.00 just to break even. Do you think people are gonna pay more for Intermittens than Newsweek? What is the actual VALUE of the IP involved here?

Saying "if you want to retain your rights, don't post it on the internet" is naive at best, malicious at worst, and far from accurate.

Nigel, if I didn't have to deal with this shit in real life, on a regular basis, I might agree. However, I do have to deal with IP and the Internet regularly. I have to hang out with lawyers and listen to all sorts of legal opinions, ramblings and bullshit. I get to hang out with some of the 'brightest minds of 21st century digital law'... and you know what they say?

Let me paraphrase without the legalspeak:
... if you want to retain your rights, don't post it on the internet...

OR (as I stated in the last post)

Copyright it in the proper manner first.

I think you are completely misunderstanding my position on this, so let me be clear:

I DON"T GIVE A FUCK HOW YOU CHOOSE TO PROTECT YOUR POSTS. I WILL RESPECT WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE.

You absolutely have a copyright on ANYTHING you post. However, if ... in another thread, you say something like "My Work is Kopyleft" you shouldn't be surprised if people thought they were allowed to do as they will with it. Further, IF you think some story/poem etc IS actually valuable MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT REALLY REALLY PROTECTED FOR REAL.

I am never gonna rape this forum for content and use it without permission. I wouldn't respect anyone who did, because I think that sort of behavior is shitty.

However, personally... my private opinion... I think I've made clear.

What happened is that someone posted as if they had decided to change the game rules, without consulting the rest of the players, and profiting off of it.

That seems odd, since:

Ok, so Rumkle pointed out that there is a store here in Melbourne that will print magazines for free if they like them, and then sell them and split the profits with the people behind the magazine...
So I was wondering what intermittens crew think.

that doesn't look like changing the game rules to me.

Cram's second post:

I think it should be up to the editor

looks like discussion, not changed game rules.

In fact, the whole first page looks like 'DISCUSSION', not changed game rules.

Get some perspective.

[LMNO]

Get some perspective.

I was gonna split my profits with Telarus.

I think it should be up to the editor what they do with their issues and any revenue potentially generated from them.

I'd like to be the first one to profit off my labor.

Yeah. So, anyway...

[Iason Ouabache]

This thread is all kinds of retarded. How supremely ironic for Discordians to suddenly get so butthurt about something as stupid as copyright issues.

If anyone makes a single dollar off of any issue of Intermittens I will eat a medium sized hat.

Yeah, this. The fact that you guys are contemplating going to small vanity presses should be a big clue here.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

After a quick phone chat with one of our IP lawyers, I also got some advice on the future state based on discussions in the Kopyleft thread.

If you want your content to be covered under a CC license, you should define that with the content and not in a separate thread. Any post not marked defaults to copyright. Proof of copyright can be presented digitally, if you can prove non-repudiation... that is you can prove that you didn't manipulate the date stamp, or that no one else manipulated the date stamp etc.

As an aside, he seemed to think that this current situation would be very interesting in court. By law, all of our work here is copyright, however, given that kopyleft content has been published and has an existing 'common' meaning, anyone that published the material for profit, could be found to have had a reasonable expectation of the will of the author.

He said it would end up depending on the judge and their interpretation, but that the lawyers on both sides would have some very interesting arguments.

Also he said this was not legal advice and shouldn't be considered as legal advice.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Rat, whether posting online is a "good idea" is IRRELEVANT TO THIS DISCUSSION, which is about respect and legality. How I protect my copyright is beside the point. The fact that someone might be able to get away with stealing other people's work is simply not relevant. It's a straw man.

This whole discussion has taken place countless times on countless other forums, including the ISGB forum which is a forum for a trade organization which has a lawyer who is highly versed in copyright law. Don't bother with your "I schmooze with lawyers" appeal-to-authority argument... again, it's irrelevant.

What is relevant here is whether this community is going to choose to respect the authors who contribute not only to the forum discussions, but also to collaborative projects like Intermittens. This is an issue of community standards. I feel that a consensus on this is important, because otherwise I believe that a lot of people will pull their work and stop contributing. It certainly isn't an issue of money, but of intent.

Regardless of how I've protected my copyright, it wouldn't be worth it for me to sue an Intermittens editor for misappropriating my work, but if that was to become the "community standard" here, it would leave a sour taste in my mouth and I would be unlikely to participate in any future projects, or to post my work here, and I know that I am not the only person who feels this way.

For the record, to the best of my knowledge I have never declared any of my work "kopyleft", and at least one of my pieces that is in an Intermittens issue has also been published elsewhere. For free, of course, but with my permission and proper attribution.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

After a quick phone chat with one of our IP lawyers, I also got some advice on the future state based on discussions in the Kopyleft thread.

If you want your content to be covered under a CC license, you should define that with the content and not in a separate thread. Any post not marked defaults to copyright. Proof of copyright can be presented digitally, if you can prove non-repudiation... that is you can prove that you didn't manipulate the date stamp, or that no one else manipulated the date stamp etc.

As an aside, he seemed to think that this current situation would be very interesting in court. By law, all of our work here is copyright, however, given that kopyleft content has been published and has an existing 'common' meaning, anyone that published the material for profit, could be found to have had a reasonable expectation of the will of the author.

He said it would end up depending on the judge and their interpretation, but that the lawyers on both sides would have some very interesting arguments.

Also he said this was not legal advice and shouldn't be considered as legal advice.

Isn't that what both 000 and I have been saying?

And whether OTHER people here have released work as "kopyleft" has no bearing on those of us who haven't.