LFGSS and Microcosm shutting down 16th March 2025 (the day before the Online Safety Act is enforced)

@velocio what happens to DMs when you delete a user?

I don't think I am in for whatever follows the end of your benevolent dictatorship, and so I might like to be merged into the @deleted singularity prior to 16th March.

The public parts will be archived by ArchiveTeam and made available by the Wayback Machine.

Who owns the copyright to this treasury of knowledge, wit and invention?

@velocio what happens to DMs when you delete a user?

It depends.

Your part is deleted, but if the other recipient still has a copy in their inbox then it continues to exist. If they delete it too then it's fully deleted.

Who owns the copyright to this treasury of knowledge, wit and invention?

The site has had the same T&C since the vBulletin days, and the most recent wording was more than a decade ago:

You confirm that images, sounds, text or information that you submit or create ("User Content") whilst using the forum will meet the Rules of Acceptable Use.

You give us unlimited permission to use your User Content and allow others to do the same for no fee. In legal terms this means that you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and perpetual licence to use, copy, reproduce, distribute, adapt, re-format, modify, publish, translate, licence, sub-licence, assign, transfer and sell the User Content anywhere and in any form.

In essence you own the copyright to your content (i.e. you post that I'm replying to) but you grant a right to us to use it (i.e. to show it to others, re-format it, make it public, etc) and you grant a right for us to transfer the content too.

It's that set of rights that allow any public website to operate, and also allow it to be archived.

I draw a very strong line around private stuff regardless of whether it's covered by the T&C above (which it is).

As I read it that means you own the copyright to your own posts but in effect have simultaneously given it away.

Then, who have you ceded the copyright to? I suppose in the first instance to the Forum, however legally constituted, but the text also includes:

and allow others to do the same for no fee.

Does this mean that anyone could take this intellectual property and repurpose it for private or commercial use? So that for all practical purposes there is no copyright? Or are the 'others' to be determined by whoever represents the Forum?

Examining the minutia of copyright seems a little beside the point at this stage in proceedings.

This is the sort of legendary behaviour that made you the forum leader you are. I salute you.

Wait, +Velocio is not on the New Year's honour list?!?!?! Scandalous...

Never impressed by people that accept an Order of the British Empire.

Examining the minutia of copyright seems a little beside the point at this stage in proceedings.

That's what Lennon & McCartney said as they let Northern Songs slip out of their fingers.

It's terriblingly sad, this forum made me meet some amazing people IRL, what a shame for UK gov to destroy small communities...

It’s a rights grab so any content you post can be re-sold, licensed or modified without your permission or recompense.

So a huge image archive that is now owned by whoever owns the forum.

I don't disagree.

That's how it works if you want to run a service and not have people flounce and say "I withdraw my copyright", which would then need that tracking at every level to enable compliance, which is frankly impossible as the vast majority of images are reposts from elsewhere and you didn't have the rights either 🤷

The best the internet has is creative commons, and maybe I should've gone with that, but I carried forward a rights grab from the mid 1990s instead as I was lazy in building the system.

Well no you can have a disclaimer that works both ways that gives you (the owner) the right to show the content and the image owner to assign that right by hitting the post button but not grab all rights to it.
They (the poster) also agree to be responsible for any subsequent copyright infringement due to their posting.

But seeing as the bean counters and legal people of the corporate world would like to grab whatever they can it became the default position and can be cut and paste without worry.
Anyway those are the terms, people can not post their content if they don’t agree to them.

Away in a very different time zone riding a motorised two-wheeler thinking this will all blow over, but now wanna chime in after reading your latest assessment @Velocio, or more personal, Dee.
I also want to extend my sincerest gratitude for this incredible place you've facilitated through immense effort. Having had time to think it over, I would be at peace for this to end, despite being such a large part of my life for the last +-15 years including lurking. And I wholeheartedly understand you making this decision with the intense past behind you and us. And as I have come to understand, on your personal journey, intense future ahead.
My best wishes internet stranger bossman!
Ruud

It’s a rights grab so any content you post can be re-sold, licensed or modified without your permission or recompense.

So a huge image archive that is now owned by whoever owns the forum.

The wording of the T&Cs seems to allow at least the possibility that anyone can re-use the content, not just the owner of the forum.

Yeah totally.

Because there's an lfgss app made by someone else, and that's intentional, the site is API first and the UI is implemented as a different layer, and I hoped this would allow a kind of federation, the ability to seed new communities from small but relevant parts of another.

So yes, it is broad and essentially says the content can be used however by whomever.

There's a reason why I said it would be relatively easy to make the forum work on the fediverse, a lot of the concepts that eventually arose in activity pub were put into the architecture of the forum software. I was going the same direction that the fediverse is now doing successfully.

Thank you for everything @Velocio

If Stonehedge were still here he’d have seamlessly moved us onto the blockchain by now. Thanks Mashton.

Would rep!

DMs are very likely going to be scanned

I mean, wtf?

I'll run it from Australia, under my pet cat's name.

Also dont be a dick. Sheesh... [Also as TS would point out internet hides actual meaning so take that]

internet hides actual meaning

Best album title ever.

It's dogs that are allowed bank accounts and tax exemptions.