Questions about staff policy decisoins

Oct 31 14:53 UTC 2001

I'd like to see staff explain, for the benefit of the users as well as the
board members who are not staff, how they arrive at policy decisions.  The
bylaws seem to say that the Board makes policy.  But it is obvious that
staff also reserves the right to make its own policy.  Fine.  I just want
to know how it is arrived, whats the official process.

The reason I ask is that mdw edited post #111 in agora.  He claimed "staff
policy"  yet clearly not everyone agrees with the reasons given.  the
problem is that we are not privy to the staff conf, or the inter-staff
communications that preceded the action.  Janc even admitted his
willingness to act unilaterally-- he was seeking input and discussion,
but by no means was binding himself to any consensus.  

This place is built on democratic principles.  It is only in keeping with
the spirit of the place to ask staff to act democratically.  If a staff
vote has taken place, share the results.  If item #111 was being debated
in staff conf, it was not security related, link the discussion for
reading purposes only somewhere else so the rest of us can read it.  

And I want to ask each staff member, if you disagree with the consensus of
the rest of the staff, but still feel individually compelled to take an
action, will you ignore that consensus and take that action anyway

response 2 of 16:

Oct 31 15:32 UTC 2001

Staff operates within the guidelines set by the board, by member votes, and
by the U.S. law.

These guidelines fall short of dictating our every move.  We all make
judgement calls every day.

Staff members work very independently from each other, and it is inevitable
that on some questions the response will be different depending on which staff
member is handling it.  A user who downloads hacker tools might get a stern
warning from one staff member, a deleted account from another, or a letter
to his ISP from a third.

We would like to maintain a certain degree of consistancy however.  We do this
by talking a lot about how we responded to different situations (that's most
of the content of the staff conferences) and by occasionally writing down
guidelines for different things (see http://www.grex.org/staffnote).  There
is no formal big fat book of staff policy.

In this instance Marcus saw the response he made to this item as being a
direct extension of things he does regularly in handling E-Mail issues.  I
don't handle those, so it's not too amazing that I don't know what he's
talking about.  So while I've never heard of the policy he quotes, that
doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Furthermore, I 100% agree with the policy he states.  The only reason I
didn't instantly censor that item was that I felt that since we hadn't
previously clearly articulated the policy, it would be good to have some
time to get more staff and board members to think about it and come on
board with it.  I didn't think there was any question, or legally even any
option about what the policy should be.

So Marcus, who has been here longer than I have, and has dealt more with
similar issues in the past, felt that this policy was already established,
and I thought it wasn't but needed to be.  That doesn't amount to a very
big difference of opinion.  I was willing to act unilaterally because I
believed only one policy was possible under the law.  I didn't do so only
because Joe and Jamie agreed to allow us some time, not so much to decide what
to do (because there was nothing much to decide), but to build a little more
consensus, so it would be clearly an action taken by Cyberspace Communications
rather than just one staff member.

I agree completely with what Marcus did.  I wouldn't continue to be a member
of the Grex staff if our policy was any different than the one he stated.
I do not see how it would be possible for the board or members to set any
other policy within the constraints of U.S. law.  So even if I didn't know
that we had ever articulated such a policy, I did know exactly what it was.

response 4 of 16:

Oct 31 16:04 UTC 2001

fine.  all I was saying was that if policy had in fact been established
in the past, I wasnt aware of it.  I think there needs to be a uniform
policy concerning "fair use"  there are plenty of instances where
copyright material shows up on grex.  song lyrics, excerpts of articles,
a lot of other things.  What one staffer views as "established policy" may
in fact not be an opinion shared by other staffers.  I think staff needs
to move to the point where its policies are stated in the record, and
every user concerned enough can read the record and be aware.  Unstated
policies are a hornet's nest.

response 6 of 16:

Oct 31 16:19 UTC 2001

"Fair use" isn't ours to determine.

The reason we don't have a written down policy is because we do not want
to get dragged down into lawyering.  Grex is not a courtroom.  Grex
staff do not want to be your parents.  You *should* know better.  You
are *expected* to know better.  Nobody currently involved with keeping
grex running wants any more bureaucracy than absolutely necessary.
Bureaucracy is no fun, attracts the wrong people, and however honorable
the original intentions, winds up being used for evil ends.  Now you
just *try* and come up with one example of a bureaucracy that isn't
remarkably clumsy in its execution.

response 8 of 16:

Oct 31 17:02 UTC 2001

I don't view it as "stealing" because I think it can be argued that
when one posts on mnet or grex, one gives implied shared copyright to
the site and to the item. I do not believe an individual poster owns an
item, but I see an item as a collected work and that work should carry its
own copyright.  Who owns that copyright?  If it is mnet in this case, and
mnet doesnt expressly prohbit the sharing of its copyrights, then as a
user of mnet, am I still prohibited from copying the item?  Would the
copyright on the item apply if said item was excerpted and not copied
whole?

By the sounds of it, mdw must now believe that any user can request of
staff to delete a post of theirs.  the post doesnt belong to the item, it
belongs to the poster right?  so if some user came along and said, I want
you to remove every post I've made under this login, because I withdraw my
permission, then staff must comply?

I think since mdw has now extended this policy, staff needs to close the
censor log and allow posters to outright delete any posts.  I didnt agree
with that previously because I recognized the need to keep a record of
activity here.  But if a poster owns his post, and the copyright is
in now way shared by grex or the item iteslf, staff cannot legally
prevent them from outright deleting.  Also the logging of party
transcripts should now be discontinued, because the copyright of a user's
chat belongs to the user and he is only chatting in the present time
frame.  The user has not given permission for their copyrighted chat words
to be stored.

response 10 of 16:

Oct 31 17:22 UTC 2001

If an implied shared copyright does exist, it would be between the posters
and M-Net.  Grex is not M-Net, so you would have still violated copyright.

response 14 of 16:

Nov 1 08:37 UTC 2001

1.  There is no such thing as a definitive definition of fair use under 
the law.  There are guidelines, but the range of possibilities is so 
broad that those who craft law have recognized the impossibility of 
absolute definition and have left it to the courts to decide, case by 
case.

2.  Although I see the validity of the reasoning behind the removal of 
the text of Agora 111 #0, and though I believe richard is the clearest 
example in real life of the truth of the line "a foolish consistency is 
the hobgoblin of small minds," both because of his own foolish 
consistency and the extent to which he demands the same foolishness of 
Grex, I do still oppose the removal of that text by anyone other than 
richard himself because I am not satisfied that it is actually in 
violation of the law -- though I will admit it *looks* much that way.

3.  I will trust anything jp2 says about the law and how it applies just 
about as far as I can throw him from here in my apartment while he is in 
Maryland.  (Which isn't to say that I couldn't -- or wouldn't immensely 
enjoy doing so -- throw him around a bit in person.)  I have done a fair 
amount of copyright and fair use research myself while writing a draft 
policy for the UM cable TV system, and I have not come across any 
authoritative statement by suitably credentialed individuals which 
convinces me both that the law as written applies in our specific 
situation and that it stands constitutional muster.

4.  I am really sickened by the notion that a determined nuisance like 
jp2 can so successfully hijack the energies of so many good people with 
such absolute impunity.  I almost wish he *would* get elected to the 
board just so he would have that much more rope with which to hang 
himself (and as any board member could tell you, very little if any 
additional ability to make a nuisance of himself than he already has).  

5.  Mary?  If I *do* accept the nomination, will you break jamie's knees 
instead?  8^}