Comments on: Why it’s important to “own” your content

By: 5tein

5tein — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:17:31 +0000

One of the biggest problems with institutional ownership of individually-authored materials (whether that’s student materials or faculty materials) is that it limits freedom and imagination.

I truly do understand the institution’s stake in this argument to a degree: they provide the environment, the materials, the resources, etc, and therefore they are entitled to reap the benefits of their investment. But there needs to be a way out. There needs to be a way, either at the beginning of the project as a declaration, or at the end of the project as a proposal process, for individuals to claim their own either shared or exclusive rights to the materials that they too invested in. I’m less interested in circumventing then in coming to a compromise type agreement.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 00:57:32 +0000

Yes, that is one of its appeals - I too have found some long lost friends - one actually whom I’ve been trying to track down for years (and it was one of the best reunions ever, virtual or real). And even now, having reached the sweet spot of having most people I care about tied into my account, I get the odd friend request once every week or two which in most cases turns out to be a rather pleasant surprise.
And I’ve seen people come to FB and go, freaked out about its ’snooping’ abilities, privacy concerns, ownership issues. I’ve thought of leaving once too, but then the application foundation was added and I saw an inkling of something great, something that might keep FB alive if they do things right, after the entire Web 2.0 hype dies down. Still, I also think it will be superseded by something more open, so unless they change their business model (or Google buys it and changes it for them), it’s a temporary platform for me.
One thing that FB does well, hands down, is content distribution. Even my supertweaked, Yahoo-Piped, netvibes-channeled RSS content, nor my Plaxo-enhanced personal CRM package, can produce such acutely and PASSIVELY distributed content that’s directly fed to all of my friends, associates, etc. I don’t blog much as I can’t seem to make much time for it. And yet the notes I post into my FB account (directly from the blog), usually generate about 10x more feedback/discussion/forwarding. That’s hard to beat.

By: dnorman

dnorman — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:15:58 +0000

@Thomas: I’m seriously considering shutting down my FB account. Except that it’s been absolutely amazing in reconnecting me with long lost childhood friends and the like… I need to think a bit more about the implications of content (re)publishing, and how many eggs I’m comfortable having in one basket. Or who’s basket I’d be comfortable using…

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 03:25:00 +0000

Hmm, it’d be handy to know a good IP lawyer just about now While re-releasing under a different license sounds highly suspicious and would also make me worry, it presents an interesting IP dilemma. Say someone started stealing your articles… does a) Facebook go after them for violating their copyright, or b) do you go after them for lack of attribution and then, could they tell FB that they’re simply quoting your article and FB has no basis for legal action, thus having been at most forced to attribute the article to you…. I could think of several variations of this.
Anyway, I’m hoping that the likes of OpenID will sooner or later bring about a fully independent social networking solution that will allow for something akin to FB, but where the end user actually owns the content and their own privacy settings. Combine that with an open JSON API framework and the Open Source community will happily adapt the project.

By: dnorman

dnorman — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 01:05:27 +0000

@Thomas: I’m not sure. That’s a pretty open grey area - republishing an existing work could be interpreted to be re-releasing it under a different license - would cross-posting a CC-licensed blog entry into Facebook mean that FB “owns” the republished version? I don’t know, and that makes me nervous. That said, I’m still republishing all of my blog entries to FB because there are a fair number of people there that I know, who may not be RSS readers. There is value to the service, but what is the cost?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:36:39 +0000

Well, I wonder if copyright circumvention isn’t the way out at times. While generally I have no problem with FB “owning” my content because I don’t place anything of ‘high’ value in it - and my interests, wall posts, etc., are just demographics I’m willing to exchange in lieu for the service that FB provides….
Still, oftentimes I _repost_ content to FB that has prior copyright on it - either full copyright in case of pictures / academic articles, or Creative Commons Sharealike-NonComm-Der license. I admit, I know fairly little about IP law, _but_ from what I remember, unless explicitly granted on a per-case basis, primary copyright would in that case belong to me.
If I follow that line of thought, should FB try to explicitly infringe upon the intellectual value of my profile (i.e. selling an academic paper I published using its framework without paying me royalty as opposed to simply making money off my adclicks based on ads served contextually to me using my profile as source of demographic data) - I am quite certain I’d happily take FB to court to see what would happen.
Any thoughts, D’Arcy?

By: Wide Open Education » Ownership and open sharing

Wide Open Education » Ownership and open sharing — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:41:36 +0000

[...] and isn’t effective where intellectual property law is weak. D’Arcy Norman has a nice post illustrating just exactly why ownership is so important–you can’t share what you [...]

By: Chris Garrett

Chris Garrett — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:46:03 +0000

It’s a good point. Reminds me I should put up a disclaimer in my new forum that posters own their own content …