Postscript: Who Owns The Hellmouth Posts?

A discussion follows on why the messages in "Voices From The Hellmouth" should be published as they are, and why they were chosen. These messages were meant to be heard. They are the right ones. They shouldn't be edited, excluded or silenced, especially not here. (By JonKatz & CmdrTaco)

To me, the moral imperative of the Hellmouth series has always been simple: get these stories out to a wider audience. That's what they were sent.

There are countless victims of a tragedy like Columbine. First, and certainly foremost, there were the 12 kids and a teacher who were slain. Secondly, there were the two emotionally disturbed kids who killed them, and then took their own lives. And finally, there were the many thousands of individualistic, interesting and sometimes-alienated kids who have suffered from the post-Columbine hysteria.

Their stories are familiar to anyone who read the Hellmouth series, or who has been following the epidemic of suspensions, expulsions, arrests, forced counseling sessions, social abuse and suspicion, and nightmare creations like Pinkerton's "WAVE America" program, an anonymous hotline on which kids are encouraged to turn in peers they consider dangerous or violent.

In the days after Columbine, many of those new victims sent messages to Slashdot, in the hopes of finding an outlet for their experiences -- since schools, the media and politicians were giving them no voice. We can't count exactly how many messages were sent this way, some posted here, others e-mailed directly to me, while many messagers were unable to get onto the site. But my best guess is close to 20,000.

In a handful of cases, posters asked for anonymity, or that their messages not ever be passed along. Those requests were, of course, honored. But as perhaps the only person who read all the messages, that got through, and that I received, I am confident about their spirit and intent, both literally and figuratively. Those people wanted to get their stories out. They sent their messages in the hopes of reaching beyond their own lives and schools and into mainstream media, educational and political circles. The Hellmouth posts are unique. They belong in the public domain. In fact, they cry out to be there.

The overwhelming majority of these kids and adults came from outside of the Slashdot community. They perceived Slashdot as a place where messages get out, where they could speak freely, where information is shared and distributed. They asked that I do everything possible to see that their words and perspectives and pleas and stories reach journalists, educators and parents. None of them were particularly aware of or interested in the many internicine issues and conflicts that characterize a site like this. They were not conventional posters to Slashdot's Threads.

So I have worked to be faithful to those requests. In these kid's lives, a year is a long, sometimes painful time. Lots of these kids have stayed in touch. Many have moved, gone on to college, switched computers or ISP's, changed their technological lives or personal interests. Many, of course, were young, complicating the posting issues still further.

Although I didn't select the messages in this about-to-be published collection, (Since I am legally under contract to another book publisher, I couldn't directly participate in the production of the book, and I also thought it would be better to have a more detached eye) I've read them. The selections were brilliant. They are the right ones, and they are powerful.

My belief and recommendation was this: the safest, fairest and most effective way to deal with publishing excerpts from the outpouring was to select the most powerful and universal posts, strip them of identifying name or e-mail addresses (some of them are young, some messages to them might be intercepted by parents or siblings, and the Net can be hostile) and publish the strongest, most representative excerpts. To do anything else, in my opinion, would be arbitrary and unfair, because:

- Messages shouldn't be excluded just because the posters were young, or had moved or switched ISP's.

-Messages should be chosen for their content, not availability.

Inclusion in the book shouldn't be part of a negotiating process, but on the basis of merit.

-All of the posted messages -- including some e-mailed to me -- were clearly sent with the intent of being seen. People wanted to have some impact on the post-Columbine hysteria.

Many people in this community have raised all sorts of questions about my motives (the accusations included profiteering, self-promotion, exploitation, opportunism, among others), and about idea ownership, and some proprietary questions about including posts. Many of these concerns are perfectly valid, others ironically coming from people who routinely download music, videos, software and other information and pass along opinions, columns and stories without a second thought, or even as a matter or principle.

Fact is, I've never been prouder to have my name on any book. I hope it's published in a timely fashion. I hope it's supported and widely read.

One of the problems with the eruption of hate-mail Friday (I define hate mail as a message with the word "hate" in it, or a message sent for the sole purpose of personal attack or injury) is that it often obscures genuine issues, and the posts that raised intelligent and important questions. That was the case in the response following the announcement that "Voices From The Hellmouth" was going to be published.

These issues, while valid, raise the risk of obscuring the point: The Hellmouth messages urgently need to be disseminated; they deserve to be heard. Don't do to these kids what so many journalists, administrators, parents and others have done -- shut them up.

Where possible, it's perfectly valid to try to reach individuals and get their permission -- believe me, that will not be a problem. In every case, e-mail addresses should be stripped and only the poster's initials used. But messages ought not be kept from the book simply because a poster was unreachable. These messages are the right ones.

That unrelated issues ought not delay the publication of the book by a single day, or result in the deletion of any valid message. Nor should they divert attention from what the Hellmouth series is really about -- the very real persecution of kids who are individualistic, different, "non-normal," and who have been wrongly caught up in an ugly hysterical response to a tragic event. These voices should not be silenced, and certainly not here.

Addendum by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda

I wanted to make a few points in addition to Jon's.

• A terrible thing happened a year ago. Then the world freaked out and caused even worse things to happen to even more people. Everyone involved in the production of this book felt that this would in some small way help. You're not obligated to buy, read, or even care about this book. But there are many people who hopefully will benefit from it.
• It was impractical, and in fact undesirable to contact and credit the vast number of contributors. Under other circumstances, it might have been different, but considering the subject matter, we felt that it was better done anonymously anyway. If we were publishing the 'Slashdot Readers Guide to Hacking C++' or something, much different criteria would have been used.
• We're donating any money to charity: we'll certainly entertain suggestions about which charity, and perhaps it'll be put to a Slashdot poll, all of that however was just a nice side benefit to a larger purpose. Accusations that this is a PR stunt were pretty hurtful. We honestly feel that this was above all else, a "Good Thing". Yes, we did it through a Andover, a corporate, "For Profit" entity, but that alone doesn't make turn this into an evil plot to take your money, and earn us fame. Turn the conspiracy theory down a notch and remember that Andover just a group of human beings with real feelings and everything. Several of them were very hurt that so many people reacted so angrily to something that we all felt was good.
• We're in the middle of a big server move. After that we'll hack a permission system to allow people to decide if their words are for Slashdot only, or may be redistributed if this ever comes up again. There are many good things in the comments worthy of wider audiences, and most readers don't have any problem with that, but the few (loud) people for whom this is a major stumbling block should most certainly be allowed to determine the destiny of their own words. It has been my intent to add this for months, but ideas are plentiful, while the time to code them isn't.
• It will be published electronically. It'll be run either on Slashdot, or it'll be in some downloadable format. Its just not out yet, so chill out for a few weeks ;)

Extra-special bonus addendum 04/21 16:24 by michael : Already the jokes have begun.

Comments

IIAL (I am a lawyer).

[Anonymous Coward]

IIAL, and I just wanted to make a few comments. First of all, the fact that this site has "The following comments are owned by whoever posted them" on every discussion page is very important. This sentence doesn't just absolve Slashdot from all responsibility for the content of the posts, it actually confers ownership to the posters. It seems like the Slashdot administrators would like to have it both ways: for the disclaimer to mean that the site is not responsible for the content, while at the same time having the people posting them really not having the right to them. I've seen a few posts about this being a "public" forum, etc, and that because of this they have the right to reproduce the comments and make a profit from them. This just isn't true. First of all, from a legal standpoint, this has no merit. Slashdot would have to post some sort of disclaimer in the membership agreement (or on the page where people submit comments) saying that they reserve the right to reproduce the comments in the future, etc. for them to be able to do so without asking permission. Just because it was "too difficult" for them to obtain permission from everyone doesn't make it legal not to do so. Sure, you've got Jon Katz saying how these stories needed to be told. Maybe that's true morally, but it doesn't make the situation any more right legally.

Re:What the fnar?

[Gleef]

As far as I can tell, the bulk of the content was written by Jon Katz for slashdot, as opposed to being written for the book. Some content was included from other slashdot posters. The employees of Slashdot did the editing, and Andover did the publishing. Therefore, Jon Katz should get authorship credit, since he wrote most of the material.

Disclaimer: I was not involved in the production of the book, the above is merely my interpretation of various comments by Jon Katz, Commander Taco and Hemos.

----

Reality check

[Watts Martin]

And what if one of the featured decides that the published version is too personal, and, despite of the alterations for privacy, all too personal and identifiable?

At risk of sounding harsh, then they shouldn't have posted them to start with.

Look, folks: how many people read Slashdot on a frequent basis? How many people see any given article or high-rated comment? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

How many people have seen a substantial part of the "Hellmouth" series? At least tens of thousands? Closer to hundreds of thousands?

More than you think than will see a book with a print run of, say, 25,000? I've worked in publishing. 25,000 would be an big run for a first printing of something that didn't have the name Danielle Steel or Stephen King on it.

Wake up, folks. These posts have already been published. There are some valid copyright concerns in theory, but I don't think this can be said to set a "once online, all rights are lost" precedent. (You can, of course, kiss first serial rights in all countries goodbye, but that's another story.)

The change in media is irrelevant--the question is only whether or not this falls under "fair use" provisions of copyright. If you're prepared to argue that it doesn't, you'd better be prepared to argue against

• Copying someone else's .sig
• Forwarding a joke, with or without attribution
• Posting or forwarding most or all of a short news snippet
• Clicking the "email this article to a friend" link anywhere
• Printing out a web page with a recipe and letting someone else photocopy it

...you can see where I'm going with this. The media and the distribution of that media aren't relevant to copyright concerns; you don't get to say that those examples are okay but the Voices from the Hellmouth book isn't simply because there's a chance you'll be able to find it at Borders.

Open-source everything but my comments!

[Cid Highwind]

I'm not going to name names, but there are a bunch of you who regularly post GPL-the-world, proprietary anything is bad, MP3s deserve to be free, intellectual property is a myth, type posts. Now these same people are whining that their slashdot comments are being quoted in a book.

How does it feel now? are you going to stop posting anti-copyright diatribes, or do you just think your writing is more deserving of legal protection than anyone else's?

Notice: I grant permission to the slashdot editors to reprint my comments in part or whole in any form, with or without contacting me.
The above is now in my user bio section, I encourage everyone else who feels the same way to put something similar in their info.

Re:Public domain

[Syberghost]

Putting something in print that was submitted anonymously is just flat out irresponsible.

You had me, right up until this statement.

In the middle of an insightful, well-reasoned post, this is just rubbish.

If you submit something to Slashdot anonymously, you're not sending it to small, secret group of people; you're sending it directly to several tens of thousands of people worldwide, and you're listing it on search engines where it'll show up to anybody typing a keyword or two.

What would be irresponsible would be backtracking the Anonymous postings to identify their poster, so he could be credited; that would completely undermine people's confidence in the anonymity of their postings, and have a chilling effect on a tool that's getting a lot of important messages moved from inside people's brains (where they often aren't accomplishing much) and out into the wide world, where they sometimes are accomplishing useful things.

Slashdot isn't a private messagebase on a BBS somewhere, it's a public forum.

It's a bit like a big reader-edited newspaper, which doesn't really have parallels in the non-virtual world because it's not feasible without Tim Berners-Lee's amazing invention.

I assure you, when we collectively interview somebody, he doesn't assume he's speaking to use in our living rooms privately; he assumes he's being published.

If you post something to Slashdot anonymously, the very act of making it anonymous removes any right you have to hope it remains unpublished, because you've made it unattributable.

The Right Thing vs. The Legal Thing

[SteveM]

Let me start by saying that I think that the book is a good thing. I think that the way it was done is a bad thing.

I agree that this is a story that must be told. I think that it is extemely important that "freaks and geeks" not be persecuted for being different.

There was a right way to do it. Unfortunately, Andover et. al. didn't choose that way.

In reading the comments in this thread I've seen a number that express the idea "The issue is too important to worry about the legal issues." or "We have a moral imperative that supercedes any other issues."

This is the same argument used to murder abortion doctors. This is the same argument that is being used to keep a young Cuban boy from his father. This is the same argument used to destroy research projects and careers in the name of animal rights. This is the same argument used by the religious right against gays. It is used everytime someone 'knows' what is right for everyone else.

And this is the same argument used by the Pinkerton company to run roughshod over the rights of kids whose only "crime" is that they are different.

The outrage I have with Andover et. al. is not that they put together this book or even the way they did it. My problem is the attitude they are now displaying after the issues were raised. "We know best." "We are above the law." "We don't have to stand by what is written on every /. page."

For better or worse we (at least in the US) live by the rule of law, not by the rule of force (in theory at least). You may not like the fact that abortions are permitted, or gays have rights, or that animals are used in experiments, or that kids who are different get persecuted. But you do not have the right to take matters into your own hands and ignore the rights of others.

I find CmdrTaco's, Jahn Katz's, and Andover's actions both unfortunate and disturbing.

Steve M

What the fnar?

[pkj]

Jon Katz writes:

Although I didn't select the messages in this about-to-be published collection, (Since I am legally under contract to another book publisher, I couldn't directly participate in the production of the book,

Ok, then, who did write the book and why is your name on the cover?

-p.

Re:This IS a Good Thing

[Barney]

I'm just a little feller. I don't post early and often, I'm not 1337, and I've only read half of the DMCA.

But I'm standing up with you. And Jon and Rob. I hope the book spreads some consciousness about the almost-timeless problem of adolescence, how rough it is for most people, and how most people cope with it okay without losing their sanity, and what can help them make it through instead of making it harder.

I think it is a good thing, and is the right thing, and I salute the people who went to the effort of doing it. From the kids brave enough to tell the world about their pain and humiliation, to the folks at Andover (who are NOT going to make a lot of money at this, I expect), to Jon and Rob, who also endure more pain and humiliation than they should have to.

Now here's my two cents on the intellectual property mess.

It seems that lots of people on /. take IP seriously. Whether it's software patents or click-through licenses or copy protection or GPL, there's a lot of posts and a lot of argument about it. I know it's a topic that I think is interesting and important.

Now, I'm not as rabidly paranoid as some others, so I think that Jon and Rob are not cleverly scheming to use other people's work for their own devious purposes. I expect that most of the stories published are:
- not from the people whining about their rights to their posts
- from people who wanted to tell their story, and would be honored to have it more widely published
- quite possibly fair use.

But I don't know, and neither does almost anyone who's posted about it. Therefore, maybe we should wait until it comes out and see if anyone whose work is published feels like their rights have been infringed before we unleash all our righteous rage. There are things Jon has said that I've thought were inaccurate conclusions, but that hardly seems reason to presume that this book is going to have infringing material in it that the copyright owner's going to be upset about.

In the this-isn't-the-law-but-it's-what-I-think-is-right
category, I don't think anyone's going to make a lot of profit from this. So I don't really feel that anyone's liable to benefit overmuch from someone else's talent. And the only situation that I can imagine someone getting hurt from their post being published is if they sent to Slashdot expecting that no one they knew would read it, and when it is published as a book, someone does read it and is able to identify them, and they didn't want anyone they knew to read it. But this seems somewhat unlikely. No undue benefit, probably no undue harm -- in my little world, there's no foul.

And if in your little world, there's some horrible moral lapse or negligence that _might_ be going on, maybe hold judgement and a little trust that the good guys we know and love are doing a good job, until you see the end product?

Bob

I don't understand the complaining

[cowscows]

To everyone who's complaining that they don't want their posts quoted, why does it scare you so much to be involved in this? This is something bigger and more important than any one of us, and our own little concerns of property or whatnot.

I've really only seen two types of angry arguments from the /. crowd over this book. Some people are upset that a whole sentence or two of what they posted in an already public forum is being spread into a more public forum. The rest of the people are complaining that /. is just selling out, trying to make money by exploiting the community it has. I'm pretty sure they've said numerous times that this book is not making them any profit.

What I haven't seen much of is criticism of the underlying idea, which is that the people publishing this book, and the posts and emails that were quoted in it are trying to fight a culture that has allowed a tradgedy to get far out of hand.

Why are you whining that Katz is trying to speak out on behalf of people who need a voice? In this case, it doesn't sound like he's really trying to speak for the geek community as a whole (which he sometimes seems to do), but rather just relaying a message that has found much discussion among us.

I guess the point is, most of you need to stop your petty selfish whining. Shut up and swallow the whole "information should be free" concept. If you don't believe that, well, fair enough, but /. is a community built on sharing information, and if you don't like it, then maybe you shouldn't post here.

ps. - There have been a few posts of people actually arguing the real issue, and while they have point some valid points across, I don't think they're significant enough that they should prevent a spreading of the views of thousands of others.

This IS a Good Thing

[grahamkg]

Here's the text of an email I sent to Jon yesterday in response to learning about the publication of the book:

Subject: Hellmouth Thanks

Hi Jon!

Thank you for making it into a book! I expect I'll buy the book, and I look forward to reading it, the fact that I've read the "Hellmouth" pieces on /. notwithstanding. I'm not one of the important readers, however. The important readers will be the ones who aren't aware of the Hellmouth.

This is really important. No, I don't expect some revolution to come from your book, but it *will* plant some seeds. It's a way to fight back, to raise awareness in a techologically sophisticated yet socially barbaric world.

Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!

--
Graham

Thank you too, CmdrTaco!

'Nuf said.

Graham

Public domain

[heff]

Although there may be copyright issues involving a post, when an actor or politician says something in public there's always the possibility that he can be quoted. The same thing applies here. Thousands already read your post so what's the problem with a few more? If you didn't want your opinion to be heard why voice it in the first place?

Come clean everybody

[cprincipe]

Everybody who is upset about getting their /. posts quoted in the book are upset because of one of two reasons:

1. They didn't get their two seconds of fame, because all the posts were stripped of names. Now, nobody in the print world will know of the offended poster's infinite wisdom.
2. They didn't get their two cents of royalties, because Jon Katz and Rob Malda are actually getting money from publication of the book, even though they are turning over that money to charity.

Jon and Rob are not idiots. If they were to seek permissions for all the posts they chose to include, they would run into the following problems:

• Everyone who posted as an AC would be cropping up claiming they had produced the quote. Ensuing battle would take months.
• People would be pissed about not making any money off the publication. Ensuing battle would take months.
• People would refuse to allow intelligent quotes to appear in the book on the sole basis that they hate Jon Katz. Ensuing idiocy would occur perpetually.

Grow up and get a life outside of /.