Respecting Author's wishes.

[paraka]

As some of you know, I'm currently hosting a copy of the Google streaming code for podficcers to use. It's been whitelisted over at AO3 so we could get pod_together up and running this year and AO3 made an announcement letting people know this and that I'm open to others using the player too if they want.

This week, someone calling themselves nnyrt (zie doesn't seem to have an account at AO3, and I can't find zir on the web by Googling) started leaving comments to that post. In one of the comments about the Google TOS, zie started to attack me, personally, making it clear zie has some kind of personal grudge and/or problem with me.

The statement made was:
"Google Inc. may lack a persona in fandom to sympathize with, unlike londondrowning or ariestess, who were hurt in the past by Paraka's disregard for their derivs statements. But there is nothing transformative about outright theft, especially of something for which use had been served at no charge. It's just tacky."

I would like to make it clear that I do respect authors and I respect when they say yes or no to podfic.

The situation with londondrowning was a complex one that involved miscommuniation because of a 3rd party. I cleared things up with her right away, took down my podfic and, as far as I know, we're on good term and she was happy with the outcome of our situation.

As far as I know, I've never podficced anything by ariestess and I would, of course, respect her say so, should I ever ask and she say no.

Comments

[heard_the_owl]

o_O? They're...they're fighting for Google's rights? Because you're hosting the google reader??? Um.

o_O?????????????????

[paraka]

I can respect someone wanting to follow the rules. Google gives a lot of things away for free and I get people wanting to respect that. The internet (and fandom in particular) has a habit of completely ignoring TOSes and using things however we want. I'll admit that I fell into that. I admitted that on the post nnyrt referenced about taking on the liability.

Protecting Google's rights isn't really a priority of mine and if Google ever contacted me about my hosting their player, I would respect their wishes. As it is, I had already had some alternatives bookmarked that are open source, I just haven't had a chance to look at them closely yet. When/if I find other options that work just as well, that aren't TOS violations, I'll encourage people to use that option instead. However I don't want even more broken streaming links out there for podfic, so unless Google tells me otherwise, I'll probably keep hosting the player for those that don't want to make yet another code switch.

[were_duck]

that comment is weird. I am sorry!

[paraka]

I'll admit, it was kind of a shock. The people around me seem to be more angry on my behalf than I am at the moment. But I try really hard to have a good reputation online, so I'll probably be more hurt by this later when it really sinks in. /o\

[greedy_dancer]

What is even going on? I just... Don't understand what the Google player situation has to do with anything. If you have issues and concerns about the player and want to offer other open source players, why make it personal?? This all seems totally unreasonable to me.

*hugs*

[paraka]

*nods* nnyrt could have brought up the problems with the Google player without the personal attacks. Conflating the two things wasn't the greatest. Also, possibly nnyrt has secret information about my relationship with the two authors named, but zie could be putting them in an awkward situation too, since she's talking about things I'm not aware of.

[anatsuno]

ugh. *hugs*

[paraka]

Thanks. *hugs back*

[cathexys]

Wow, weird! And I'm sorry!

(Hey, i just wanna use my Stiles&dad hugs icon :)

[paraka]

Thanks, hugs appreciated.

[akamine_chan]

That particular post had several comments, not just by nnyrt, but also a couple of anons, that are just...odd. Except for the personal attack, I would have said that they were bots.

As for the personal stuff, *shrug*. That's between you and londondrowning and if you say it's resolved, then it's resolved. nnyrt can fuck off.

[leish]

I... what. Just, what, I don't understand how anyone, especially someone who presumably knows you well enough to harbour a grudge, can seriously think you disregard people's transformative works statements. I mean. I just. Ugh. *hugs tight*