otw_news | Once and future things

It adds a huge extra layer of complexity on the project-- definitely not something to be undertaken lightly. Just think how often we all use our LJs. Could a fannish nonprofit really support that kind of traffic and maintenance?

And I'm not sure how much protection it would give us. We'd have to buy our hosting from somewhere, and some "Warriors for Innocence" group could make threats against the hosting company. We'd need something on the order of a data haven to host it to be really sure it was safe.

Yeah, just look at how robust JF is... :-/

Plus, I don't know about other people, but I have non-fannish friends on LJ, and I have years and years of history on my journal; if I felt I had to get a journal on this archive to participate in fandom there, I would, as I have done with GJ And JF, but it would never be my home.

It's a good point, but at the same time, I don't think JF is a fair test case for the idea of a fan-run journal system. Nothing against what Robin and ZR have achieved, but other people did try to help improve JF and for whatever reason, the JF admins couldn't integrate those efforts into the site.

I hope the Archive project will have more luck at putting fannish volunteer work to good use.

True. And presumably the archive would have more personal journals rather than extremely high traffic comms like f_w.

Could a fannish nonprofit really support that kind of traffic and maintenance?
I always remain optimistic! (At least, until I am faced with actual code.)

But we'll be faced with a large amount of traffic and maintainance in any case - it sounds planned to be more complex than FF.N. And the journals wouldn't have to be a proper LJesque network... so long as we can post and build personal feeds.

Even just the option to post with different (specific) tags -eg, "archive:fic", "archive:vid", "archive:meta" - would attach the post to the appropriate part of the archive, whereas "journal-only" would only show up on the personal page.

Comms and forums serve the same purpose, more or less. We could stick with forums, which I'd guess to be much easier as there's so much ready-made code floating around. (And most sites have forums in any case.)

And I'm not sure how much protection it would give us.
Well, the archive'd be coming at its policies from the other direction - though, for all that our cost/benefit equation would be totally different from LJ's, centralizing always makes us a more tempting target.

From what I understand of the legal situation, and I am no lawyer, the organization is going to be a lot safer if it can claim to be hosting only fictional works. By which I mean no manips or vids (copyright issues are less clear-cut) and no personal journals.

Also, the level of complexity behind the servers of LiveJournal should not be underestimated. What they've ended up doing to make this site work has been adopted by most of the huge community sites on the Web, and it's server -- and therefore cost -- intensive.

I am also no lawyer, but I have to disagree with this: "the organization is going to be a lot safer if it can claim to be hosting only fictional works. By which I mean no manips or vids (copyright issues are less clear-cut)"

I've studied Art History, and there's a lot of legal precedent for artists being allowed to use copyrighted material, provided they change it enough to create a new work of art. (The most famous case would be Andy Warhol vs. Campbells Soup.) Manippers and vidders would be classed as digital artists, and so could use those legal precedents. (Which status, incidentally, could also cover adult manips against anti-porn laws: it's not porn if it's Art.)

Indeed there is precedent: it's just the precedent is significantly more clear-cut for prose fiction.

One thing that you're NOT considering is the copyright issues related to using music in fannish vids. Typically, a song is not altered as significantly (if at all) as the visual source material when creating a fannish vid. That means that any arguement claiming fair use due to "newly created" material is significantly weakened.

Also, the RIAA is also far, far more rabidly aggressive about perceived copyright infringement than other organizations. The issues of musical copyright regarding sampling and mashups have been treated somewhat differently, but even a very small sampling segment has been ruled, in some cases, to be copyright infringement and resulted in monetary damages.

The LJ community newsletter

veni_vidi_vids has a section on copyright articles related to vidding every Wednesday, and there are always at least a half dozen articles linked.

So, no, I don't think that you are accurate in your assessment about the relative risks of vids versus fiction.

One thing that you're NOT considering is the copyright issues related to using music in fannish vids. Typically, a song is not altered as significantly (if at all) as the visual source material when creating a fannish vid. That means that any arguement claiming fair use due to "newly created" material is significantly weakened.

Also, the RIAA is also far, far more rabidly aggressive about perceived copyright infringement than other organizations. The issues of musical copyright regarding sampling and mashups have been treated somewhat differently, but even a very small sampling segment has been ruled, in some cases, to be copyright infringement and resulted in monetary damages.

The LJ community newsletter

veni_vidi_vids has a section on copyright articles related to vidding every Wednesday, and there are always at least a half dozen articles linked.

So, no, I don't think that you are accurate in your assessment about the relative risks of vids versus fiction.

I was thinking the exact same.

It's the discussion area we'll need more than anything else, I predict. Fanworks are absolutely fabulous, but it's not going to be sticky unless there's some sort of interaction.

Whether it's in the form of journal/blogs or not, if there's a place we can hang out we'll probably bring sleeping bags. (Forums alone, in my experience, lend themselves too easily to "TL:DR! ;p" and so on, which is only helpful if the poster is *actually* annoying.)

I imagine that, complexity aside, the costs of adding blog facilities to an archive would be prohibitive. Also...

Have to say I can't see the need and I say that having whiplash from this kerfuffle. One would post a fic notification to their blog, then link to the archive, no? Unless linking to posts in the archive from personal & comm blog posts became an issue.

Unless linking to posts in the archive from personal & comm blog posts became an issue.

Well, it's an issue if you no longer have an LJ to link from because it was suspended for having "chan" or "incest" in the interests...

More fool you if you did.

You mean like incest survivor communities that listed it to help survivors find each other? Or the Lolita book discussion group? Come on. I don't want to get into this here, but there was no reason up until a couple of days ago to suspect that interests in controversial topics would get LJ users into trouble and not say posts containing "copyright infringement" or "blasphemy" or whatever some crackpot felt like complaining about.

Really? They did that?

Never mind. Oh my God. I read

pornish_pixies, and a number of those other journals.

sbrb_blackcest :(

Have to say I can't see the need and I say that having whiplash from this kerfuffle.
Fair 'nuff. Part of it's just that I've been waiting for the mass fannish exodus from LJ for a while now. We've been here a *while*, and in my experience fandom tends to jump when we spot something else.

People like their current social spaces for that sort of communication and without their friends all moving too, that's not going to end any time soon. So either you would have people splitting their content amongst multiple blogs or you wouldn't have many people moving across.

Instead what you can do is offer RSS feed aggregation of existing blogs which would mean that people would still use LJ and the like for posting and the public posts would appear on the fan archive site through these feeds. Allow users to add their LJ feed to their profile (may need human admin confirmation) and you essentially have a lot of the same value for less website development. It also means that the blog-like content is under the TOS of sites like LJ so you don't need to worry too much about the scope of non-fic content.

This will allow you to capture the conversations, which are an important part of fandom, without having to force the conversations to move out of their comfortable space - it reinforces the social communities like LJ instead of reinventing them on the new site.

Certainly, the discussions I've had regarding the frameworks for building this site, it's entirely doable for not a great deal of effort, imo.

Oh, I like that idea.

That's a really good idea. Content does get diluted when someone has multiple blogs, and it would be really nice to see the archive hooking into all the discussion happening elsewhere.

*adds vote*

And it would also be more flexible. I know we're all coming at this from a very LJ-centric view, but people use all kinds of blogging software/services, and this way, it would be able to accomodate MORE people where they already are.

The way I see it, it would be one of those "most bang for your buck" sort of situations. It makes sense to take advantage of structures that are already in place so effort isn't needlessly duplicated. And also, that way, people don't HAVE to migrate anywhere. They can keep doing what they've always been doing, and maybe run into more people that they would not have otherwise.

That would be amazing...ly complex. But it would be awesome.

It would be an amazing idea. Maybe the people who have paid accounts here, would happily pay elsewere, somewhere with more respect for the customers.

But it would be... time/server consuming...

That would be awesome.

I think some people would use it, and some wouldn't. I personally have two different LJ accounts, one for fandom and one for RL. So if there was another, better system for the fan part I'd move over. People with non-fan friends on LJ would probably not move completely over.

I would most definitely use such a thing, hell, I'd pay for it, but--could such a thing be maintained on a fannish non-profit's budget? We would need some damned robust servers, to keep that going.

And an army of volunteer maintainers with a lot of spare time, it is true.

But even if it's not journals per say, having some sort of tailor made discussion area would be pretty cool. (Fandom's pretty much been served notice by LJ, after all. Long run, we're going to have to go *somewhere*.)

In the past day, a great many fannish folk have said they were going to shell out for permanent accounts when LJ out them up for sale again.

Would it be worth asking people if they'd be willing to put that cash towards the running cost of An archive of our own?

I certainly would be willing to give money to archive. I was considering the permanent account just like you mentioned and now I doubt I'll be purchasing one.

You know, I probably would. I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is; even if the site achieved only a fraction of the features proposed, it would still be one of the best out there and I'd have no problem investing in that (though, as a poor college student, investing doesn't mean big bucks for me *g*).

I'd been planning to throw $150 at my online community stuff this month. I could still do that; I'm just not putting it towards LJ.

Not fandom, but stumbled across this and thought I should note that Elgg is rough but might provide a base to work off of.

Once and future things

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Vids versus art re copyright

Vids versus art re copyright

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