New Boards.ie Terms of Use and Privacy Policy - your feedback welcome

onq wrote: »

For my money, there should be a policy of requested deletions being honoured by the site admins/mods for whatever valid reason.

By this I mean it should be a serious matter, for example, causing an invasion of privacy, or be abreach of someone else's copyright, etc.
It should not be frivolous - "it makes me look fat" - mind you, that's assuming you're not suffering from clinical depression about your size perhaps, and so it gets complicated.
The fact is that without adequate means of enforcement, any pictures can be downloaded by others and claimed as their own.

Deleting entire sets of posts by a particulr author may be desirable in csome cases but it ruins a thread.
Perhaps this shouldn't affect posts by other people which include quotations - again, this gets tricky.
I'm reminded of Demon Internets woes a few years back over IIRC an alleged defamation issue.
In an extreme case this may involve removing all references to the person making any claim.

In relation to copyright the matter becomes more thorny and I'll leave it to the experts.
To me, one view of the Upper Lake in Glendalough looks much like another taken by a similar camera from a similar position.
At the end of the day, the administrators have the final call and this should centre on running the site in an acceptable manner according to the acceptable norms of public behaviour - not an easy job, and good luck to them.

I'd suggest a legal eagle should be called in to advise but that costs money.
Still, its a prima fascia defence if there are ever allegations made about not properly administrating this site.

ONQ.

I don't agree with that at all. A photographer requesting to delete an image for any reason or none should have it deleted.

I don't want to bring more heat than light to the table, and I also don't want to talk through my hat-so I have looked at this closely over the last few days when I've had a few minutes here and there.

And an awful lot of the anxiety from users (coupled with reasonable responses from yourself Darragh-I have to say) seems to consistently run along the following lines:

ToU Policy: "You can't do this! If you do, we'll slap you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper, take your post, and run away with it. We (Boards.ie Ltd.) reserve the right to take your post and make off with it in any event. We also reserve the right to beat you with paper truncheons in perpetuity."

User: "But I don't want you taking my post into your garden and playing with it."

Boards: "We won't do that. We just want permission to put it on that wall there so our friends can see. We might take it in to show the Aunty if she visits."

User: "Sound. But it's still mine, yeah?"

Boards: "Sure it is. My dad's a lawyer, and he made me put that in."

User: "And I can get it back whenever?"

Boards: "Well, you couldn't up to now, anyway it might ruin the look of the wall if we keep taking stuff down."

User: "I kinda get ya. Thing is, you never asked to take it away to show others before either."

Boards: "No, but we're doing that now. It is *our* wall, like. But it's still your post."

User: "So let's update the agreement then."

Boards: "Cool, but I'll have to talk to my dad about that..."

Anyway, I think the phraseology of this document has caused a lot of the problem. Without knowing which legal person/entity put it together, it seems that they had little idea of the nuances of these communities-which I admit is no small thing to get your head around anyway.

The point being. The initial thrust of all this was presumably to cover boards' backside. Can you guys now look at it from a users pov wrt allowing the removal of what one might deem "creative works", like pictures, programming code, poems, anything that goes outside the remit of conversational discussion? There are enough mods here to do this on request, which surely won't be that often if things run as they have, and it won't mean granting users delete permissions after the 48 hours either.

Without negating the document (because lawyers fear any departure from legalese, I've found), can you, Darragh, in the plain language you have expressed the intent of the site in this thread and others, not insert a couple of lines enshrining the fact that users own their own works, that boards aren't going to make a buck off the contributions, (I know you've suggested amendments in this line and some others already), that users can be moved to a dormant usergroup on request, signifying their withdrawal from the site without breaking threads, in short that the ethos of the site hasn't changed.

Unfortunately, the initial draft-which I assume is now in force, and will be applied retrospectively, and the way it was/is worded has negated in many people's eyes, a lot of the things that they would have previously taken for granted about b.ie. I'm sure this is not intentional, but neither is it clear that many things remain the same, because this ToU policy has created doubt in many minds that this is the case.

i was always under the impression that you could delete/edit any post you made at any time you wished...lol... when does the edit icon disappear at the foot of posts ?

i also presumed there would be an option to get a mod to delete all your posts if you wished this action taken when closing your account, replacing each post with some standard blurb stating your gone and you took all your words with you.

imho this seems to be the correct ethical position that boards should take, the 'continuity of the conversation' should take a lesser preference over the wishes of the member who contributed his/her content even if they are only words.

imo you should not have the ability to delete your own content if it was copied into another post, eg. if you were quoted, those words should stay, or if other formats of content that you posted like photos ended up in someone elses posts as a copy they should stay also.

im not sure if this would create some sort of legal minefield for boards, i would of thought the opposite to be honest. it emphasizes that the content creator is solely and indefinitely responsible for the legal implications of the content published.

didnt facebook or mypage try to 'own' all content once by changing the TOS and had to do a quick u-turn after a community backlash ?

it wont affect me either way but i believe online community growth can stagnate by the wrong ethos.

On the one hand, it is a legal document and needs to be written in a legal manner. On the other, maybe we could look at taking a leaf from the Creative Commons people and posting a plain English interpretation as well?