On May 6, 2009, at 5:13 AM, Atalan wrote:
> There's been some discussion (largely here: ) of the fact that when
> users import their LJs to DW, they bring all the comments with
> them, and the commenters are then assigned OpenIDs whether they
> choose to or not. While I think it's good that imported comments
> are given that level of control, there are people who aren't too
> happy with having even a passive account on DW without choosing it,
> especially since there's no way to distinguish (other than
> commonsense "if it was made before two weeks ago", which will
> rapidly become passe) comments that have been imported from another
> site from ones that were made by someone logging in actively with
> their OpenID.
>
> I've played around with my own OpenID and as far as I can see,
> although I can go and hunt down all the imported comments
> seperately and delete or screen them, there is no option to mass
> delete/screen/control imported comments. It looks to me like it
> should be something that could be implemented, since we already
> have the comment tracking code for the recent comments/
> notifications stuff.
>
> I'm a big fan of Dreamwidth and personally have no problem with my
> LJ comments being imported, but at the same time I don't like the
> idea of people feeling like they're being pressured into
> association with the service. I'd be interested in a) knowing what
> people think and b) whether or not it would be possible for OpenID
> users to mass-delete old comments. Giving them that functionality
> would, I think, then make the issue one to be discussed between
> users ("is it okay if I keep your comments/do you mind if I delete
> my comments") rather than the responsibility of DW.
The jury's still out on whether or not comments to a blog/journal are
covered under the correspondance provisions of copyright law or not,
but either way, our position, and that of our legal advisors, is that
comment import is covered under the provisions of fair use, due to
the fact that they are transfered wholesale as part of a content
backup, that they are transfered with the same security level as they
originally had (friends-locked entry, screened comment, etc), that
the original commenter retains the exact same level of control as
they had on the originating site (ability to delete), and in the
originating environment there were already provisions for the owner
of the journal to manage the comment content (screening, deleting the
comment, changing the entry to private, etc). It's very common in the
blogosphere for people to transfer hosts (such as from Blogger to
Wordpress to TypePad, etc) and transfer entries, along with comments
made on their entries, with them.
We do plan on very shortly adding the option for people to log into
the site with their OpenID and choose to permanently screen any
comments imported as being left by that OpenID account, along with
any comments imported in the future, such that the only people who
can view them are the journal owner and the person who left the
comment, but we don't plan on allowing the mass-deletion of comments.
--D
--
Denise Paolucci
[email protected]
Dreamwidth Studios: Open Source, open expression, open operations.
Join us: www.dreamwidth.org
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