**MEGATHREAD:** RECENT EVENTS & THE FUTURE OF THE BOARD

[_Kishkumen]

True. But we don't have to associate with him or talk to him either.

Praise Jebus!

[_Eric]

True. But we don't have to associate with him or talk to him either.

Praise Jebus!

Rev. Kish,

With all due respect, did you contact Matt Groening or the good folks at Fox to get permission before using the Simpsons reference quoted above?

I think you might be in violation of the law, good sir. Please report yourself to the local authorities.

[_Chap]

Banned, put on a compulsory break, or whatever:

I have registered Joseph as a 'foe' and I shall therefore be spared the sight of him on this board.

I am still uncomfortable about him being out there somewhere, however ...

[_Doctor Scratch]

If you wish to post a photo, simply place a link to it and then notify me, liz3564, and/or harmony via PM. If it's not of a real-life non-celebrity--in other words, if it isn't a real-life picture of SeattleGhostWriter, Simon Belmont, or whomever--or if it doesn't have a copyright notice or otherwise doesn't seem like it'll cause a problem, then we can alter the BBCode to make the link into a hotlink. Sound good? This way, our webhost will be much less liable to receive DMCA takedown notices, frivolous or otherwise, which in turn will make us much less likely to be suddenly taken offline. (In very rare cases, if you're a person who has been known to post photos in legitimate [non-mocking] ways to demonstrate the points you're trying to make--Kevin Graham's Book of Abraham diagrams and Uncle Dale's statistical charts come to mind--then I can enable your image posting privileges permanently. That'll be the extreme exception, though, not the rule. Sorry.)

I don't like this solution. There are many people here who like to link images pretty regularly, and waiting for mods to enable them and post them is going to kill the pace of those threads and make this forum inferior to a lot of other forums.

No one at MDB did anything illegal. The use of Berman's photo was practically a textbook case of the Fair Use doctrine. I'm sorry that a perfect storm of events (vindictive crackpot embarrassed at having his pornographic fiction outed, personal image of the man involved, Dreamhost irresponsibly pulling the entire site immediately without giving us time to respond) combined to cause MDB to be taken offline for a few hours, but I don't believe we should change a thing.

Except for maybe finding a new Web host. Maybe one in Canada, where the DMCA doesn't apply.

Yeah, I agree with this. I don't think that "pre-screening" the links is the solution here.

[_Kishkumen]

Rev. Kish,

With all due respect, did you contact Matt Groening or the good folks at Fox to get permission before using the Simpsons reference quoted above?

I think you might be in violation of the law, good sir. Please report yourself to the local authorities.

I have a summons in my hands right now. Damn you, Joseph!

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

I support Shades in not banning Joseph. That policy is what sets this board above some others. Ironically, Joseph is hardly deserving of the favor. He doesn't contribute to Discussion here; he uses the board as a showcase for his inferior brand of infantile humor and is already ignored by many. Maybe if we ask him politely to leave, he will just go?

[_why me]

Why would I or my brother file a DMCA action here? You have me confused with the porn writer. You aren't stealing our photos... now the Deseret News, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Brigham Young University, Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and other LDS holdings.... that may well be a different story.

Quit stealing and you have nothing to worry about.

It is NOT site administration who is stealing and posting the photos of others, it is a few of the 'honest' people doing it here.

If all gets shut down it is because these thieves are not being controlled.

Well, I am surprised. Here I thought that you were the most antimormon poster on the board. And now here you are attacking this board. Quite amazing. I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it myself.

You are doing wonderful work for the LDS apologists. Thank you. Please keep the pressure up on this board and all other antimormon boards. You may even get a special invite to the FAIR conference where you can discuss the rules and regulations of copyright infringement and teach apologists the trick of the trade.

[_Yoda]

As a Mod, frankly, I am hesitant in being the one doing the screening.

What if one of us makes a wrong call?

None of us are skilled at copyright law. We're either likely to be too paranoid based on the board already taken down, or too lienient, based on our inboxes being filled with impatient requests.

I also agree with Ms. Jack that this basic screening will slow down the flow of threads.

Shades, it's your board, and you know I have always been your most avid supporter, but I am concerned about this.

I'm thinking that the best way to go is either to put the img code back for everyone, or leave it off for everyone, the way Infy has decided to go.

How are other boards handling this? Did our host indicate that we would be under more of a "watch" based on these incidents, or is it still up to us to police ourselves?

There just aren't any easy answers for this one.

[_Blixa]

In the beginning, our poster Blixa hotlinked an image that she found at the NASA website. "Hotlinking" means to have the image itself appear in a post, even though it's hosted or stored elsewhere, rather than just placing a hyperlink to it that someone has to click on in order to view. Our poster Joseph replied in that thread, asking her if she'd obtained permission from that photo's copyright holder. When she didn't respond, he posted comments to her a couple more times.

For my part, I didn't bother doing anything about it because I knew he could send her a PM whenever he wanted if he was really concerned. For all I knew, they had started dialoguing about it. This turned out to be wrong, because Joseph contacted the photo's owner (and copyright holder) and alerted him to the presence of his photo here.

Shades, could you address the bolded part here? As far as I can tell, Joseph only once asked me about copyright. Of course I didn't see that, because I have him on ignore. I just now went back to the thread in question and looked through all of Joseph's posts on it. There were no other posts to me about copyright. The thread was very short, by the way, since it had been bumped to Telestial as it discussed, albeit very obliquely, temple content.

It is possible that Joseph has been following me around in unrelated threads for weeks yammering about copyright. If so, I have not seen these posts, because---ignore.

He sent me no pm's about the alleged "theft."

Has anyone who doesn't have Joseph on ignore seen any unrelated copyright rants to me? Because as far as I can tell the idea that Joseph continued to comment to me about this is not true.

[_asbestosman]

Moving on, although this particular bout wasn't Joseph's fault, he has nevertheless made it known that he'll continue to inform copyright holders of images used here that he deems to be infringements. However, our mutual understanding is that he'll first send me a PM if/when he sees something questionable, and if he ends up contacting a copyright holder, then he'll give them my e-mail address so that they'll come to me with their takedown request and not our hosting company.

I dislike Joseph immensely, but this seems like a reasonable compromise. Maybe everyone else could, I dunno, give him credit for agreeing to a reasonable solution. So the board was down for a day. Big deal. I know it was traumatic for me. I was forced to go outside and enjoy a swimming-pool. The horror!

Ironically, by putting Joseph on ignore, it may be more difficult for him to warn you of copyright infringement thus putting the board at greater risk for a DCMA takedown. Thank you, geniuses, for letting your anger blind you. I may curse for the sunburns and fresh air I'll get this summer.