When is sharing another contributor's content appropriate?

in steem-help •  8 years ago 


logo by @cass

An interesting conundrum

In a recent article by @steemcleaners titled “Why Cite Sources” a discussion that was started by @thecryptofiend received a response from @letc that we wanted to explore further after a dispute between @jwaser and @mweich was brought to our attention in The Weekly Bee - 29 August 2016


screenshot from “Why Cite Sources”

The dispute

@jwaser likes to do a weekly roundup of bee related posts they find interesting on steemit.com. The Weekly Bee - 29 August 2016 originally included an article by @mweich titled Wait, is that a BLUE BEE! Steemit Colours!

The dispute started when @mweich noticed his inclusion in this week's The Weekly Bee and made a comment. He did not appreciate having part of his work "copied and pasted" without being asked first. @jwaser responded and promptly removed the portion of the post in question.

Perhaps @jwaser was within his "fair use" rights to reproduce a small, credited segment, and indeed @mweich was within his rights to express his disapproval. Maybe it's not a simple question of legality, but one of courtesy and professionalism.

The question

How do authors like @jwaser know which contributors would not appreciate being included in their curation posts?

With no direct way to contact authors, ​it isn't easy to ask for permission unless both users happen to use steemit.chat. Leaving a message on a contributors post could be viewed as "comment spam" or "hijacking".

The current method of sending SBD as a messaging system is inefficient and sometimes frowned upon by the community.

So what is the solution?

Solutions we would like to see the community adopt:

  • Contributors declare their content is under copyright at the bottom of their post if they do not wish to have it shared, or to be contacted for permission to share.
  • Contributors wishing to share their content stipulate at the bottom of their post which Creative Commons license they'd like to see applied to their content.
  • Creators respecting the wishes of other Creators.
  • Creators respecting the copyright licenses of other websites.

Some thoughts from our group, @letc, and others at steemitabuse-classic and on how steemit developers could improve steemit.com:

  • "Resteemit" as a way to share another post on your own blog/feed.
  • Built in option to select whether or not a contributor would like their content shared and how.
  • Specific tags to show contributors would like their content shared seperate from the current tags.

How do you feel about it? What solutions would you like to see? Please feel free to have a civil discussion on the topic. We’d like to get the opinion of the community.

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The "Resteemit" option could be an interesting feature. However, I think one of Steemit's major strengths is its constant supply of new and unique content, and I would hate to see pages become cluttered with recycled articles.​

Now that you mention it, I think it really may become "cluttered" with old articles and the stream of new ones would lower. There's a chance.
Still, I myself wanted for several times to hit the "share" button, but alas! it's not here. :(
Also, this feature would be great in means of featuring other authors, if it'll be implemented in some similar way as @condra proposed in his post.
And a built-in option on selecting wether the author wants his/her post to be shared is very needed, so no misunderstandings occur further.

One of the brainstorming comments I had on @condra's first resteemit post suggested that resteemit posts only show up in your own blog feed and in the feed of those that follow you. That is if resteemit resembles twitter or facebook. I have stopped following relatives that post junk on facebook.

My thought behind that is that it would prevent individuals from resteeming a lot of posts that are uninteresting since this would bury their own original posts. Users that resteemit posts that are uninteresting to their followers could lose those followers. This would actually encourage sharing of interesting posts and deter sharing "clutter".

I like your thought process here. Unless I had valuable insight to add to a previous post, I'd be afraid to Resteem anything in fear of losing my whale followers.

Yes, I thought it would work like that and this maybe a solution, indeed. Or maybe it could also be shown later on in the feeds of those who voted for the post - as in Facebook, if your friend likes something, it's in your feed as well - that's for greater exposure.
But in the case of featuring posts it's really necessary then that somehow it's possible to resteemit several posts in one post, so that the feed is not a chaos. :/

  ·  8 years ago (edited)

Do we really need featured authors posts if the resteemit feature works? I'm not talking about "the weekly roundup" curation type posts that when done right prompt the visitor to check out the contributor's post. But "featured author" type posts that post featured author's full creative work.

For example, I'm following you. You resteemit @happyzoee's "I'm a dog" post. It shows up in my feed as "resteemed by". I think it's good. " I resteemit. So do half my followers.

Now, maybe that would "clutter" my main feed. How about a second feed tab? I can look at the second tab and see all the resteemed articles from those I follow.

Preferably grouped together so that I see:

"resteemed by @happyjack, @happymack, @dogriley and 10 others -- "I'm a dog" by @happyzoee

I see immediately see that a lot of my followers like this... I need to check it out. Okay, this is awesome, I resteemit and then jump on steemit.chat and start telling everyone about it.

So, @happyzoee who's been posting for a month finally gets noticed by writing an awesome post about her life as a dog and how she trained her owner. Those who truly enjoyed it will follow her.

Just a thought.

I agree with your thoughts, and do think that "second feed tab" is a wonderful idea! It should be very handy and no clutter. Your posts will be seen, and so could be the shared posts, if one clicks on the tab.
No, I don't think that we need featured author posts when the whole work is being posted, "share" feature would be enough, imo.
But me, for example, I am doing daily top5 in psychology - so am featuring 5 articles at once, not the whole text, and @dragonslayer109 has a whole bunch of articles and links in his hidden gems, for these kinds of featured author posts it's form difficult to impossible to realize everything just by sharing single posts, but I think it's something you meant by ""the weekly roundup" curation type posts".

Where should we propose the "second feed tab" so that we're heard? :)

Maybe this is the right place to comment: https://github.com/steemit/steemit.com/issues/203

Yes, posts like your [Daily Psychology - It’s a Lucky Find!] (https://steemit.com/psychology/@aleksandraz/daily-psychology-it-s-a-lucky-find-12-today-s-top-5) really encourage curators to visit the link if they find the title and text snippet interesting. I really wish we could use inline thumbnails, but I made another comment on that and don't want to repeat myself.

"resteemit" like on twitter could be turned off if you don't want to see shared (retweeted) content in your feed. "resteemit" can help also discover new great content more easily...as good content would most likely be retweeted plenty.

Hmm.. But that idea of yours, @patrice, wouldn't work if there's an option to turn-off the shared content from your feed, as @simoneighties suggests, would it? Or at least it'll has less impact.

is it possible that something could be resteemed only once in X time period.

Completely agree. It would become extremely dull.

Any solution would need to be communicated to everyone... and that's a problem I see right now. When I first joined Steemit, I read the "official" curation rewards paper, but didn't realize it was outdated and obsolete. There needs to be some sort of Steemit manual with all these various instructions that's in an obvious place and up to date so noobs and minnows can access it when they arrive.

That is a problem, not only in this context. A lot of users don't realize that unlike facebook or twitter anything you post here is available and visible to anyone, there is no deleting, or hiding it. Even when removed from the website interface it is still available on the blockchain.

It's great that you brought up this topic.

AFAIK, legally any work is under copyright by default and can't be used without permission, we can not change that. Yet it would be useful to have a way to find works for which certain permissions were granted by the authors.

For works licensed under Creative Commons there is a metadata standard that popular search engines already understand (at least for images). But when I last tried to include metadata in a post, the Steemit parser ate all the extra attributes. It would be great to have this fixed. And even better would be to have an option in the submission form that will automatically add the necessary metadata — it will help to make more users aware of the possibility.

Common tags would also be useful for finding reusable content, but probably only as an ad-hoc solution until licensing metadata is fully supported for posting and searching. For CC-licensed works we can use one of cc0 (Public Domain), cc-by, cc-bysa, cc-bync, cc-byncsa, cc-byncnd (by = Attribution, sa = ShareAlike, nc = NonCommercial, nd = NoDerivatives) and maybe also a catchall #creative-commons.

Hi @steemcleaners, I totally agree. Two points which I think are essential: courtesy and professionalism.

It is common courtesy to ask permission. But most won't and don't care

The most common issue is content being used without permission. Once we have a way to directly communicate with each other , a simple "May I use your image in my post" would help stop many conflicts. In some cases with original photos the user may not want it used and so would decline.

The problem is most won't even ask they just do. The way content is shared on the internet, is for the most part not frowned upon at all, so users have become accustomed to this and think nothing of it.

Because steemit is a way of making money things become more complicated. Users with original content need a way to inform users it is not ok to use anything they post unless permission is granted. Or the community could take care of this collectively. There are a few ways this could be achieved depending on how far the platform is willing to go with implementations.

In a virtual world, i have been involved with for many years, they introduced a "Peer Review" system. Users submit their creation it then goes into "Peer Review" The content is not visible to the public but only to the users participating in peer review. The content must get x-amount of votes before it becomes public. Peer review is based on a reward system for users that participate. This dramatically reduced the amount of copyrighted material.

The Peer Review system works very well because it is incentivised. Also, it helps maintain a Good tier level which is the equivalent to the "Reputation System" on steemit. There are many more layers to this system, I just mentioned an overview.

I am not saying this exact model would work but something along those lines could help stamp out a lot of the abuse.

Good idea - direct communication. If somebody could just build a Steem-Mail APP...

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all original articles are under copyright unless stated otherwise.
if someone is ok with his article being "shared"(you mean copied&pasted) he will state so and to what conditions ( credit/source to be included is most common).
"resteemit" (equivalent of retweet) would be great, so someones article can be shared without violating any copyright, as the article circulating would be the original article itself.

thanks for the info - i will read all the guides and make sure i am a worthy steemian - i am following you to keep up to date -David

tags on images for reuse could be a very good and very useful idea.

You wrote to me at the post. I pointed to the source! https://steemit.com/art/@steemafon/8-famous-quotes-are-paired-with-clever-illustrations-by-tang-yau-hoong#@steemcleaners/re-steemafon-8-famous-quotes-are-paired-with-clever-illustrations-by-tang-yau-hoong-20160903t020601510z

Copying/Pasting articles without permission is copyright infringement. If you want to share a news story, simply link to the source, and include your original commentary, and possibly small quotes from source. Copy paste is discouraged by the community, and may result in action from the cheetah bot.
Source:
http://en.beta.fishki.net/cool/1225818-famous-quotes-are-paired-with-slever-illustrations.html

original content

I'd like to see the ability to have inline thumbnails. It's hard to do a curation post that looks attractive without using full sized images. That could lead to copyright infringement issues and disputes among users wishing to curate posts that derive their value primarily from the graphics, art, or photography aspect in the post.

Hi! So glad you are doing something about this. I have been here only 8 days, and can't believe the infringement going on! It's almost worse than I have seen anywhere, as new users scramble to post the best stock image they can find as eye candy - even going as far as entering them in competitions!

What I would like to see is perhaps something in HUGE block capitals for new users to sign stating that they will not use stock images and other images from the web that they are not authorized to use for monetary gain. I would also like to see them sign something that says they understand that if they falsely represent work as their own, or steal stock images from the web, their account will be blocked! They need to know this in no uncertain terms up front.

Although this is supposed to be a blogging site, most of these infringers have never blogged a day in their life. They are just hoping this is some get-rich quick scheme where they can earn money at the expense of others.

As far as I know, I have not had anyone copy and paste my images yet. Why the heck does Steemit allow this? I had no idea!

I wanted to speak, in general terms, to @steemcleaners, and everyone on this topic:

Copyrights, Digital Copyrights, Authors' Permissions, etc... This is such a dull and boring topic, to be honest. I'm sure, if you "have skin in the game" and you are actually losing BIG money because of your work being ripped off by others - then it would be VERY interesting to you. Also, if you are trying to protect SteemIt from lawsuits by outside entities who might like to target us, because our platform is a threat to their continued dominance of social media, I could understand your interest here.

But, DAMN! I think I'd rather go sift through a law library than keep on reading this kind of thing... SNORE! ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz...

OH! What was I saying?!?! Oh, yeah! I'm out of here. Bye!

I think the tagging part is good but not absolut and essential!

thanks for the information. what your news is useful for us all ..

I release everything under the Public Domain, so me personally, with my writing, I just simply don't care. Others might take more offense though. I'm not very careful with the images I share, however I believe the images I do reproduce fall under "Fair Use" in that what I use accentuates my articles without removing any value from the original copyright works.

However, if someone does take issue with an image I use and they are the copyright holder, I'm happy to comply with takedown notices of images I use within my written works.