--part1_ac.4c0fee.25b9e5ce_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Forwarded per request. There are some very valid points made here and IMO, a discussion by the Advisory Board is long overdue on this topic. Virginia (Ginger) Cisewski "It takes two to speak the truth: one to talk, another to hear." ----Henry David Thoreau --part1_ac.4c0fee.25b9e5ce_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-Path: <teylu@home.com> Received: from rly-yc03.mx.aol.com (rly-yc03.mail.aol.com [172.18.149.35]) by air-yc01.mail.aol.com (v67_b1.21) with ESMTP; Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:12:19 -0500 Received: from mail.rdc1.tn.home.com (ha1.rdc1.tn.home.com [24.2.7.66]) by rly-yc03.mx.aol.com (v67_b1.21) with ESMTP; Fri, 21 Jan 2000 11:11:57 -0500 Received: from home.com ([24.2.25.34]) by mail.rdc1.tn.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.00 201-229-111) with ESMTP id <20000121161156.YVCT9818.mail.rdc1.tn.home.com@home.com> for <FEATHER2s@aol.com>; Fri, 21 Jan 2000 08:11:56 -0800 Message-ID: <388883F0.53664E16@home.com> Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 10:06:11 -0600 From: Sandy <teylu@home.com> Reply-To: teylu@home.com Organization: CornwallGenWeb: http://www.rootsweb.com/~engcornw/ X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FEATHER2s@aol.com Subject: The REAL issue/ [was Re: Copyright] References: <Pine.SV4.3.96.1000121080041.210C-100000@saltmine.radix.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ginger, I'm sending you the following in your capacity as a member of the USGenWeb Advisory Board, in hopes you will give consideration to this as a topic of discussion for the entire board. It is a message I've posted to the USGW-CC-L county coordinators list, in the context of YET ANOTHER "debate" over copyright law. If you see see fit, please feel free to forward this to the advisory board list. I would genuinely like to see our project address what I believe is are some fundamental problems which merely serve to perpetuate ill-feelings and bad situations. Thank you, Sandy Bolick cc: Vance County, NC ========================= I think the bigger question is WHY the issue even comes up (and keeps coming up!). Instead of launching off into useless debates over something that doesn't matter (like what everybody THINKS the law says or should say, when after all what matters is what the courts have decided it says).... the REAL issue, to me anyway, is WHY it keeps coming up! Seems to me in most instances, it's purely a matter of ill-feelings, quite often because someone perceives they've been misled and/or used. If you're really concerned about the success of the USGenWeb Project, seems to me THAT is the issue to address! Good grief, if a REAL issue of copyright infringement arises, then it's not something to hash out on a list anyway. That's the time the involved parties need to retreat to private discussions, hopefully with their respective legal counsel. But from a PROJECT standpoint, I think we need to analyze WHY this issue keeps coming up, and whether we can make some changes to lessen the liklihood of people ever getting to the point of being upset in the first place. When somebody wants their files removed, the reaction always seems to be one of "What can we do? Is it really copyrighted? How can we keep it?" That strikes me as missing the point. The question is WHY do they want to remove the files? WHAT has happened to cause this person to want to pull out of the project? In other words...WHAT have WE done, as a project, to cause this person to be upset to the point of wanting to withdraw their files? COULD we have avoided ever having this happen? CAN we do something to help prevent it happening again? There will always be the fluke situation you coudln't/can't do much about. But the project seems to take the "attitude" that EVERY situation is a "fluke," and is the result of some flaw in the person who wants to pull out. But I don't think that's true. I think we've seen a number of people withdraw files for essentially the same reasons, and yet we don't, as a project, seem to be willing to address the situation(s) that LED to the problem.....and consider that MAYBE, just MAYBE we could make changes to better ensure the same problem doesn't happen for essentially the same reasons a second (or third or forty-blue-millionth!) time. The structure of the archives of this project, from what I've seen, seems to be THE biggest problem at the "root" of most of the complaints that lead to withdrawal of files and these long [useless] debates over copyrights. We keep getting complaints because people feel they did NOT know the Archives were really the project of one individual, that this individual had negotiated an exclusive contract to house the archives on the servers of one particular for-profit company, and more recently that the "owner" of the archives project is even employed by the company with whom she made the agreement. Folks who complain seem to sense a conflict of interest here. Frankly, I don't see why they shouldn't! To make matters (possibly) worse, MANY pages of this project seem to encourage people to make financial "donations" and "contributions" to this for-profit company...and more than one person has mistakenly assumed this meant the company was NONprofit. EVEN if the project never changes any of that structure, it most certainly can make everyone who visits or participates in any way FULLY aware of it - VERY clearly and prominently. The project does NOT do this, and hence should not be surprised when people feel they've been misled and are upset. People are DOUBLY upset in ANY circumstance where they feel they would have made a different decision if they'd known the full situation and that NO effort was made to clearly inform them of the situation from the onset. I submit the problem is OURS as a project, and that the PROJECT is at fault in much of this. And probably the bulk of the problem IS an ethical one, not a legal one of copyrights and such. And yes, David....I think there IS a question here of WHY people are upset about the use of material THEY contributed to this project. The very FACT someone donated their files in the first place ought to tell us ALL they wanted to help and to SHARE. So just WHAT happened to cause such a complete turn-around? I think you can pretty safely assume they didn't suddenly decide they don't want to help other researchers. So why doesn't the Project address the WHY instead of jumping off into some posture of "how can we keep their files even though they don't want us to?" -Sandy --part1_ac.4c0fee.25b9e5ce_boundary--