READ & HEED: Our New Forum's Terms & Rules

[EnolaGaia]

As you know by now, the shutdown of the FTMB and our migration to a new site was largely motivated by legal concerns - most particularly compliance with recent stricter regulations regarding personal data and protecting personal data.

As a result of such changes in our operating environment, a new set of Terms and Rules will be effective over at the new site.

In this thread from last week:

NOTICE: Terms of Service (TOS) & Forum Contents
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/notice-terms-of-service-tos-forum-contents.64917/

... we advised you that the current FTMB terms and conditions would continue to apply up until the migration to our new site. These current terms can be reviewed at:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?help/terms

We further advised you that your prior consent to the FTMB terms would presumptively carry over as tacit consent to the new terms established for the new forum.

This tacit consent was claimed to be justifiable based on:

- Our (the providers') right to change the terms at any time, as stated in the current terms and ...
- Our claim that changes and / or additions to the current terms represented such a change in the interest of continuing the same service.

We (the FTMB staff and affiliated personnel) have now agreed on the set of Terms and Rules that will govern the new forum.

These new Terms and Rules are based on the same basic themes and points in the current FTMB terms.

They have been revised, reorganized, and augmented for the sake of clarity, more precise specification of responsibilities, eliminating ambiguities and loopholes, and compliance with the more restrictive legal environment within which we must now operate.

Logging onto and using (e.g., posting to) the new forum will presumptively and effectively constitute acknowledgement and acceptance of these new Terms and Rules. Period / full stop / no ifs, ands or buts ...

If you do not wish to continue using the forum under these new Terms and Rules, we will afford you the opportunity to opt out by disabling or deleting your user account.

The second post below presents the full text of the new Terms and Rules.

 

[EnolaGaia]

TERMS AND RULES


The "Providers" ("we", "us", "our") of the service provided by this web site ("Service") are not responsible for any user-generated content or accounts.


The Content You Submit to the Service

All content you submit, upload, or otherwise make available to the Service ("Content") may be reviewed by our staff. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services).

All Content you submit represents your own views, selections, or preferences. Your Content does not represent any views, selections, or preferences attributable to, or the responsibility of, the Service or its Providers.

You are granting us a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service.

You retain copyright privileges over the Content you submit, subject to the granting of license noted above.

We may remove or modify any Content submitted at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be acted upon only at our discretion and subject to the Service's Privacy Policy and applicable data protection regulations.


Content Types We Discourage or Prohibit

Do not submit for public access or viewing any Content that represents private, confidential, or personally identifiable data relating to you or anyone else. Your rights and privileges with regard to your personal data are specified in the Service's Privacy Policy available elsewhere in this site's Help section. If you submit personal data so as to expose it to public viewing, you agree to accept full and sole responsibility for your submission and any consequences deriving therefrom.

You agree not to use the Service to submit or link to any Content that is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, that invites or inflames discord (e.g., "trolling"), or serves solely to promote a particular political, religious, or commercial interest or agenda (excluding announcements of relevance to the Service's thematic scope).

You also agree not to use the Service to submit or link to any Content that contains adult or objectionable content, contains the personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws.

You are entirely responsible for the contents of, and any harm resulting from, both your Content and your conduct while using this Service.


Your Relationship With the Service and Its Providers

We may terminate your access to all or any part of the Service at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice.

If you wish to close your account, please contact us. Closing your account will neither nullify nor terminate the aforementioned license you grant us as a condition of registering for and using the Service.


Minimum Age Requirement

This Service is available only to users who are at least 18 years old. If you are younger than this, please do not register for this Service. If you register for this Service, you attest that you are of this age or older. We accept no responsibility for registrants below this age or users who explicitly or implicitly misrepresent their age.


These Terms and Rules

These terms may be changed at any time without notice.

Obtaining a registered user account and using the Service constitutes acceptance of these terms. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not register or use the Service.

Registered members from the former Fortean Times Message Board (FTMB) migrated onto this new forum presumptively and effectively acknowledge and accept these Terms and Rules by using this Service. If you do not agree to these terms, please refrain from actively using the Service and contact the forum staff to disable or delete your user account.

 

[INT21]

...All content you submit, upload, or otherwise make available to the Service ("Content") may be reviewed by our staff. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). ..

Does this include the contents of PM messages ?

INT21

 

[EnolaGaia]

...All content you submit, upload, or otherwise make available to the Service ("Content") may be reviewed by our staff. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). ..

Does this include the contents of PM messages ?

I'm pretty sure the answer is 'No'. As far as I know, we (or at least staff members of my rank) cannot access your PM's / Conversations, even using our super-moderator / admin powers.

Private messaging among registered users is an auxiliary feature to the core 'Service', which refers to the open forums and 'Content' posted there.

If, on the other hand, someone were to copy and post part or all of a PM to the open forum it would be subject to staff review, etc., etc.

 

[stu neville]

Does this include the contents of PM messages ?

No. PMs are just that - if people want mods to review such content they can be forwarded to us.

 

[INT21]

Stu neville,

This is the bit I was wondering about..

All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services).

It appears to imply your content (and PM is content) may be obtained by services outside the confines of the site.

As for copying PM or partial PM to a forum, I have always considered that to be 'bad form'. Maybe something to threaten an aggressive PM er with if they don't desist.

INT21

 

[David Plankton]

You are granting us a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service.

You retain copyright privileges over the Content you submit, subject to the granting of license noted above.

This seems a bit hazy to me (I know t&c's are supposed to be like that). In very broad layman's terms?

 

[INT21]

...You retain copyright privileges over the Content you submit, subject to the granting of license noted above...

Appears to imply that should any of your content be passed on to a third party then, although you have no overriding authority to prevent this, you will still hold copyright to your scribbling s.

All this is very legalistic, but I suppose we need to thrash this out in the open.

INT21

 

[Coal]

Seems fine and boiler-plate like.

 

[EnolaGaia]

This seems a bit hazy to me (I know t&c's are supposed to be like that). In very broad layman's terms?

It's actually identical to the corresponding provision of the current FTMB terms and conditions, which has been there all along.

Basically, it means that anything you post on the open forums is presumptively ours (the forum's) to cite, quote, copy, etc., at our discretion.

The 'publish / re-publish' bit was most relevant in the past situation when the forum was strongly associated with the magazine - e.g., allowing the editorial staff to publish IHTM stories posted to the forum.*

*Note: I'm not sure they ever really did that without contacting the IHTM poster.

We retained the 'publish / re-publish' bit because these terms are commonly used in reference to online content and no longer pertain exclusively to print publication.

The 'copyright privileges' bit reflects another provision that's always been in place, but now rephrased for clarity.

If you post content to the forum that you've copyrighted elsewhere, you've given us a permanent / irrevocable license to present that content. If you subsequently copyright content you'd already posted to the forum, that doesn't nullify the license your act of posting accorded us.

Bottom Line: If you post it here, we have the right to present / display / maintain it in perpetuity.

 

[EnolaGaia]

...You retain copyright privileges over the Content you submit, subject to the granting of license noted above...
Appears to imply that should any of your content be passed on to a third party then, although you have no overriding authority to prevent this, you will still hold copyright to your scribbling s.
All this is very legalistic, but I suppose we need to thrash this out in the open.

Basically 'Yes' (for material posted to the forum which you've already effectively copyrighted). See my response to David Plankton above.

The earlier version of this provision in the current FTMB terms stated:

"You retain copyright over the Content."

This can easily be parsed to imply that any Content you post is somehow magically copyrighted by the act of posting, or that the Content you post is presumptively already copyrighted.

 

[stu neville]

All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services).

Email address and IP. We cross reference.

...copying PM or partial PM to a forum, I have always considered that to be 'bad form'. Maybe something to threaten an aggressive PM er with if they don't desist.

It's not copied publically, rather the content forwarded via PM to a mod.

 

[elle]

You agree not to use the Service to submit or link to any Content that is defamatory, abusive, hateful, likely to offend, that invites or inflames discord, or serves solely to promote a particular agenda (excluding announcements of relevance to the Service's thematic scope).

So no more posts from ******* ***** then?

Also, it might be good if the new forum didn't support YouTube links. That would cut down the drivel submitted by ****** by about 98%.

(Specific members' usernames deleted in response to a formal report issued to staff.)

 

[INT21]

... serves solely to promote a particular agenda..

That's a possibly gray area.

A site promoting, say, model steam locomotives, is promoting an agenda. It appears that I could not point someone here who has expressed an interest in the above to a site on steam.

Possibly I could do it via PM, but that would deny others the chance to visit.

Could get interesting.

Hi Elle,

Took you long enough

INT21

 

[EnolaGaia]

So no more posts from ******* ***** then?
Also, it might be good if the new forum didn't support YouTube links. That would cut down the drivel submitted by ****** by about 98%.

Given my staff role it would be inappropriate to acknowledge or validate any applicability attributed to the particular members cited - especially since I've just deleted the names in response to another member's formal report.

Having said that, and without so much as implicit comment on the members cited ...

... I know what you're talking about with regard to off-putting content and cursory posting of media items from elsewhere.


One of the side-effects in having to address and codify data issues is a need to specify any relevant boundaries on Content.

The old / current FTMB rules already prohibited most of the content types cited in the new Terms and Rules. These new terms add the 'trolling' and 'promotes an agenda' items to the previous list. These additions afford us a clearer specification of things we won't permit as well as a solid basis for dealing with them without it being purely a matter of personal interpretation or second-guessing.

Having said that ...

The new terms afford us a license to be more proactive and decisive in putting out interpersonal fires and eradicating doctrinaire diatribes that aren't relevant to the subject at hand.


The issue of profligate YouTube postings was discussed in the course of devising the new rules, but mainly with respect to copyright and content ownership. YouTube has rigged things so that you can't easily post a URL to a video without the video being embedded in place of the URL text.

Switching over from staffer to fellow member and speaking personally ...

A large proportion of YouTube and similar external media postings are simply dumped onto the forum as the entirety of a post. There's no introduction or explanation of their relevance, nor any free text citation of the address / URL from which they are drawn.

I call such items 'drive-by' postings because they are cursory contributions of sometimes questionable relevance / value casually fobbed off on the rest of the audience. IMHO they represent the same sort of off-putting behavior as graffiti 'taggers' who ruin someone else's work by spray-painting their own names over it.

My point in saying this is that a considerable part of the drive-by video posting problem (as a problem for the forum) isn't so much the video posting per se as the drive-by / cursory / context-free manner in which much of it is done.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... serves solely to promote a particular agenda..
That's a possibly gray area.
A site promoting, say, model steam locomotives, is promoting an agenda. It appears that I could not point someone here who has expressed an interest in the above to a site on steam.
Possibly I could do it via PM, but that would deny others the chance to visit. ...

It's definitely and deliberately gray by design.

The point was to finally establish a basis for proactively dealing with discussions that were always, or devolved into, doctrinaire dogma-fests and / or members who seem to use the forum only as a personal megaphone.

In recent years the most obvious example of how such things have caused problems for the members and staff relates to 'political' content. We've tried advising people to engage rather than pontificate, and it didn't work. We've tried segregating political discussions within their own dedicated section, and that didn't work either. All along, the staff has been encumbered by trying to handle the problem absent any clear basis in terms and rules.

There will be no problem with the steam locomotive referral example you gave or similar asides. It would only become an actionable problem if (e.g.) a nasty argument broke out between steam and diesel advocates with neither side contributing anything more than 'we're right; you're wrong' - all of which would be irrelevant to the forum's stated topical focus and scope.

We nuke a lot of such agenda-promoting content already, in the form of incoming spam (e.g., from the endless stream of east Asians hawking remedies and male potency enhancers). You don't see that activity. One could say this 'promoting agenda' provision is designed to give us a clear license to deal with what might be construed as 'spam from within'.

 

[Nemo]

I'm confused/stupid about the "copyright" stuff.

So I post a real decent ghost picture and the picture is verified by...let's say Kodak and they (Kodak) says that the picture/neg. hasn't been tampered with.

Does that mean the new FTMB/CFI now own the the rights to the said photo (and make money of said photo, while I get bugger all)?. If that is the case, I won't be posting any pictorial evidence.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I'm confused/stupid about the "copyright" stuff.
So I post a real decent ghost picture and the picture is verified by...let's say Kodak and they (Kodak) says that the picture/neg. hasn't been tampered with.
Does that mean the new FTMB/CFI now own the the rights to the said photo (and make money of said photo, while I get bugger all)?. If that is the case, I won't be posting any pictorial evidence.

First ... How familiar are you with what a copyright is? It's an internationally recognized protocol for creators of content / materials such as text and images by which a creator may annotate his / her creation so as to reserve legal rights to, and control over, the thing(s) created.

The current FTMB is not copyrighted with respect to member postings / contributions. There's a copyright notice at the bottom of FTMB pages, but it refers solely to the forum software and the software producer's 'ownership' of it.

The new FMB will be similarly un-copyrighted with respect to postings / contributions.

In other words, the forum hasn't - and the forum won't - express or claim any 'ownership' over any content you post here. However, we have always claimed - and will continue to claim - that the act of posting such original content on the forum represents a presumptive license to hold and use such content for the purposes of the Service.

To use your example for illustration ...

Let's say you post your ghost photo and it contains a copyright notice identifying you as the copyright 'owner'. Whatever else you do with your copyrighted photo is your business, but once you post it here we've got a permanent and irrevocable license to hold and display it here.

The same license rights apply if you post the photo without any copyright annotation, and these license rights don't change or disappear if you formally copyright the photo later.

The new FMB is afforded hosting space by CFI, but the new forum is in no way 'owned' by CFI. In other words, the new FMB forum will be as legally separate from CFI as it is required to be from Dennis and the FT magazine.

The new FMB forum is not being established as a for-profit enterprise or an entity engaged in 'business activity'. This is why donations are under discussion as the means for sustaining the FMB financially. If anything, such a self-definition would be suicidal, because it would expose us to draconian regulations and risks far more elaborate than we already face and probably far more complex than we can handle as a rogue operation.

We have no plans to mine the forum so as to market its contents. The provisions regarding copying, etc., refer to what we may legally do on the forum itself, for the sake of the Service the forum affords its users, and under the presumptive license your posting of the photo gave us. That's it; that's all.

 

[Lb8535]

Gaia you have my respect and profound sympathies. Promulgating policy to this group, whose basic nature is to deeply analyze and question every teeny bit, is like herding cats and putting socks on an octopus simultaneously.

Once you post it here they can keep using it. Forever.
Don't post it if it's really dirty unless it's in the Dirty Posts chat
(boy, that's asking for trouble. Scratch that.)
Americans, let's keep a lid on it
Before you post a link ask yourself....why

 

[stu neville]

So no more posts from ******* ***** then?

Also, it might be good if the new forum didn't support YouTube links. That would cut down the drivel submitted by ****** by about 98%.

(Specific members' usernames deleted in response to a formal report issued to staff.)

..that little outburst earns you a warning. Amber, as it was unprovoked and aimed at two separate people. Do that again and you're gone.

 

[David Plankton]

If you post content to the forum that you've copyrighted elsewhere, you've given us a permanent / irrevocable license to present that content.

That makes it clearer, thanks.

 

[maximus otter]

So no more posts from ******* ***** then?

** ******, *******!

******* *****

 

[stu neville]

Let's say you post your ghost photo and it contains a copyright notice identifying you as the copyright 'owner'. Whatever else you do with your copyrighted photo is your business, but once you post it here we've got a permanent and irrevocable license to hold and display it here.

The other effect of this is it allows other posters to freely quote you. This board - any board - wouldn't work if permission had to be sought and re-sought every time someone wanted to quote someone else.

 

[Coal]

is like herding cats and putting socks on an octopus simultaneously.

I'll take the octopus. Easy *looks for spade*

The other effect of this is it allows other posters to freely quote you. This board - any board - wouldn't work if permission had to be sought and re-sought every time someone wanted to quote someone else.

On 'my' forum the rule is that you may not download and re-use other members' own photos - this has happened, which is small-minded at best, and I recommend folk insert copyright messages into their own pictures.

And if I find out who it was, they're toast.

 

[henry]

** ******, *******!

******* *****

i think she meant me

 

[maximus otter]

i think she meant me

maximus otter

 

[McAvennie]

18+ site… Didn't know that was what we were moving to, but OK, why not… Bit of excitement…

 

[stu neville]

18+ site… Didn't know that was what we were moving to, but OK, why not… Bit of excitement…

It's easier than trying to enforce some sort of Parental Advisory. Quite apart from anything else, as far as I know we haven't had any self-proclaimed teenagers on here in a decade, and in the days when we actually enforced COPPA - pre 2005 or so - there was a single under-16 who got in, and as far as I know never posted.

We decided on the 18+ purely as a lot of threads contain adult themes, for want of a better word, and we won't be in a position to fend off Mr Angry-Litigious of Tulsa if his child has been corrupted reading about weird sex on here, so if you register it's on your own guarantee that you're an adult. Lurkers we can do nothing about, but if kids can access Red Tube then this place isn't going to be much of a challenge, TBH.

NB - this doesn't mean that suddenly it'll be fine to post porn videos, questionable memes, etc etc. We'll maintain the same standard of content as we do now. Same book, just a different cover.

 

[EnolaGaia]

18+ site… Didn't know that was what we were moving to, but OK, why not… Bit of excitement…

That wasn't what we were initially aiming for, and it doesn't mean 'adult' content is suddenly acceptable.

The new terms - just like the current / old terms - explicitly prohibit "adult or objectionable content". This point hasn't changed at all. The new FMB won't be an X-rated version of the current FTMB.

Instead, the key problem facing us concerned responsibility for minors' data, data protection, access privileges, etc.

We've been wrestling with the issues surrounding the data protection regulations as they pertain to minors. These issues are complicated enough in the context of a single nation, but they become hideously complex when you're trying to offer a service worldwide. Is there a single age limit that works across jurisdictions? How much parental approval is required for any new registration from anywhere?

As recently as last weekend we were wrestling with the requirements for allowing registered members as young as age 13 (the lowest age some jurisdictions treat as a legal boundary).

Within the last week a discussion surfaced on swearing and sexually explicit language. As soon as the staff expressed a reasonable middle of the road attitude toward policing such speech, a wave of explicit language and content occurred.

The staff has to manage things on two fronts - policing the membership and policing the forum content. Agreeing on rules for the former was driving us crazy enough when recent events demonstrated the eternal hassles associated with the latter.

In effect, the recent postings proved to us we didn't have and couldn't achieve solid ground for maintaining reasonable oversight and compliance on both fronts.

As a result, we discontinued worrying about age boundaries, parental consent, etc., and set a minimum age limit of 18 for registered membership. If kids want to read about Fortean topics, they can still do so as lurkers.

I repeat: The prohibition against "adult or objectionable content" has always been in force, and it will continue in force.

 

[ramonmercado]

So, no more dead beaver porn?