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Content licensing and site ownership. (Avoiding another future acquisition.)


Grondorr

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So, considering what happened to NintendoAge, and how people have felt about everything that was taken away, I think that if it hasn't already been addressed publically, we should talk about who owns VGS and the VGS content. (I'm sure we don't want to pour our hearts and souls into a new site, only to have someone's life circumstances change, and accept an offer that they can't refuse.)

I'm wondering if it makes sense to have some soft of nonprofit/community/coop ownership of the site, and have the content be licensed using licenses similar to Wikipedia (Creative Commons)?

Thoughts? (Apologies if this has already been addressed, but I didn't find anything in the announcements other than a general pledge of non-affiliation with certain entities.)

P.S. - I think it was insane what happened. (Old ColdFusion could have been supported indefinitely by third party support companies.)

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Administrator · Posted

We've not put anything into blood writing or lawyers hands or anything like that, but generally speaking, the idea here is that we don't want another NA happening.

The information on this site is all of ours, mine and yours, his and hers. If you write it, it's yours, as far as we're concerned.

That said, if anyone on VGS happens to be a lawyer and is versed in what we could do to get this written down in such a way that protects the users please reach out to me, I'd be very interested in getting something more official going.

VGS will never be sold to a company, but may one day change hands as the "old guard" moves on with life. We're definitely interested in a group ownership kind of situation rather than an "evil overlord" sort of thing.

I get a lot of credit for putting the site together, and yeah - I did that. But it bears mentioning that I'm honestly just a web dev who strolled onto the NA scene 2 years ago and wanted to see the community move forward in a positive way. All of this is impossible without the people who kept NA alive and honestly that goes to the mods and admins who held it together, some of them for over a decade. Please remember to shower those guys with praise as they 100% deserve it.

All that to say - we agree. We don't like what happened and that's why we're here. Let's work together to make it not happen in the future. We're about the community here and I hope that is clear to everyone.

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17 minutes ago, Grondorr said:

 

2 minutes ago, Link said:


The new URL format they are now using is: 

https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/[THREAD ID HERE] 

That thread above would be here: https://connect.gocollect.com/discussion/98939

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Administrator · Posted
1 minute ago, ryanflucas said:

So are the previous posts anyone made on NA "owned" by GoCollect? What if a user created a guide of some sort on NA and that same user is on this site? Can they copy that data (even manually from Archive.org) to this site without getting sued?

If you wrote it, it's yours. Pretty sure that's the case across the internet. 

I'm not a lawyer though I just wanna talk about video games online without fear of censorship or my data being sold (we will never sell your data, btw, in case that wasn't clear before).

And to make it at least clear for VGS - if you post it here it's yours. We might feature your work, we might even ask your permission to add your writing to an article or something just to help us build some SEO and get a bigger userbase or something. But it remains yours, you'd get full credit, and we'd never sell your shit. 

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I assumed that, but then I wondered what did GoCollect even buy if they purchased a site, didn't keep the name, and all the data was owned by the individual people that posted it? What's even the point? 

You could copy the data/guides (maybe not the complete history) to this site and essentially be NA under new ownership/title. The only reason why I mentioned a user being on both NA and here is that it may open up a grey area if you're copying someone else's data. If you're the author of the data and you own it, there's no violation.

I'm not a lawyer either but it would make sense. Otherwise there would need to be a notice that says "By posting and using this site, we own all data created here". I don't remember seeing that anywhere on NA. 

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3 minutes ago, ryanflucas said:

I assumed that, but then I wondered what did GoCollect even buy if they purchased a site, didn't keep the name, and all the data was owned by the individual people that posted it? What's even the point? 

Looking at what's happening, I'm pretty sure mostly all they wanted was GameValueNow and maybe the game and rarity databases. Obviously they wouldn't mind if people kept using their forums, but pretty sure they want the conversations to be different.

P.S. - I have thoughts that I'm not quite ready to share on community ownership of this site, and really would love to see community owned content regarding game/rarity lists, and pricelists. I expect we'll need to explore "creative commons" licensing. (There are a number of different types of CC licenses, some of which have restrictions.)

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I wouldn’t be so firm on the what you type is yours. What did the NA sign up terms say?  Did they say that, nothing, or something else.  Given it was bought out and jerked away the new owner had the rights to anything Dain gave him which obviously and primarily is that board.  The board is nothing without the content. He’d argue in court anything added by signees who joined is company property unless the sign up rules clearly protected that. It would be in his interests to control it all in the contracted purchase. 

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I guess what I'm asking is this: while starting fresh here is fine, is there any specific guides/topics/info you'd want copied from the old NA to here? Is it doable? Whether that means copying it over manually or reformatting it for this forum. Or was NA a more collaborative effort in that it's everyone joining in on a topic that creates the data and only time builds upon that, time that will occur here eventually?

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Administrator · Posted
Just now, ryanflucas said:

I guess what I'm asking is this: while starting fresh here is fine, is there any specific guides/topics/info you'd want copied from the old NA to here? Is it doable? Whether that means copying it over manually or reformatting it for this forum. Or was NA a more collaborative effort in that it's everyone joining in on a topic that creates the data and only time builds upon that, time that will occur here eventually?

The latter.

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1 minute ago, ryanflucas said:

I guess what I'm asking is this: while starting fresh here is fine, is there any specific guides/topics/info you'd want copied from the old NA to here? Is it doable? Whether that means copying it over manually or reformatting it for this forum. Or was NA a more collaborative effort in that it's everyone joining in on a topic that creates the data and only time builds upon that, time that will occur here eventually?

A lot of us are planning on transferring articles/lists/photos etc that we had written there, on here.  But new stuff will come in time. 

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39 minutes ago, Grondorr said:

I have to say.. I'm very relieved that you all created this site. I was confused at first because it seemed like people were overreacting, as in my mind there was "no way they are taking down nintendoage, as they would piss of so many people".

Boy was I wrong! Thank you to everyone involved!

Same here. Oh well.. this site is beginning to take shape and reminds me of 2012-2014 NA. Glad to see some of the people that had been MIA or banned for silly reasons on here. Here's to what 2020 will bring VGS!! 🍻

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On 11/4/2019 at 11:32 PM, dewisp02 said:

Same here. Oh well.. this site is beginning to take shape and reminds me of 2012-2014 NA. Glad to see some of the people that had been MIA or banned for silly reasons on here. Here's to what 2020 will bring VGS!! 🍻

I'm wanting NA circa 2008...... There was a lot more giving, and good vibes. People were positive and helped each other out. Everybody wanted everyone's collection to grow.  As the hobby hit more mainstream ( I noticed the first bump around 2000), every year the "friendliness" of the site slowly dwindled and became almost cold. Its why I stopped coming by as much. I am looking forward to see if VGS gets the community back to its roots. It has the right people, and that's got me excited. 

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Moderator · Posted

Lawyer here, lemme just get some lawyer stuff out of the way: I am not offering legal advice, no one here is my client, and this isn’t my area of expertise.

It depends. The key things at stake are the terms and conditions created here and whatever was in place at NA. Since VGS is managed by former NA mods and administrators, I suggest they 1) consult the terms from any records of their time with NA to understand what rules existed there, 2) draw up something of their own (if they haven’t already) so users here clearly understand what the situation is here.

Though it depends what the terms were in on NA to know for certain, most likely any user content licensing provided that ownership of content belonged to the original poster and the public; meaning the point is that posting on a forum such as this didn’t mean you lost your rights over your content, just that you probably lost exclusive ownership over it.

As far as ownership questions, whoever is paying the bills owns this place. Anyone kicking in a couple of bucks or saying they’re a major member of the community because they post a lot owns nothing. Gloves and MrWunderful have chimed in some and shared their intent. If they haven’t already, they could form a distinct entity that pays the bills and memorializes decision-making to make it easier to pass the torch as needed, but that’s their decision to make.

Edited by Scrobins
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It would certainly be nice to have some kind of written rule that creators content is theirs and cannot be transferred to another business for their shitty purposes. I think right now a lot of people would be wary about any contribution now that they got to see their efforts get nuked without proper warning. I do hope VGS can come up with a long term plan to tastefully grow their userbase and maybe find a way to collect moderate and noninvasive ad revenue so that the model can be profitable enough to keep going as it would be without needing to ever sell it off. While I didn't know the owner of NA in particular, it seems tasteless to cash out with a paycheck that rode on the back of tons of other peoples work (who likely didn't see a dime) only to then allow the site to be destroyed just because he didn't feel like doing it anymore. A community driven site should have some community input on its fate even if it isn't owned in any part by the contributors.

 

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Administrator · Posted
10 minutes ago, goldenpp72 said:

It would certainly be nice to have some kind of written rule that creators content is theirs and cannot be transferred to another business for their shitty purposes. I think right now a lot of people would be wary about any contribution now that they got to see their efforts get nuked without proper warning. I do hope VGS can come up with a long term plan to tastefully grow their userbase and maybe find a way to collect moderate and noninvasive ad revenue so that the model can be profitable enough to keep going as it would be without needing to ever sell it off. While I didn't know the owner of NA in particular, it seems tasteless to cash out with a paycheck that rode on the back of tons of other peoples work (who likely didn't see a dime) only to then allow the site to be destroyed just because he didn't feel like doing it anymore. A community driven site should have some community input on its fate even if it isn't owned in any part by the contributors.

 

Agreed on all parts. 

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