Update, 1 September 2010

[fu]

Hi Dreamwidth!

I've been stuck with a craving for Lucky Charms (they're grrrreat! And are for kids, silly rabbit), so I've been having that for breakfast this entire week. Also had it for lunch this one time a cat leaped up onto the dining table and ate my lunch for me. Hey, at least the cat didn't get my cereal.

Anyway let me just hand off my cereal bowl and we can start with the update.

A Warm Welcome

We've noticed a lot of new members this week! Welcome to those of you who are coming from LiveJournal -- you might want to check out the Guide to Dreamwidth for LiveJournal Users.

Last Week's Progress

This week's code tour was done by the ever awesome cesy.

That brings us to exactly 2002 bugs which have been resolved fixed, and almost 2300 bugs that have been resolved in some way. This week also brought us another milestone: I filed our 3000th bug!

Since our bug list contains planned features and code cleanup as well as actual bugs, I'm really proud of this milestone.

This Week's Request for Feedback

We have another version of the update Create Entry page up for feedback.

And first of all thank you to everyone who left feedback for the last version! We weren't able to respond to everyone individually, but we read all your comments and tried to take all of them into account while working on this latest version.

The short list of changes is:

• less options on page startup


• ability to customize the page so it fits your posting habits


• full list of tags


• editable individual tags


• fix for the red flash issue


• tweaks for older browsers, including better support for resizing


• various appearance and behavior tweaks

Play around with it a bit :)


We built in drag and drop functionality for mouse users. We are aware that this only works for mouse users, and we'll be working on ways to have something that will work for everyone, not just mouse users.

We'll also start integrating the mockup into the backend soon, which means that the next time we do this, the mockup should respect your site scheme and use your icons/tags/etc (it still won't remember your settings, though, and it won't work to actually post).

Communities that Link to Other Communities that Link to Other Communities

This week's theme for community plugs is communities that link to other communities to get you started on finding and making those communities that you're interested in:

• dw_community_promo - the official community promotion community


• community_promo - an unofficial community promotion community


• create_my_comm - a community for community ideas, in case the community you want doesn't exist yet

And finally, some links that don't fit into the theme, because I've said "community" so much that it doesn't look like a real word anymore:

• getting_started - for any questions you may have about getting started here on Dreamwidth


• interests search, to search for people and comms which share your interests


• site search, to search by keyword for posts about topics you're interested in


• the latest entries page, to see the latest public entries posted to Dreamwidth. Also possible to see the latest public entries with a specific tag
  

Equally Warm Goodbye

And that's it for this week. Rest of this month is denise's as per usual. As always, if you're having problems with Dreamwidth, Support can help you; for notices of site problems and downtime, check the Twitter status page; if you've got an idea to make the site better, you can make a suggestion.

See you again next week!

Comments

[denise]

It is our belief, and that of our lawyers, that comments to an entry fall under compilation copyright, and thus the compiler (aka the journal owner) has the right to move that compilation to a new location. The original contributor retains the exact same amount of control over their contribution to the compilation, and the contribution is still attributed to the original contributor at the same location.

I see no privacy violation there. You may argue that your copyright has been violated, but there are plenty of other people who will argue that it isn't, and legal precedent goes with our position. Still, people who wish to remove their comments have the same option they did on LJ: to use the recent comments page (which we have improved considerably over LJ's version) to find and delete their comments.

[interesting]

This argument doesn't make any sense. Compilation copyright covers things like telephone directories, encyclopedias, and the like. It also requires that the arrangement of the compilation show "originality and creativity" (see 17 USC 101). Selecting every single comment to every single entry in a persons' journal would almost certainly not meet this standard.

Even if you were somehow able to argue that journal enties and their associated comments (or a person's journal, since that seems to be what you are using) were covered under compilation copyright, that copyright applies to the compilation itself. The individual elements of the compilation maintain their pre-compilation copyright status. As an example, a joke book consisting of several jokes would have the arrangement of those jokes copyrighted, but the individual jokes would also still fall under copyright. If I compile a jokebook of public domain jokes, those jokes don't magically become copyrighted by me just by virtue of me placing them in a compilation.

If you sincerely believe that your wholesale copyright violation is somehow preempted by a 'compilation copyright' that you misunderstand, then I can only suggest you contact some real IP attorneys so that you can be educated about what this copyright actually does and what it actually covers. Feist v. Rural Telephone is quite clear and easy to read and sets forth the limits for a compilation copyright -- I would be very interested to read your legal precedents that you feel provide you with immunity from willful copyright infringement from running your importer.

Notwithstanding any of this (which is primarily an academic argument,) you still don't even answer to why this isn't a wanton disregard for the privacy of LiveJournal users and their rights to control where their content appears. The "recent comments" tool you mentioned does not list every comment, only a certain number of comments, and my source has informed you that had the unmitigated gall to suggest they pay to extend the scope of this 'tool' (and, I suppose, to be able to continually use this tool to prevent your continued theft every time the importer runs) to stop you from infringing their copyright. Furthermore, what LiveJournal offers is utterly irrelevant, as LiveJournal does not have a "wholesale copyright violation" (er, 'journal import') tool, as far as I can tell.

The entire point of this comment is to bring the conflict between your 'guiding principles' and your seeming personal grudge with LiveJournal to light; your 'guiding principles' indicate you respect everyone's privacy -- what you mean is "everyone who wants to be a Dreamwidth user", not "everyone's privacy is equally important." Some people do not want their copyrighted content that they have exclusive control over placed somewhere where they do not have control over it, or want companies they disagree with to be able to profit from their copyrighted material. It's really just that simple.

[feelforfaith.livejournal.com]

your 'guiding principles' indicate you respect everyone's privacy -- what you mean is "everyone who wants to be a Dreamwidth user", not "everyone's privacy is equally important."

Thank you. These were my thoughts exactly when I read the original comment.

[mage]

I don't understand why you decided to create a fake account to hide your name, instead of speaking up with your own name, but oh well.

I do want to say one thing in response to what you said though:

"Some people do not want their copyrighted content that they have exclusive control over placed somewhere where they do not have control over it."

But they do have control over it here. Comments are ported under OpenIDs where the poster can log in via their LJ url and do whatever they wish with the comments (they're also added to the users access list so they can control comments on locked posts too). They're not ported under a random account they can't access.

[shiv]

I've posted 90,000 comments on LJ. Although I doubt that all of them have been ported over here, can you tell me how I'm supposed to track them down and / or delete them. Because I'm not seeing a way to make that happen.

[erika]

Log in with your open ID.

Navigate to http://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/recent_comments

Start deleting.

Edit! I stand corrected, as apparently that page only supports your last 10 comments.

[dr_memory]

It is our belief, and that of our lawyers, that comments to an entry fall under compilation copyright,

*jawdrop*

Get a better lawyer. Seriously. There's ample legal precedent for these sorts of questions (hint: "dejanews"), and boy oh boy does it not point in the direction you seem to think it points.

For the record, I don't personally care in the slightest if my comments in lj journals get copied over here, and I doubt anyone could successfully get damages awarded for this type of infringement, but as an example of the quality of legal representation you're getting, this is a little scary.

[shiv]

Can I delete all the comments made by my LJself when other journals were ported over to DW easily and quickly?

Currently I can take all my comments with me if I deleted my LJ. If you do not offer me the same opportunity in relation to my open id here, then you have materially disadvantaged my control of my content.

[feelforfaith.livejournal.com]

Still, people who wish to remove their comments have the same option they did on LJ: to use the recent comments page (which we have improved considerably over LJ's version) to find and delete their comments.

This does not work. When I'm logged in with my OpenID, the recent comments page shows only 10 most recent comments, and there is no way to display more. The page also does not refresh when those 10 comments are deleted. So there is now way for me to find all my comments that were imported into DW.