I was going to let this thread go without additional comment, since, after all, the people who destroyed the yahoo version of trdev through their arrogance, and then, in a pique, destroyed the knowledge and potential learning for those that come later, by sending to oblivion 13,000 messages accumulated over nine years, are gone, out of it, and have finally, one would hope, no longer in positions to do any further damage.
But, as Bev Ferrell saw fit to fire a “final message” back and not allow any discussion, I guess it should go on here. Because there’s much to learn, and also because Bev obviously sees things through a rather unique set of goggles. So here goes. Here post is entitled “Archives and Personal Responsibility”, and lest the good lady start blustering about copyright issues, which she seems not to understand, her message is reproduced for the purposes of commentary, under fair use doctrine.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but frankly after the last two days….there has been as usual, a lot of leaping to conclusions without proof of investigation of circumstances.
First of all, it is YOUR personal responsibility when you join a group to determine if you wish to receive individual mails, digests or read from the web or two of the above. The messages you send are, by YAHOO TOS, copyright to YOU, which trdev has always followed and expressed in the guidelines which most of your didn’t bother to read. You should have copies in your mail box if you submitted by mail. Our closing note reminded members that the content from others in their mail boxes still remains owned by the poster and must be acknowledged or permission obtained, by Yahoo TOS and US govt copyright law.
Second, it is YOUR Personal RESPONSIBILITY when you join a group to determine the TOS for the hosting organization ( egroups, yahoo), which many of you probably did not read either when YAHOO bought egroups where we started.
Read below.. although you have copyright to your words, any messages currently displayed or LEFT on ANY board/group belongs to YAHOO groups TOS to do with AS THEY WISH, including displaying for the world, adapting or deletion.
As has frequently been the case, arrogance results in determining OTHERS don’t understand. In fact Bev seems to be wrong. Bev suggests we “read below” and in fact what we find is clear. Yahoo ONLY claims the right to the material in order to promote the specific group. It’s crystal clear. (see below, really, it’s in what Ferrell quotes). I’d add that Ferrell’s message is also rambling, frequently mixing up various points, and being self-contradictory in terms of who owns what under copyright law. Here’s the clause that Bev provided from Yahoogroups policy:
With respect to Content you submit or make available for
inclusion on publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Groups, the license
to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and
publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the
purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to
which such Content was submitted or made available. This license
exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such
Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you
remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.
Bolded portion above is absolutely clear. They do not own the content. They have a granted licence to use the content to promote the group. That’s it. I was around when they initially attempted total ownership, actually, and how they quickly backed off. Bev goes on…
Under those guidelines, the archives cannot belong to any one person or organization except Yahoo if they are still on the boards. Backing them up and transferring to a university setting would require contacting the owners of all 33000 messages and asking permission. Yahoo has total rights over the groups.
Actually, the conclusion is probably correct, that since individual ownership remains with the authors, it “might” be problematic to “republish” them. However, her first premise is wrong. THe list owner probably owns the copyright to the collection of messages. This is how, for example, a museum of items can transfer them to other media without asking the estates of, let’s say, the letter writers. There are indeed two copyright issues, one for individual messages, one for the collection. In any event, there would have been simple way to make almost anything work to preserve the archive.
Leave the list such that the archives are open and public, but no more posts are accepted. There’s no downside to that unless one is paranoid about something.
Open the archives public and then allow an rss feed so the material can be more freely available. There’s also probably tons of other options, including moving the entire thing to google, let’s say, or finding new folks to run the list. The excuse given about why the latter wouldn’t be done was laughable, in the first notification these people sent.
(I know this is probably even more boring to read than it is to write, and heck, it’s boring…)
Bev goes on:
Third, Yahoo is even now revising how they will handle groups in the future and may delete at any time any group or as stated above, open it for display for all of your comments, email addresses in the signature files etc. and set it out for the world to see if the owners do not respond in a specified time. Yahoo may eventually be purchased by someone else and who knows where your messages would be.
This is a fact of internet life. I’m a little stumped as to what strange perspective is being displayed here, but if you are on the Internet and have a doctorate that is directly related to technology use, you’d think there would be an understanding that when you post on the Internet, you have NO control over it, PERIOD, regardless of laws, or anything else. Ferrell is absolutely right, that you don’t know what will happen tomorrow. So? I’m not willing to live my life in such a paranoid way as to worry that some bit of flotsam I write is going to be “misused” by somebody who maybe buys :Yahoo. Seriously. This is just plain silly.
If you are worred about such things, don’t participate in any way, even under pseudonyms. If we are worred about such things, then we should never share.
Finally:
Fourth, we have tried with THOUSANDS of unpaid person hours both on the list and behind the scenes with individual help, to deliver a list that was free of spam, commercialism and netizens who deliberately set out to ruin communities by not signing their names or assuming “nom de plumes” because they are too cowardly to do it openly. This includes those whose scruples did not stop them from stealing your messages and posting them elsewhere under their own names or “nom de plumes”. Nor did you appreciate the whole month it took us to change all of the NOMAIL addresses to “SPecial NOTICE” (the same thing) to send out a message to alert everyone and to stop a university in Europe from feeding out your messages in digest to their servers. open with all of your content, personal feelings and email contact info for the world to see and who was then “social network” analyzing who was talking to whom. We asked you NOT to change them back to nomail and 1500 of you promptly went out and changed them back. We sent out one special notice in 8 years and now because of all of those who changed their settings, I have to delete each person 30 at a time in order to deliver one last service to those who probably won’t appreciate it, and let them know that TRDEV-L is back in operation and to go there.
Now, I think we are to the core of the matter, and why Bev (and her helpers) shut the list down, and destroyed the information contained in it. First, damn all those people who exercised their freedoms as adult learners, and decided what was best for themselves. Just damn them when the could of just heeded what Bev “told” them to do.
And just damn them for being unappreciative or our collective and individual martyrdom as owners and moderators. Unappreciative children. So, we are going to take the ball, let the air out of it, cut it into thousands of little bits, and drop it in the sewer. And that, readers, is what they did.
I wish all of the owners and moderators well. I know that they have all been well intentioned, but unfortunately misguided about a) what it takes to make a list work in this millenium; b) issues of security and c) about their own power and responsibility. It happens to the best.
On the other hand, the reasons offered why the trdev list was terminated without additional attempts to pass it on to a new owner are unconvincing and there is the ultimate sin, in my mind and one that should make anyone commiting it subject to censure and pariah-hood in the profession; deleting 13,000 messages, and the wisdom, and even silliness contained therein, thus guaranteeing that nobody could learn further, or laugh, and enjoy the content.
There is simply NO excuse. So, now there IS no ball to take home, or to share.
