February 17, 2006
DCist Ruins It For Everyone
As you know, DCist likes to let the cat out of the bag. We're constantly searching for ways to spread the word far and wide, from Fairfax to Frederick, soup to nuts. We also have a penchant for really screwing over a particular archetype: The Superfan. You know the type; they're the people who spend day and night toiling to sign up for e-mail lists comprised of mere tens of thousands of other superfans. They have worn the ink off of their F5 keys reloading websites for the first news of ticket presales. They wear pithy screen-printed t-shirts and dare you to resist their sarcasm. They're pissed, but mostly just at us.
We can't stop ourselves, though; we have to do it again. We don't know if you've heard, since it's been on the d.l., but there's this thing going down tomorrow night. It's called "Powerball," and it's secretly sweeping the nation. Sorry to your Powerball superfans out there, but we have a duty to our readers.
Powerball is the hipster lottery of the future. If you're the lucky one to win $365 million, you can afford all the Pumas and square-rimmed glasses you could ever want! You could literally donate millions to several charities. We're playing, and we think you should too.
Powerball tickets are on sale for the big jackpot drawing tomorrow night. The hippest of D.C.'s hip have already been lining up at liquor stores across the District to get them. Buy some before 10:59 p.m. tomorrow, and you too could have a chance to win. You Marylanders and Virginians can't play unless you come to the Federal City, and we hope that you do. We say damn the consequences! We expect the usual volley of complaints from the superfans saying we're hurting their chances of winning. We expect to be threatened with legal action for revealing this "secret" information. We don't care. We love information, and information wants to be free. Do you hear us? Free!!
Image, from flickr user Markybon, used under a Creative Commons license.
|
You might want to pay a little more attention to the creative commons license of images you use without formal permission. There are a variety of options in a Creative commons license, and the CC license used on that lottery image includes the restriction of noncommercial: "You may not use this work for commercial purposes."
While I know most or all of the DCist writers get no direct revenue from the site, DCist itself is still a commercial venture (as are all the -ist's) complete with for-profit commercial advertising as a source of revenue.
You should get permission to use the shot or remove/replace it.
We've addressed this issue before. In short: authors are not compensated, and are responsible for clearing rights. They are the ones using the images; they are not making money. Consequently, we consider this noncommercial use.
You're free to disagree with this interpretation, but please don't pretend to speak on behalf of the rights-holder. If you own the rights to the image, you're welcome to tell us that you consider the post commercial use; we'll then remove it. If you're not the rights-holder, you're welcome to contact him/her and provide notice of this use. But we're not going to respond to requests from third parties. Sorry.
I'll also note that the appropriate venue for this conversation is email. I think I speak for the rest of the staff when I say that we'd prefer for comments to be used to discuss the substance of the post.
My undergraduate statistics professor called the lottery a tax on stupidity.
My grad school econ professor had an interesting take on the lottery. He said the lottery, when played properly, offered the tiniest opportunity to provide vast returns for negligible investment.
Basically, he said that you should buy lottery tickets up to the amount of money that had no real value to you. For example, if you lost a dollar would you care? How about ten or twenty or fifty? Whenever you reach an amount that matters to you, then you've reached the maximum amount that you should pay into a lottery. (Marginal utility, basically.)
As for me, I spend maybe five dollars a year on the lottery, and only when it goes over $200 mil. Am I flushing that money down the drain? Yes, but for that dollar I buy the opportunity to play "what if" for several days.
I buy a lottery ticket and then burn it, then I hope mightily that I don't win. When I fail to win I feel a powerful sense of relief and well being.
For about 15 minutes, maybe longer, I get to enjoy the feeling that perhaps great wealth is in my future, and fantasize about what I'd do with it. That's usually about worth $1 to me...
Thanks, CCFan. And DCist Tom, I suggest you either talk to counse (or more capable counsel than you've got). I suspect that most folks with noncommercial CC licenses would be more than happy to see their work on DCist, but you should be embarrassed with that tortured justification you just gave. It's essentially saying that you're going to go ahead and infringe unless the copyright holder complains. Nice.
Not all people would agree that playing the lottery is a "tax on stupidity." Read this article from Slate that explains (from a mathematical standpoint) why it makes sense to play the powerball when the jackpot is this high.
http://www.slate.com/id/114577/
I'm afraid I'm not interested in your interpretation, MB. As I mentioned in the other thread, the analogy in my mind is to a bulletin board system that runs ads. Would posts from unpaid users constitute commercial use?
I don't think so. I could be wrong. But the only other person's opinion on this matter that I'm interested in hearing is the rights owner's. As I said, you're welcome to contact him or her.
Finally, let's keep in mind that Creative Commons is meant to make culture more open and useful -- I'd like to think, for enterprises like DCist that aim to do something productive. It was not meant to give people something to complain about in comment threads.
I'm an engineer. In Engineering school they taught us how to round numbers using the concept of 'significant digits'. In most calculations you would just use 4 or 5 significant digits max. For example, when you get a number like 0.000000007, that is 9 digits, you would throw away the last 5 digits, so you end up rounding it down to 0 because it's pretty much the same thing.
The probablility of winning the Power Ball is
1 in 146,107,962 = 0.000000007 = 0
You have NO chance of winning.
I am not an engineer and I haven't heard the term "significant digit" since chemistry class in 1993, but I thought it wasn't about abitrarily throwing away 4-5 digits but was a result of how accurate your measuring device was. For example if you use a ruler that can only measure down to a millimeter, then the result of any formula using that measurement cannot be trusted to amounts below a millimeter. Since the measurement device of your odds of winning the powerball is accurate down to a single ticket, they can accurately say your odds are .000000007.
Indeed you are wrong in your approach to this, Tom. And your lack of interest in other opinions doesn't really change that (tho' I suspect that more interest in other opinions might keep you from being as uninformed as you are on the matter). And if you had something more than lip-service interest the aims of Creative Commons, you'd understand the importance of respecting a license. And that's it from me on this.
(Other than observing that the title of this post is rather appropriate for this subject.)
MB,
I believe the point is this: we're a community oriented website that doesn't cover its costs and doesn't pay its writers. We are as careful as we can afford to be about the media we use on this site, and when there is doubt about the legality of something we're thinking of using, we cut it.
I think you've annoyed Tom on this because you've questioned his integrity and motivation without really having the first idea about what we do here. Tom spends hours on webapps that our audience finds fun and useful, and he doesn't make a dime on them. All our writers spend hours researching and writing their posts, and they don't earn a thing for them. And, quite frequently, the work we do here is taken and used by others without attribution or consent. So we're quite sensitive to the whole CC thing.
You couldn't be more wrong regarding our attitude toward the sanctity of a license, and parading your snarky legalese about in the comments section isn't helpful to us or the artists whose work we display. If you have legitimate concerns about what we post, by all means email us with your interpretation. Or, you know, ask us what we do or don't do before calling us bloodless corporate infringers.
MB, you seem to be quite a dick.
Ok, speaking as someone who teaches college courses on topics that cover the net and intellectual property issues, I'm sorry DCist folks, but you're dead wrong on this issue and it's not any sort of fuzzy matter for interpretation.
Really.
Look, you've made a mistake. And so you know, it's the sort of mistake that's very vexing for those of us who do put our work under the creative commons license. And yes, your rationalization regarding the writers not being paid, and that this somehow trumps that the DCist site itself is for-profit (no matter how small), is actually ridculous. I'm sorry if that sounds snarky, so help me, I really like you folks, and it's a statement about the argument, not any snarky slight against you as people.
Please also understand that everyone who uses and benefits from the creative commons licenses has a good reason to make sure that the CC agreements are understood and respects, even when the work doesn't happen to be our own.
Again, I'm saying this as someone who's supportive of DCist and has been a prolific contribute to images here ta DCist. If you really think this is a vague issue, I can talk with you all more in person. It really isn't, and I hope you'll really try to do the right thing about this and future image use.
Yikes, what an awful lot of typos in my last comments. 4am postings can do that to you. I hope you’ll pardon them and that the gist of what I was pointing out is still clear.
I did want to also say that I think that it’s fair and appropriate for people to be raising these concerns in public comments, and hence with the larger DCist reader community. A “we welcome comments, except critiques, those should be private and in email” position wouldn’t be very constructive, open, or just blog-ish in general. Whether you intend it or not, that’s starting to sound like what you’re asserting.
So you know, I’m also raising this issue with the DCist flickr group. I hope that you can eventually be persuaded that using images under a CC “non-commercial license”, without permission (directly from the photographer or through the inclusion of the DCist tag), is the wrong way to go.
I appreciate the tenor of your comment, John, and I appreciate that this may indeed be vexing. I honestly think that any mistake here has occurred between the split hairs of both the CC license AND the vagaries of our legal footing--something that is handed down to DCist. I think that maybe the best way to go is an email to one of our editors--I think it would really help. It may be that if you had the skinny from our end, you might be better armed to help us navigate these waters, now and in the future. Let's take a deep breath and do that, and I'm sure that afterwards, everyone will be better for it.
For my part, I'd just like to say that while I've known Tom for only a short while, I have found him to be exemplary of character, and I feel confident that he's not the sort of person who would avoid "doing the right thing" out of either convenience or malice. I am quite sure that his decision to run this photo did not stem from some sort of thought like: "Aha! If I willfully torture the wording of the license, I can get it in."
Whether or not a mistake was made, I can assure you that he acted in good faith. I surely hope that you don't mean to imply that he is otherwise suited. It would be, in my opinion, doing him a great disservice.
Jason, thanks very much for your kind and thoughtful reply.
Just to be clear, I don't have any doubt that DCist folks were and are acting in anything other than the best of intentions.
What I know and think about DCist folks:
1. While DCist itself is a commercial site--part of the larger for-profit Gothamist LLC group--the people doing the real labor of running the site and creating this great media do it without pay and do it with all sorts of great motives that have nothing to do with profit or greed.
That doesn't change the commercial status and copyright requirements at all, BUT I sure don't want to give the impression that I think DCist folks were operating out of greed or malice. Like you said, that would be a great disservice, and it's not at all intended by me.
2. The DCist folks I've spoken with have had what I'd characterize as "good net politics": democratizing media, addressing the digital divide, supporting the open source and creative commons movements, etc. Part of the reason I was so surprised by how this got handled was precisely because I do think editors and writers at DCist are net savvy and have such good net politics around stuff like Creative Commons licenses.
All this is to say: While I think there was some bad decision making and behavior here, I think DCist and the folks who put in the work to make it happen rock. Big time. :-)
Finally, I'm glad to hear that you think there's room for discussion and persuasion here. I hope you can also see how, from some of the initial responses by some DCist folks, it looked like it wasn't a message that some folks were open to hearing. (I think some of the early critique by other commentors was fair, if understandably hard to hear.) So it sure looks like some more friendly persuasion and pressure is required. But hey, then there's more discussion about both DCist and Creative Commons in the process, and ultimately that's a win-win situation.
Anyhow, now it's 6am. So please pardon what I suspect are even more typos than my earlier post, if not downright rambling.
It's not a problem. I think if you had been the one to set the tone of discussion, things would have gone a lot better.
The first stage of a 150m investment in regional museums is praised for boosting visitor numbers...