Change in Legals and Terms of Service?

Workspaces Community
1

I noticed that there was a change made earlier in the month to the Legal page and Terms of Service

Previously here

Given recent confusion between representation and the role of EdgeRyders LBG, and EdgeRyders Community - I was wondering why these (quite far reaching) amendments were made by a director of EdgeRyders LBG with zero consultation with the community?

I was also under the impression that any formal change of this nature would legally speaking, need to go in front of the whole board of directors and probably also be raised in public with the community, given that it effects the community. Maybe I’m just a stickler for due process though?

Lastly, there seems to be a contradiction between the legals (Creative Commons Zero as default) as was explained here: https://edgeryders.eu/en/comment/16674 - and how that is reflected in what is and isn’t okay with respect to the EdgeRyders community material (i.e the logo etc).

2

urls

your links have “%C2%A0” appended to the urls, and so generate a “file not found” message

3

Thanks, I’ve fixed!

4

File under housekeeping

We were advised to have at least a placeholder privacy policy and data retention policy; about two months ago Nadia went public with it in this post in the Agora – you must have missed it. You are welcome to improve upon it. If you want to initiate a consultation on this, go right ahead, with our thanks, as – you guessed it – who does the work calls the shots. wink

You misinterpreted my post. The original ER website was CC-BY, not CC0, and I still believe that to be the best license for user-generated content as it protects the right to be acknowledged as author. Some lawyers say CC0 does not work with the European legal framework on moral rights (which include the right to be acknowledged as author), because the latter are unmovable: you are not allowed to renounce your legal rights. From an interoperability point of view, however, CC0 does not break interoperability in Edgeryders.

5

File under untrustworthy?

If you feel that significant changes and decisions about the way that EdgeRyders the community should function on the part of ER LBG are the equivalent to housekeeping, then that indicates a very clear message as to how far we’ve come from EdgeRyders as “an interface between the client and the collective intelligence engine of the system”

What this attempts to suggest in reality is; all content created on ER becomes property and attributable to ER LBG; which is a self selected group of 7 people - whom based on this example feel that they can freely change the nature of the community platform at their whim.

Presumably though, if it is the person that does the work who calls the shots, I can just edit this document myself?  

6

OK

I wouldnt mind getting some formulations changed - particularly to the use of logos - they’re not trademarked so the differentiation should read more explanatory rather than enforcing anything. there’s nothing to enforce anyway.

I didn’t mind the Legals  in the past or now,  because I don’t think that reflects so much on how the community behaves or the company. So I haven’t paid too much attention. And like always, if someone cared enough to make something that we can then build on, less so.

How do you prefer to work Ben? Put the text in a google doc and invite others to edit?

Let’s please be constructive about it… stuff is changing all the time on this website to meet a huge amount of needs and ux demands… you know this, don’t you? We worked together for so long.

7

Happy to be constructive.

Google document, hackpad, either works.

Noemi I appreciate that things are changing all of the time, and I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but given certain actions and attitudes, I feel very uncomfortable about the way EdgeRyders LBG has been acting recently and if you see my comment below you might have some further understanding as to why I find these recent additions to the legal documents of ER slightly uncomfortable.

With regard to my previous issues about things changing, or seeming strange, I have offered to help fix and/or improve them, which would require being given back my technical admin rights (which were revoked without explanation), but these requests were ignored - so my ability to be constructive is somewhat restricted isn’t it?

8

Have you even read the license?

The text:

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. This applies to both content produced by Edgeryders as a company as well as third-party content. By posting on this site, visitors agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Your interpretation:

All content created on ER becomes property and attributable to ER LBG.

is just wrong. If people, by posting, agree to grant a license, it means they are the owners of the licensed content. Right? And the license is CC-BY, which means the content can be reused, but it has to be attributed to the right holder. This is the function of usernames and avatars next to posts and comments. So, the license says all content created on ER is property of the creator, and attributable to her.

Also:

  • I feel that day-by-day stuff is not worthy of discussion. Others will make their own choice as to use their time.
  • No, you can't edit the legals page yourself. And the reason is, you have no legal or financial responsibility for what is on these pages. But it comes to much the same thing: start a wiki with the privacy/data retention policy that you think it is appropriate. Once it is there, we will go through it. Ok?
  • Notice that I never use adjectives like "farcical" (source) or "untrustworthy" on you or your work, though I do have my own reservations. You (and readers of this) can draw your own conclusions.

9

Specifically

I am referring to this section that was added with the latest update, not the licensing we have previously discussed, which is a pretty significant addition:

"Shared ownership of community projects

As an experiment in decentralised organisation structures, we need rules to ensure everyone can build on shared value to develop projects in whatever direction they like, without getting in the way of others who wish to do the same. Projects born out of the community and built on the Edgeryders.eu platform are the property of the EdgeRyders community as a whole. Whenever a project born on the platform is taken out of the platform, the new initiative /organisation /network /technology /site/ application is required to be named in such a way as to clearly communicate that it is a new iteration, and different from the original Edgeryders community project. This ensures the brand to which everyone is contributing remains a part of the commons without enclosure, while giving everyone liberty to fork, remix and or continue to contribute to the original project.

The same applies to Edgeryders taken as a whole. You can use the Edgeryders red logo when you are speaking for/as the community, e.g. participating in debates, presentations…but not for business. You cannot use the Edgeryders blue logo unless you are working with Edgeryders LBg (have a valid contract with the company signed by the board of directors). If you want to set up your own Edgeryders organisation, you are free to do so with the only restriction that the name, domain name(s) and visual branding you give it are different enough from the Edgeryders Community and Edgeryders LBg names, domain names and logos to avoid confusion about who people are dealing with."

Lets take a specific example in respect to this, that follows this line of thinking, with the legals added retroactively (which I have raised previously in the admin group, and was shouted down for). At lote4 I hosted a session with Remy focused on Hacker Care, and open source approaches to health. Which subsequently EdgeRyders LBG mounted a H2020 bid for funding on - as cited on the group page “The idea first came in the context of a LOTE4 session proposed and led by Rémy Cagnol” (although you’ve conveniently managed to redact my name from attribution, which must mean the CC-BY thing is really working well here).

Now this session was derived from a number of conversations, ideas and workshops that were intended to be deployed into other initiatives, including people not attached to ER, but myself and Remy proposed the session and ran it at lote4 because we thought it would be of interest to other EdgeRyders - not because I had any interest in articulating and developing these ideas within the EdgeRyders space. So understandably the H2020 application came as quite a surprise.

Previously you have made claims of enclosure when I’ve raised this, pushing me into the position of not being “open”. I’m sorry but this isn’t the case, I was merely not aware that everything that touches the EdgeRyders platform and space, is eligible for an EdgeRyders LBG project. Whilst you have contacted me very recently to make me aware of the bids submission and suggested that if successful we might discuss my involvement in the project, this is irrelevant to the way in which I’d imagined any such initiative might proceed - it feels to me as a community member incredibly opportunist and not what I signed up for. I wish you luck in the project, and I hope that it proves to be enjoyable and profitable undertaking for EdgeRyders LBG, but this is not mine nor do I think most peoples approach to collaboration.

Now you can continue to tell me that I am being unreasonable, attempting to enclose ‘community projects’, etc but this is a public space, people are reading this and people aren’t stupid when it comes to their time and investment or what they might consider to be best practice for developing work and initiatives within the commons. If you think my words are unfair, please respect that this addition of legal addendum’s as if it’s no big thing and many of the other experiences I have highlighted in the past months have caused me to call into question much of what I trusted before and seriously reconsider the way in which I contribute here.

It feels really important at this point for the health of the overall community that there be a separation between EdgeRyders LBG the consultancy (legal infrastructure) and EdgeRyders Community (platform).