dear birgitt, per your request, i am publishing here the entire list of people -- as you call them, the small group of people in power -- who have been responsible for the global and public distribution of your writing via the OSLIST email listserve and worldwide web, 1996 to the present:
1. Birgitt Williams, birg...@mindspring.com over the years, the people listed here have posted countless messages to the list. all written by you, and yes some of them seemed rather personal. i know that you did not know that your words were being made public, even though they were being mailed to hundreds of strangers around the world. years ago, when the existence of the public archive system was discovered by you, your objection was raised and noted... but the people listed above continued to use their power publish your words to the list and into those darned public archives. those archives have always been public, and have always been available to stranger people and strange crawlers, none of whom have ever had to announce their presence to you or anyone else. as for the givens here on the list... the only given that we have ever had is that if you email something wise and professional or deeply personal to several hundred strangers around the world, you don't and can't have any idea where or when it will turn up next. and this rule was not made by anyone in power and not imposed on anyone. and as for being copyrighted and quoted out of context... as far as i know, a copyright does not protect you from being quoted. it protects you from having your entire work or major chunks of it reproduced in full, or quoted in such a way that your quotes make up a significant chunk of work that was then claimed or sold as the work of another. simple quoting of and reference to copyrighted material is absolutely legal. and of course it happens all the time. sometimes it even is done badly or out of context, but it only runs afoul of the law when what is quoted is a substantial portion of your work or makes up a substantial portion of a reproduction for which somebody else claims credit. so your declaration of copyrighting is obviously heartfelt, but also irrelevent... unless someone chooses to publish special a book of your postings. i'll bet that doesn't happen. and even if that did happen, at least there would be plenty of context. please address all future questions, concerns, legal-sounding threats and general comments about the public distribution of your writing to the powerful people listed above. i join you in holding them fully responsible for the distribution of your work and i'm glad to know that from now on, you will be in full control of all of your words. i hope that you will find a way to keep giving them to the world. thanks very much for your frequent kind words, your quick acknowledgement the volunteer work i do to maintain our global community web presence, your living example of generous community contribution and the wisdom of your letting go with grace. with best wishes for peace, michael herman p.s. thanks too for your linking to our community sites from your site at "OpenSpaceTechnology.com." that seems important as "OpenSpaceTechnology.com" might often be the first place people would look to find the worldwide community of openspacers. so thank you for generously redirecting them to the rest of us! Birgitt Williams wrote:
Dear friends and colleagues on the list, I have done considerable thinking and meditating about the existence of the archives of this list and about the fact that the list is now open to being searchable through the world wide web. It appears that I cannot do anything about the decisions made. I am sad that we do not have a democratic process in this community for decision making and I am sad that decisions are made on behalf of a community by a few. Those decisions are then recorded in the FAQ's and captured as what appear to be the 'givens' for this community. I have read a number of items regarding building community for list serves, the importance of protection and safety for its members so that the community is a real community. I am deeply saddened that through the opening of our list to world wide web in the way that it has been opened now by a decision made by someone who has the power to do this on our behalf without a decision making process within the community, that in my opinion we no longer have a community. People can access our conversations without ever taking the responsibility of identifying themselves to us. There is no equal energy exchange between these people and those who contribute to the list by participating in community either as speakers or listening learners. Also, when our list archives are accessible through the search engines on the www, our e-mail addresses are now available to the public whether we want them to be or not. And as you all know, this means that these addresses are now likely to be 'harvested' by the spiders who 'harvest' e-mail addresses to send out spam mail to them. We have been opened to this and without the community permission. From my perspective, any belief that there is now a community is an illusion. I have invested a lot of my time, energy, heart in contributions to the list for many years in my passion about what I believed was an important community. I am so so sad at this violation. Some years ago, on the list, I was made aware that the list had archives and it was happily announced at the time that the archives could be accessed by anyone on the list. I was fairly unfamiliar at the time with how all of this worked and I was deeply disturbed that there were archives and I spoke against them at the time, only to be told by Harrison and others that I was naive if I had assumed there were no archives captured for the list. I noted for myself that everyone who accessed the archives had to sign in to the list, and so I fell silent on the subject thinking that in a very arms length way, these people, by signing in to the list to get to the archives were also part of the list. Over time, most people on the list who used my materials from the list also used great professional courtesy and sent me a note about the intended use to get my permission, knowing that once words are written, it is like a copyright on those words. I was grateful to these people. I always gave permission to use my words but sometimes I asked for a change to include more context so that my words kept the same meaning that I intended them to have by being kept in the context in which they were written. When my words have been used out of context by people who did not have the professional courtesy of letting me know they were using them and indeed publishing them, that was another situation and one that I haven't known how to deal with. For me, the recent announcement by Michael Herman that the archives are now open to be searchable on the world wide web was one to which I immediately expressed my dismay. I realize that I cannot change what is being done by people who have power on our behalf. I don't even know who they are because they have never identified themselves as our executive or some such. But, they appear to be the decison makers. I cannot do anything to change this situation that has troubled me so much. I can however express my own needs very very clearly so that they are not misunderstood. I have been a significant contributor to this community through this list almost since it began. I did this to support this community to the best of my ability and to do my part in assisting with the building of this community to the best of my ability. I didn't do this to assist in the creation of a data base that would be used by researchers and others. My vested interest was in community support and community strengthening. Archives of this list have been kept and it has been without my permission to keep archives of my writing and they have been kept without letting us know from the beginning that a 'given' of this list was to have archives. Archives of this which includes my contributions have now been opened to the worldwide web and its search engines without my permission to use my contributions in this way. I am hereby giving notice to those who have made this decision that my contributions are copyrighted and that anyone using my contributions to the world wide web in any paper, article, thesis, or book that they are writing must request my permission to do so. I am holding those who made my contributions available to the search engines of the worldwide web accountable for my copyrighted material which I made available for one purpose and is now being used for another purpose to which I did not agree. I am deeply concerned that my materials be quoted by noting the context in which they are written and not pulled apart piecemeal creating the illusion that I have said or implied something that I did not say or imply. I request that those on this list who have made the decision to put make our archives available to the world wide web search engines identify themselves to the list so that I know who the decision makers on this list are and so that I know who to hold accountable. I am also deeply concerned that my sharing from the heart including sharing about my personal life which I did a lot in the early days of this community has become available to others for whom it was not written, to now read. In my research, I have discovered that most designs for lists intended for community never violate that community. I am not naive to have made assumptions that we were a community and that our sharing was for our community. This is a clear situation of 'givens' being made along the way,on behalf of a community, by a few in power. Again, this information is copyrighted and permission must be asked of me to publish this information in any way. Again, I am holding the decision makers on this list who have made my contributions to this list community available to search engines on the world wide web accountable for the protection of my copyrighted material. I have loved this list community as an important part of my life for a long time. It is my hope that there will be some understanding of what I am prepared to engage in and what I am not prepared to engage in with my energy and that my decision about the materials that I have submitted to the list over the years falls within my definition for myself of what I am available for and what I am not. I am available to contribute to this community. Birgitt Williams --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.634 / Virus Database: 406 - Release Date: 3/18/2004 * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
-- Michael Herman Michael Herman Associates 300 West North Avenue #1105 Chicago IL 60610 USA (312) 280-7838 http://www.michaelherman.com - consulting & publications http://www.globalchicago.net - laboratory & playground http://www.openspaceworld.org - worldwide open space ...inviting organization into movement * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu, Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
