(no subject)

[arethinn]

qarael says, "Somebody in the lj_releases community finally got a response from the support forum", a response which confirms my suspicion that they were operating under the impression that a comment is the property of the commenter, not the owner of the journal where it was made, regardless of security context.

Some advice on how to hide the repost option boxes using custom CSS, or see this, although of course this "fix" can't cover all cases, so isn't really a "fix" in that sense. On that first link, "xnguard posted their version, suitable for anyone using style=mine in a news thread here" (btw: the link attached to "here" is wrong and links to a "subscribe to this thread" page; use http://news.livejournal.com/129190.html?thread=87366310#t87366310 instead) I think refers to you making use of ?style=mine, not someone else (since of course you can't alter someone else's style).

Comments

[charcoalfeathers]

I dunno, I've heard a bit about this argument lately .. and privacy concerns aside, I find it very troubling that copyright would be interpreted that something I write on someone's journal entry is owned by them. I'm not a lawyer, but I've spent quite a lot of time with my nose down in copyright laws for various reasons, and it seems like the best thing you could claim is some sort of derivative copyright. For example, if I copied and pasted this comment onto some totally unrelated medium, I don't think there's a copyright issue involved because it stands on its own as a work and doesn't contain any of the original post.

If we're truly making the argument that any comment posted on any blog or forum that's not owned by the person posting belongs to the blog or forum owner, that seems like a cure that's much worse than the disease.

(Why can't we just draft laws that say "don't suck"? lol...)

[arethinn]

I find it very troubling that copyright would be interpreted that something I write on someone's journal entry is owned by them.

Copyright is not the point; it's privacy. I don't think the above is what anyone is claiming. If I owned this comment you just made, I would have the right to republish it as I pleased. Clearly, I don't have that right - I need to ask you if I want to repeat your words. In the strict sense, even a comment you make on an f-locked post is yours and you have the legal right to repost it, although I would say that to do so is morally wrong; it's something you told me in confidence, if you will. Thus, it seems wrong (and dumb) to me to make it easy for someone to break that confidence through accident or ignorance, never mind making it easier to break it through malice (where previously it would require more effort of copying and pasting). But worse than the fact that the text of the comment - the words that belong to you - is reposted somewhere outside of my control, is the fact that my username and a link to the post in question is automatically posted. This opens up to all kinds of dangerous situations that, again, previously would have required acts of conscious malice.

[arethinn]

Addendum: However, apparently the copyright law that replies is that of "contributor to a compilation" - this came up in a recent discussion of whether it was legal and/or ethical for DW to facilitate importing comments when someone imports a journal. After all, what if someone didn't want their comment displayed on DW? Well, because it creates an OpenID account with which to "post" the comment, that person still has the control over it they always had: they can find and delete them if they wish. This is not necessarily a simple task, but apparently the law is on the side of allowing the journal owner to move the content around as they wish: your comment is a "contribution" and in that sense I do own it, apparently.

[charcoalfeathers]

It's definitely a wibbly-wobbly, copyrighty-.. oh I give up. :D

That's actually a really interesting point about the DW importer. I guess technically you grant LJ or DW permission to reproduce your comments for others to read, but you aren't really granting that to the journal owner or the other site. So it's kinda thin ice.

I agree with you on the privacy issues, fwiw. I'm here, after all. :)