Fine print matters mightily: the bottom line (literally) on zero.newassignment.net needs crowdsourcing, or relicensing

Fine print matters mightily. Certainly Wired's parent company, CondéNet, Inc., knows this.

Let's take a snapshot of today's privacy and copyright policy and the license that governs our contributions:

The one thing you cannot do is stop Assignment Zero from using the work and/or relicensing it so that others can use it too.

What does 'relicensing' really mean to you? Can your content be taken out of context, modified for any reason, and used by others, with no link back to your original contribution, and sold for purposes you may not support? I think so: there is no commercial exclusion, and it is not clear what 'attribution' really means in practice. What does this long-winded legalese mean to you? Will reading this inhibit your potential contributions?

Which license would you choose, if YOU had a choice?

Would being able to choose how you license your contributions enable you to participate more freely?

I'd rather conduct this discussion in public than by email. On my space here, via comments, not elsewhere, thank you.

Our Privacy and Copyright Policy

This policy was crafted for NewAssignment.Net by Lauren Gelman, Associate Director of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society

The goal of our copyright policy is to obtain adequate permissions from you so that we can edit and remix your contribution to add to our final edited package, and then make that package available to you and all our other contributors and readers under a creative commons license.

We’ve chosen to release the final article under an “attribution share alike” license that allows anyone to reuse and build upon the article as long as they credit Assignment Zero and license their creations under the identical terms. We think this choice of license best complements the mission of our project.

To make this possible, by submitting your work to this website, you agree to grant Assignment Zero a perpetual non-exclusive right to the work. You also agree to grant Assignment Zero the right to relicense your work.

What this means is that you retain all copyright in your work and can still do with it as you please. The one thing you cannot do is stop Assignment Zero from using the work and/or relicensing it so that others can use it too.

Edited/Unedited Content and Assignment Zero’s Liability:

The law generally holds media publications responsible for violations of copyright law, libel, and other actions of their agents (reporters). By editing the content, the publications assume responsibility for what their agents do.

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) protects providers of an interactive computer service against liability for speech when another user provides the content. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects service providers from secondary copyright liability when users of their service violate copyright law as long as they provide a means for copyright owners to notify them of a copyright infringement and the website removes the content upon receiving such notice.

Assignment Zero is a unique collaboration of a media publication and a service provider, featuring both edited and unedited content on our website. To distinguish the two for our users and visitors, we created two types of signposts on the website. First, we labeled those portions of the site that host unedited user submitted content, and are therefore covered by both the CDA and DMCA “Unedited Content.” On this part of the site we link to our “notice and takedown policy” that complies with the requirements of the DMCA. Second, we labeled the portions of the site that host content reviewed by our editors “Edited Content.” The former allows us to have multiple users around the world posting content to the site at all hours of the day and night and lets our editorial team still get some sleep knowing we are not liable for what our users do. The latter is the product of our team’s hard work and professional standards and we are proud to stand behind it.

DMCA Notice and Takedown:

Assignment Zero’s website contains both edited and unedited content. The edited content is on limited sections of our website and is clearly labeled as “Edited Content”.

Most of the content on our site is submitted by our users and is not reviewed and remains unedited. That content is clearly labeled as “Unedited Content” and is subject to the notice and takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Assignment Zero abides by the DMCA by responding to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the DMCA and other applicable laws. As part of our response, we may remove or disable access to material residing on the Assignment Zero website that is claimed to be infringing, in which case we will make a good-faith attempt to contact the person who submitted the affected material so that they may make a counter notification, also in accordance with the DMCA.

The following notice requirements are intended to comply with Assignment Zero’s rights and obligations under the DMCA and, in particular, section 512(c), and do not constitute legal advice.

Notice of Infringing Material

To file a notice of infringing material on a site owned or controlled by Assignment Zero, please provide a notification containing the following details:

1. Reasonably sufficient details to enable us to identify the work claimed to be infringed or, if multiple works are claimed to be infringed, a representative list of such works (for example: title, author, any registration or tracking number, URL);
2. Reasonably sufficient detail to enable us to identify and locate the material that is claimed to be infringing (for example a link to the page that contains the material);
3. Your contact information so that we can contact you (for example, your address, telephone number, email address);
4. A statement that you have a good faith belief that the use of the material identified in (2) is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
5. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive right that is alleged to be infringed.
6. Your physical or electronic signature.

Then send this notice to:

By Mail:
Nadine Heintz
Department of Journalism
New York University
10 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003

By Fax:
Nadine Heintz
Department of Journalism
New York University
212-995-4148
Attn: DMCA Agent, Assignment Zero

By Email:
Nadine Heintz

Counter-Notification

If material that you have posted to Assignment Zero has been taken down, you may file a counter-notification that contains the following details:

1. Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or disabled;
2. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material in question;
3. Your name, address and telephone number;
4. A statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for judicial district in which your address is located or, if your address is outside of the USA, for any judicial district in which Assignment Zero may be found and that you will accept service of process from the person who submitted a notice in compliance with the section (c)(1)(C) of the DMCA, as generally described above;
5. Your physical or electronic signature.

Then send this notice to:

By Mail:
Nadine Heintz
Department of Journalism
New York University
10 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003

By Fax:
Nadine Heintz
Department of Journalism
New York University
212-995-4148
Attn: DMCA Agent, Assignment Zero

By Email:
Nadine Heintz

Privacy Policy- March 13, 2007

The goal of our privacy policy is to inform you how Assignment Zero collects and uses information about you that you submit to this website (“the site”).

We believe the more information we know about you, the more we can rely on the accuracy of your submissions. Therefore, we ask for certain personally identifiable information (“PII”) including your name and a verifiable email address before you contribute content to the site. Our editorial team uses this information to contact you if they have questions about your submission or wish to assign you a different piece of the story. We will not sell or transfer your PII to third parties except as necessary to confirm the accuracy of your submissions, publish the final package, and grant you credit for your participation.

HOWEVER, WE MAKE NO GUARANTEES THAT WE WILL KEEP THIS INFORMATION PRIVATE. At this point we cannot promise to shield the identity of our contributors (though we may create a “tips” feature down the road that could have that capability). Right now, even if you submit information under a pseudonym and/or fake email address, it is possible that our technology can track your submission to your computer. And we do not have the bandwidth to legally fight to protect our sources at this stage in the process.

Therefore, you should assume that any submissions you make to the site can be traced back to you and your PII will be shared if we have a good faith belief it is necessary to comply with applicable law.

Does that mean we will give it to just anyone? NO. We will only respond to requests for PII from the government, third parties, and the court system that are properly formatted requests in the form of subpoenas, court orders, or warrants and meet all legal requirements necessary for the disclosure of the type of information requested. If we receive such a request, unless prevented by law, we will provide you with notice of the request by email and will give you three weeks to challenge the request before we comply.

We will retain the PII we collect as long as our Executive Editors believe is necessary to assure the integrity of the project and in compliance with generally accepted norms for journalistic record keeping of this nature.

We will follow industry best practices for security and internal procedures to secure your data from attack by hackers, pretexters, and other third parties.

We will post any changes to the Privacy Policy on this page. Each version of this Policy will be identified at the top of the page by its effective date, and we will keep prior versions of this Privacy Policy in an archive for your review.

If you have questions about this policy, please contact Nadine Heintz.

RULES FOR POSTING

While this may be a pro-am project, we require all our contributors to play by the same rules. Here are five mandatory rules to follow when posting to this website (“the site”).

By contributing to the site, you agree that you have read these rules and that you will follow them or consent to be permanently banned from participating in this project, or any future NewAssignment.Net projects. Discretion in determining whether a violation of the rules has occurred is left solely to the Executive Editors.

1. No Libel: You are free to express your opinion about a person (“Joe is mean” or “Joe is an idiot,” though be careful of rule 4). However you can never assert a fact about a person (“Joe didn’t graduate from the college he claims to have a degree from”) unless you have adequate research to support your claim. Rule number one is if you attribute any fact to a person in your submission, you will submit documentation or other research to back up that fact.

2. No Plagiarism: Copyright law prevents you from using other people’s works without attribution and permission. Rule number two is that you will not submit any content to this site that is not your own original words without both attribution to the original author, and their permission if your use does not fall under the Fair Use doctrine.

3. Respect Boundaries of Fair Use: The Fair Use doctrine allows you to use or excerpt other people’s works in some situations to help make your point or to comment on their work. While there are no strict rules on what is allowed or not allowed, courts look at the purpose and character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use upon the potential market for the work. This means it is generally OK to quote short pieces from other’s work to comment on it as long as your use would not replace their publication of their work. Rule number three is that you will limit the amount and nature of your use of other people’s content to that which is necessary to tell the piece of the story you are contributing to the project.

4. Respect Privacy: Part of a journalist’s job is to determine when it is appropriate to inject someone who is not a public figure into a story when the individual would prefer to remain private. This judgment is even more important when the person is a minor. Rule number four is that you will not cite, quote, or include identifying details about any person in your contribution without their consent unless it is necessary to the article, and you will never disclose any information about a minor without written parental permission.

5. No Irrelevant or Gratuitous Content: While journalism may sometimes require explorations of the evil and grim parts of the human experience, there is never a place for gratuitous sexual references, hate speech, or other offensive or hurtful commentary. Rule number five is that you will not include any irrelevant or gratuitous content in any of your contributions or postings to this site.

SOURCE: http://zero.newassignment.net/privacy

Accessed Sat March 24, 2007 at time of posting, and posted under Creative Commons Atribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Licence