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.
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 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). 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.
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.
Regards,
Paul
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