Edits of member posts by members of the Management Council

jason

jason

Administrator
Management Council Member
Joined
Jul 4, 2006
Messages
5,128
Location
Lincoln, Nebraska
Display Name
Display name:
Jason W (FlyNE)
PoA rules of conduct said:
The content of these forums are supplied by its members with occasional responses from Pilots of America. Pilots of America shall not be responsible for policing, monitoring, or editing such content, exercises no more editorial control over such content than would a public library, bookstore, newsstand, or other distributor of content, and accordingly, shall not be responsible for exercising editorial control over such content.
Click to expand...

PoA rules of conduct said:
Notwithstanding the foregoing, Pilots of America shall have the right, but not the obligation, to monitor such content in order to respond to or comment upon communications by Participants and in order to determine compliance with the foregoing Rules of Conduct. Pilots of America shall have the right and sole discretion to edit, to refuse to port or to remove any content whatsoever which it finds to be in violation of the provisions hereof or which it finds in its sole discretion to be otherwise objectionable for any reason.
Click to expand...
These two sentences seem to be in direct conflict with one another. The sentence "exercises no more editorial control over such content than would a public library, bookstore, newsstand, or other distributor of content, and accordingly, shall not be responsible for exercising editorial control over such content." is supposed to state that the original poster is the owner of the post and that neither the site nor the admins have any control over what is posted. However, once a member of the MC edits a member post how can it be said that the site nor the admins no longer have any control over its content?

I respectfully submit to the MC for consideration a proposal that would limit their available "tool set" to the following set of actions (in the order in which I believe they should be exercised).


  • Move thread
  • Lock thread
  • Delete post
  • Delete thread
These are not intended, in any way, to limit the ability of the MC to deal with member issues regarding violations of the RoC.

I will give the following argument in support of my proposal.

If I were to make a post to the site, I believe it would be the contention of the MC that I was the owner of that post and was solely responsible for its content. If a member of the MC were to edit said post, even changing a single word could completely change the meaning behind the post. It could not be said, at that point, that the MC did not exercise control over the content of the post. Quite the contrary, actually. The MEMBER is the one that would no longer be in control of the content of the posting. I believe that in trying to avoid liability by editing member posts, the MC is in fact taking on added liability.

I have yet to think of an instance in which a violation of the RoC couldn't be handled better by one of the proposed actions instead of editing member content.

Thank you for your consideration.
 
Aside from the issues that spurred your post above (incorrect judgement by a mod of whether or not content was protected by copyright) I think your proposal has merit, for your stated reasons.
 
alaskaflyer said:
Aside from the issues that spurred your post above (incorrect judgement by a mod of whether or not content was protected by copyright) I think your proposal has merit, for your stated reasons.
Click to expand...
Agree
 
alaskaflyer said:
Aside from the issues that spurred your post above (incorrect judgement by a mod of whether or not content was protected by copyright) I think your proposal has merit, for your stated reasons.
Click to expand...

It's not the first time I've seen that choice of action taken (even recently). It is my opinion that exercising that option should be reserved as a last resort as it jeopardizes the good faith of the membership. That said, I don't want the proposal to be based on my opinion. I think that the outlined scenario is very real and provides a much better basis for the discussion.
 
Also agree.

The issue that brought this up was related to PoA's copyright policy. It should be noted in the specific copyright policy of the PoA that:
In order to comply with copyright law, posts that the Management Council believes violate the provisions of 'fair use' under law will be removed, and the posters will be warned. .
Click to expand...
not edited. It would seem that this policy is already in agreement with your proposal.

http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9528&highlight=copyright
 
Last edited:
Out of respect for Dave, I would like to avoid using his thread/post as the example throughout this thread. If he's over it, that's good enough for me.

The merit of the proposal can be discussed without specific reference (as I did in my original post).
 
Last edited:
As a person who retired in my early 50's because of the copyright laws, I may be a bit biased in this discussion.

IMHO if a post violates the copyright laws by including material without permission from the owner the "site" has limited options.

While "devilmaycare" posted it, PoA published it and PoA has some responsibility here. Their responsibility may not be worth very much but if it were to upset me enough I'll bet I could make it cost enough.

They can remove unauthorized copyright violations or they can delete the entire post. As far as I know they cannot quarentine a thread or post until the poster fixes the the problem.

If you are upset that they dealt with Dave S's post in the least invasive way possible I think you may be overreacting. Dave did not get his panties in as much of a twist as you did.

Joe
 
Conceptually agree; I think that there was never any intent to exercise editorial license, but simply to remove the potential copyright violation. Point made.
 
Jason,

Typically, the MC/mods do not edit posts. Exceptions that I might apply are: where it has been necessary to delete an earlier post and that post was quoted in later post that itself doesn't warrant deletion (rare, but sometimes happens), a profane word that is missed by the filter (might x out the offending word) but the rest of the post has merit, where the post causes a problem to the board/participants (example: a screen name that's too long or a picture that's so oversized that it causes scrolling problems), or where the poster requests the the MC make an edit.

In other words, technical edits, not content edits. I think that you'll find the MC/mods to be pretty rare about editing a post. As a matter of practice, unless it's urgent, I'll contact the poster and ask him/her to edit the post themselves.

One other technical "edit" issue is this: if it's necessary to delete a poster (usually by request, sometimes a perm-ban) we've typically replaced the screen name with a PoaDeleted1.2.3....and so forth. That's done to maintain the integrity of threads, especially those started by the poster. When that happens, it's technically an edit to the threads (done automagically, but at the behest of the MC).

So, I guess what I'm saying is that your point is well taken, but I believe there needs to be some room for flexibility.
 
I think that on the whole, the MC has done a good job with the copyright issues that have come up since the initial snafu where things were done overkill to prove a point....

Without dredging up the most current thread that was an issue, I can say this: Copyright law ain't as hard as some people (person(s)) think it is. The best way to handle copyright issues is probably to let it stay until the holder complains. That way the MC can stay ignorant on the source of the copyright and only take action when informed otherwise. Its a bad place to be making those decisions, especially when its made incorrectly (as this one, and a few others have been).

I mean, when you're deleting a post with "copyrighted" information where they give a means to hotlink directly without even so much as a "my bad, I was wrong," it kind of gives the wrong impression. Had it been my thread, I would have been a little upset that the action was taken without even so much as a consultation of the MC (which is obvious since it was edited much quicker than the MC could have possibly debated on).

I was under the impression that the MC exists to avoid such hastily made actions.
 
wsuffa said:
Jason,

Typically, the MC/mods do not edit posts. Exceptions that I might apply are: where it has been necessary to delete an earlier post and that post was quoted in later post that itself doesn't warrant deletion (rare, but sometimes happens), a profane word that is missed by the filter (might x out the offending word) but the rest of the post has merit, where the post causes a problem to the board/participants (example: a screen name that's too long or a picture that's so oversized that it causes scrolling problems), or where the poster requests the the MC make an edit.

In other words, technical edits, not content edits. I think that you'll find the MC/mods to be pretty rare about editing a post. As a matter of practice, unless it's urgent, I'll contact the poster and ask him/her to edit the post themselves.

One other technical "edit" issue is this: if it's necessary to delete a poster (usually by request, sometimes a perm-ban) we've typically replaced the screen name with a PoaDeleted1.2.3....and so forth. That's done to maintain the integrity of threads, especially those started by the poster. When that happens, it's technically an edit to the threads (done automagically, but at the behest of the MC).

So, I guess what I'm saying is that your point is well taken, but I believe there needs to be some room for flexibility.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Bill. That's a great explanation of some of the cases that I may not have been thinking of. I will say that I've seen quite a few recent cases where post editing was not used quite as judiciously.

I hope you'll take my track record into account along with my request. I will, almost without fail, take the side of the MC in most MC/member disputes. I do want to allow the MC the flexibility that it needs to run the site. I was told that this was the place (and the format) to give my feedback and that you guys would vote on any pending policy changes. That's what I'm doing. I guess my hope is that, as a group, the MC can take this feedback and decide on policy that can be applied consistently.

As I've said, I believe that editing a post is a big deal. For most of us, the only reputation that we have with one another is our written word.

FWIW, I've edited my own post in another thread that I believed crossed a line. At this point, this really isn't meant to be a witch hunt. I'm simply petitioning the MC for a fairly clear policy. Ultimately, you guys need to do what you need to do. But in the cases where that differs from your stated policies, the justification should be fairly evident and easily explained.
 
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that PoA as an organization might be opening itself up to liability if the moderators claim that they will monitor and edit posts that they believe violate copyright. On the one hand, moderators have no way of knowing if copyright is actually being violated (maybe poster had a license?). On the other hand, if PoA assumes responsibility for and demonstrates that it has the ability to "police" its members, wouldn't some of the pass-through provisions of the Act be in question? Back in the BBS days, quite a few sites went through this. Maybe responding to properly formatted DMCA take-down notices might be a better choice...

IMHO.

-Felix
 
sba55 said:
I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that PoA as an organization might be opening itself up to liability if the moderators claim that they will monitor and edit posts that they believe violate copyright. On the one hand, moderators have no way of knowing if copyright is actually being violated (maybe poster had a license?). On the other hand, if PoA assumes responsibility for and demonstrates that it has the ability to "police" its members, wouldn't some of the pass-through provisions of the Act be in question? Back in the BBS days, quite a few sites went through this. Maybe responding to properly formatted DMCA take-down notices might be a better choice...

IMHO.

-Felix
Click to expand...

Exactly -- and I agree with Nick as well.

If there's a possible (not likely) copyright infringment, wait until the holder complains, then comply.

There is no suit on record where any board was immediately sued and lost without prior attempts by the holder to settle the issue.

None. (And yes, I have LexisNexis access, but if someone can provide evidence to the contrary, I'm all ears).
 
As regards letting observed copyright violations stand until PoA is threatened by the copyright holder, we've been that route before, and we're not interested in going through that hassle again. If we see it, we'll delete it, in the fastest, least intrusive manner possible, and it's a lot easier to cut a picture from a post and post an explanatory note than to delete a whole thread leaving no explanation for why/where it went and then answer all the questions that arise from that.
 
Ron Levy said:
As regards letting observed copyright violations stand until PoA is threatened by the copyright holder, we've been that route before, and we're not interested in going through that hassle again. If we see it, we'll delete it, in the fastest, least intrusive manner possible, and it's a lot easier to cut a picture from a post and post an explanatory note than to delete a whole thread leaving no explanation for why/where it went and then answer all the questions that arise from that.
Click to expand...


Then delete the entire post, otherwise you've set yourselves up as editors, and thus complicit when a real problem arises.
 
dmccormack said:
Then delete the entire post, otherwise you've set yourselves up as editors, and thus complicit when a real problem arises.
Click to expand...
For our own education, can you cite statutory or case law to support the highlighted statement? Our legal counsel seems to think otherwise.
 
Notice, still nothing about being wrong or apologetic....
 
dmccormack said:
A couple of cases (more will follow after I get LexisNexis access tonight from home):

News-Press vs. Independent
Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., YouTube, LLC, and Google, Inc.
Click to expand...
That link leads to the FindLaw web site, not the named case. In any event, it was YouTube's failure to police its site which led to the suit. I don't see how that case suggests PoA could be held accountable if it does try to eliminate copyright infringements, only if it doesn't.
Besides, POA is covered under the doctrine of de minimus non curat lex.
Click to expand...
It's "de minimis," not "de minimus," and it doesn't apply to the case at hand because the OP posted the entire copyrighted work, not an excerpt.
 
Ron Levy said:
That link leads to the FindLaw web site, not the named case. In any event, it was YouTube's failure to police its site which led to the suit. I don't see how that case suggests PoA could be held accountable if it does try to eliminate copyright infringements, only if it doesn't.
Click to expand...

The cases mentioned suggest that POA could increase its exposure if it actively edited copyright content. One defense offered was that the site was merely a conduit.

Ron Levy said:
It's "de minimis," not "de minimus," and it doesn't apply to the case at hand because the OP posted the entire copyrighted work, not an excerpt.
Click to expand...

Latin spelling corrected -- yet the point stands: The law does not concern itself with trivial things.
 
Can we open up the discussion a bit? Let's look at it outside of the scope of copyright enforcement. I certainly didn't focus on copyright in my original post. I simply focused on liability (which doesn't speak at all to what I consider to be poor manners).

It boils down to one initial question for me (with subsequent questions to follow). Is it the contention of the MC that editing the content of member posts is ok under whatever circumstances they see fit?
 
FlyNE said:
Can we open up the discussion a bit? Let's look at it outside of the scope of copyright enforcement. I certainly didn't focus on copyright in my original post. I simply focused on liability (which doesn't speak at all to what I consider to be poor manners).

It boils down to one initial question for me (with subsequent questions to follow). Is it the contention of the MC that editing the content of member posts is ok under whatever circumstances they see fit?
Click to expand...

That's an excellent point, Jason. The one benefit of the edit is that it at least shows that it was edited by the MC member that did it, so at least in a case of abuse it can be shown that it was changed, however comforting that may be.

There are some instances that I see editing to be ok in. For instance, upon request of a member, or if there is decent content mixed with some inappropriate content. But where to draw the line....that's the question. I think the MC has done a pretty good job of that so far.
 
SkyHog said:
That's an excellent point, Jason. The one benefit of the edit is that it at least shows that it was edited by the MC member that did it, so at least in a case of abuse it can be shown that it was changed, however comforting that may be.

There are some instances that I see editing to be ok in. For instance, upon request of a member, or if there is decent content mixed with some inappropriate content. But where to draw the line....that's the question. I think the MC has done a pretty good job of that so far.
Click to expand...

I don't know, Nick. I disagree. At the request of the member the member could do it themselves (unless the thread was locked). When I write something I believe that should be my word. Changing a single word in a post could change the entire meaning of the post. I don't want my words to be left to the whim of somebody other than me. If it breaks the rules, delete it. Then there would be no room left for interpretation of words that I didn't control yet still have my name attached to.

To take it back to the liability aspect. If somebody were to write something and it was changed by somebody on the MC. That person could say that the site was advertising words that they didn't write and attributing those words to the member. How would that be better than just saying that those words aren't allowed (and deleting them)?
 
FlyNE said:
I don't know, Nick. I disagree. At the request of the member the member could do it themselves (unless the thread was locked). When I write something I believe that should be my word. Changing a single word in a post could change the entire meaning of the post. I don't want my words to be left to the whim of somebody other than me. If it breaks the rules, delete it. Then there would be no room left for interpretation of words that I didn't control yet still have my name attached to.

To take it back to the liability aspect. If somebody were to write something and it was changed by somebody on the MC. That person could say that the site was advertising words that they didn't write and attributing those words to the member. How would that be better than just saying that those words aren't allowed (and deleting them)?
Click to expand...

Excellent points....man, this is not really that cut and dry of an issue, unfortunately. There are pros and cons on both sides.

I certainly wouldn't want the meaning of one of my posts changed by a rogue or even simply misguided MC member....but I hate it when I make a small mistake and wind up losing my entire post too.

I'm not envious of the position the MC is in sometimes.
 
SkyHog said:
I certainly wouldn't want the meaning of one of my posts changed by a rogue or even simply misguided MC member....but I hate it when I make a small mistake and wind up losing my entire post too.
Click to expand...
Glad someone understands that.
I'm not envious of the position the MC is in sometimes.
Click to expand...
Thank you, Nick!:smile:
 
Having not been around this forum (or any other) until recently, I'm a bit puzzled about why anybody would give a fatrats about what is or isn't posted on an internet site. Can somebody point me to their top 10 posting profundities that would have been a real loss to pilothood or mankind had they not appeared here?

PS: Yesterday I probably wouldn't have asked, but since I chipped in for the server I figured I had some skin in the game.:wink2:
 
Wayne, it's not generally a single post bur ones overall oeuvre that makes their reputation. So as far as that goes, you're correct. However, one bad post can negate the effects of a dozen positive ones. Plus, if others can change what one has said it calls into question all one's writings. Now, having said that, I don't believe, nor, I think, does anyone here , that the MC currently in place is going to maliciously malign someone by modifying their posts.

BTW Nick, I really liked your dare I say conciliatory post toward the MC.

(Unless, of course, they forged the entire thing to make it look as if you wrote it!:devil::devil::rofl:)
 
What's an "oeuvre"?
 
And still not an answer to my questions. I was told that if I posted my request here it would be discussed and I would receive an answer. Seems as if it's easier to just avoid it all together and only respond to the posts that are easy to debate.

I'm not trying to be a pain in the a** (ok, so i'm also not trying to avoid it). But I do believe that the question and the points that I've raised have merit. Can we simply get an idea of what to expect?
 
SCCutler said:
What's an "oeuvre"?
Click to expand...
Main Entry:eek:eu·vre Pronunciation:\ˈə(r)-vrə, ˈœvrə\
Function:noun
Inflected Form(s):plural oeuvres \same\
Etymology:French œuvre, literally, work, from Old French ovre, Latin opera — more at opera
Date:1875 :
a substantial body of work constituting the lifework of a writer, an artist, or a composer [or internet poster]
 
If you say so. For those totally wrapped around the axle on this issue could we just work a joint membership deal with getalife.com?

gprellwitz said:
Wayne, it's not generally a single post bur ones overall oeuvre that makes their reputation. So as far as that goes, you're correct. However, one bad post can negate the effects of a dozen positive ones. Plus, if others can change what one has said it calls into question all one's writings. Now, having said that, I don't believe, nor, I think, does anyone here , that the MC currently in place is going to maliciously malign someone by modifying their posts.

BTW Nick, I really liked your dare I say conciliatory post toward the MC.

(Unless, of course, they forged the entire thing to make it look as if you wrote it!:devil::devil::rofl:)
Click to expand...
 
wabower said:
If you say so. For those totally wrapped around the axle on this issue could we just work a joint membership deal with getalife.com?
Click to expand...
Wayne, I just want to confirm that you DO recognize SARCASM when you see it, right?:yesnod:

In this instance I think EVERYONE has been operating with the best of intentions!
 
Oui. :tongue:

gprellwitz said:
Wayne, I just want to confirm that you DO recognize SARCASM when you see it, right?:yesnod:

In this instance I think EVERYONE has been operating with the best of intentions!
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top