2008/5/26 Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Marc-André (and everyone else), > > Thanks for commenting on this. I'll try and clarify the intent in context > below. > >> I think that you should reconsider the talk publishing policy. There are >> a few things that cause bad vibes and it's not really necessary: >> >> * By submitting a talk and not excluding its use from the policy, the >> speaker is to implicitly declare compliance with the policy. >> >> This feels a lot like shrink-wrapped licenses and is not really >> in the spirit of Python or EuroPython (and I'm sure, it's not >> intended to feel that way). > > First of all, the intent isn't to relicense the actual talk materials. I > notice that the wording on the registration form is a bit vague, and I > suppose that the wording on the talk submissions page was also a bit vague, > so I've made it clear that it was the actual recordings, not the talks, that > we wanted permission to distribute.
No, David, we'd want to publish the talks (or at least the slides) on the website. If you merely have links elsewhere (either to slides or photos,, for instance) in 2 or 3 years time you end up with a load of broken links. > As with everything else connected to EuroPython, there's always some room for > confusion or misunderstanding, but there were a few reasons for saying that > if someone submits their talk and doesn't have any objections then we'll > assume that they don't mind us filming or recording them: > > * It's a community conference, but the community doesn't stop at the door. > I think many people are skeptical about "for your eyes only" > presentations, and yet we've struggled to persuade people to even upload > their materials in the past. > > * The idea of streaming talks was proposed, so there aren't necessarily > distinct recording and distributing phases, and there isn't the level of > control where people can ask to audit or edit their talk afterwards. > > * We had advice from the PyCon organisers who said that the paperwork was > the single biggest problem with recording the conference, and that there > had been issues with "secret stuff" in presentations which forced them to > constantly check whether people were OK with the public seeing their > material. (I'm sure my recollections will be corrected by any of these > people if they're still reading this list.) I think the 'secret stuff' is a reflection of the IP paranoia in the US. If people have secret stuff they shouldn't be participating in a community conference in the open systems world. > I originally wanted a checkbox on the registration form to say whether or not > people wanted their talks (normal or lightning talks - just imagine the > paperwork involved with the latter) to be recorded and distributed, but in > the end this was seen as too intrusive (or out of context). Also it might make people think that they needn't go to the conference as they'll be able to see the recordings anyway. > The policy was > devised as a way of letting people know that we had intended to record talks > and that they could easily opt out. > >> * Licensing a talk under the proposed CC license prevents any >> control over how the talk recording is used. > > We'll gladly accept alternative suggestions about licensing and have been > looking to discuss this more widely for some time. The problem, as always, is > that too few people have been interested in saying anything. The solution has > been, as always, to just do something and wait for the complaints. > >> People will not necessarily like their talks to appear on YouTube >> or elsewhere with no possibly to take them down again. > > YouTube? You mean Google Video! ;-) > >> Many EPC speakers have put their talks up online in the past, so >> there's no need to policy them into doing so. Recording talks is >> nice (I plan to do that again for my talk(s) like I did last >> year), but how the recording is used should really be in realm >> of the speaker and not be freed in the proposed way. See my comments about broken links above. > The difference between this year and previous years is that there hasn't been > any coordinated effort to do this in at least the last three years, and we're > probably lacking volunteers to make such an effort this time as things stand > right now. > >> I think it would be better to make the recording opt-in rather than >> opt-out and there shouldn't be a specific license on it - after all, >> the speaker owns the copyright, even if someone else records the >> talk. > > The intent, albeit controversial, was that talk submitters should know what > we're trying to achieve and that by reading the policy and submitting a talk > proposal, they agree to license recordings of their talk under the stated > terms. We had a protracted discussion about whether this would be enough: > someone can submit a talk and then say that they didn't read the policy or > agree to anything, which is why I made the suggestion about putting this in > the registration form, because if one is promising to hand over money but > don't know what the transaction involves, then "caveat emptor" (as I believe > people say) is probably something one hears quite often: a registration with > payment is pretty close to a signature. > > Anyway, I hope we haven't scared people away with this. We've tried to give > people the final say over what happens, and we're obviously flexible about > people saying that they've made a mistake and approaching us later to change > things. Any suggestions about dealing with this in a way which won't cause > even more work would be very welcome, naturally. Absolutely, John -- _______________________________________________ Europython-improve mailing list [email protected] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython-improve
