4 ms·

Yeah this outcome should ensure that no outlet will publish with the proprietary platform again, and that there are controls in place to ensure that it is not a

Yeah this outcome should ensure that no outlet will publish with the proprietary platform again, and that there are controls in place to ensure that it is not available for that to happen. The "guilty" party in this scenario also seems to be EJC for not properly licensing the original content. Edit: It also seem very reasonable to think that AJ thought scrollytelling was simply a host of the opensource resource, and removed all links backs except the CDN file that was obfuscated.

frankydp 10y ago
After looking at scrollytelling.io, I am now even more confused about their claim. Their pricing model is based on hosting, with bandwidth and upload limits. Along side that monthly hosting service they offer a one off service for "in-house production" of a story. So. Their model is to collect the production fee for a one off or let the user "produce" the story and profit from the volume savings on hosting. I can not determine how in either model having the story that has already been paid for hosted remotely would be not a good thing, unless there is a license were somehow scrollytelling retains the ownership of the product they were paid to produce. I am not sure why they would want to bare the cost of an AJ level distributed, if they are a hosting company. But, if they are a content creation firm maybe they are not actually creating content for the purchaser, but allowing the purchaser to use scrollytelling content, which the purchaser already owned? Edit: In short I don't understand why the purchaser would not be able to redistribute. Anyways, I have no idea how the model works inside its industry context, and if I am confused even with the current context provided by the OP, I can not imagine that a journalist would not be.
- danso 10y ago
  As far as I can see, ScrollyTelling offers as a base service, an editor for creating content and hosting of said content. This template and editor allows a non-web-dev to create scrolly-format multimedia stories fairly easily with the additional convenience of online hosting. The journalist has to come up with the content and multimedia assets themselves, unless they hire ScrollyTelling to do it. I'm assuming that's not the case here as most independent journalists who cover these kind of stories are capable of collecting video/photos and writing text themselves (I mean, that's the whole damn appeal of being such a journalist). So this journalist "sold" the story to one outlet who already had a hosting deal with scrollytelling. Then the journalist sent the story over to Al-Jazeera -- I'm not sure if anything was really "sold", per se, as Al-Jazeera has a syndication relationship with the original outlet. Either way, someone at AJ thought this meant that the assets that the original newspaper paid for was fair game, and then apparently decided to copy some and hotlink other assets from the newspaper's site. Neither the newspaper nor the journalist nor Al-Jazeera realized that the CSS design (like the little dots used to navigate) and cloud storage was meant to be redistributed. Sure, that's on them, and AJ and the other parties are definitely at fault for not acting sooner. But I could easily see this as being a case of each stakeholder thinking that it's the other parties' job to deal with what seems like a confusing technicality. And this is a case where the stakeholders are a freelancer, a Dutch newspaper, and a global news network, three entities that normally have communication problems.
  - frankydp 10y ago
    I agree that ignorance of scrollytelling existence was the most likely cause for the situation. If you put the CDN bandwidth tester file aside. Wouldn't a paying client of scrollytelling be able to distribute that product (CSS included) if they wanted to? If their platform is a content creator/editor then the purchaser should be able to redistribute, and if they are a production shop then the same would be true. If not wouldn't it be similar to photoshop or sublime claiming copyright on something created with those tools, and if they are a production shop something similar to a commercial studio claiming copyright to something they produced and then sold to someone after they resold it. I understand they are providing a service and a value add, but wouldn't the output belong to the purchaser? I assume scrollytelling could have a very onerous license that prohibits this, but it seems if their customers knew those limitation they would probably be hesitant to purchase.
    - danso 10y ago
      I'm assuming that scrollytelling has this as part of their terms. I mean, that's the only way to get customers to pay the €399/month subscription fee [0], which seems to be the minimum offering, i.e. there's no plan for just using the editor and then exporting it as flat files that can be uploaded to any file server. [0] https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing

frankydp 10y ago

After looking at scrollytelling.io, I am now even more confused about their claim. Their pricing model is based on hosting, with bandwidth and upload limits. Along side that monthly hosting service they offer a one off service for "in-house production" of a story. So. Their model is to collect the production fee for a one off or let the user "produce" the story and profit from the volume savings on hosting. I can not determine how in either model having the story that has already been paid for hosted remotely would be not a good thing, unless there is a license were somehow scrollytelling retains the ownership of the product they were paid to produce. I am not sure why they would want to bare the cost of an AJ level distributed, if they are a hosting company. But, if they are a content creation firm maybe they are not actually creating content for the purchaser, but allowing the purchaser to use scrollytelling content, which the purchaser already owned? Edit: In short I don't understand why the purchaser would not be able to redistribute. Anyways, I have no idea how the model works inside its industry context, and if I am confused even with the current context provided by the OP, I can not imagine that a journalist would not be.

danso 10y ago
As far as I can see, ScrollyTelling offers as a base service, an editor for creating content and hosting of said content. This template and editor allows a non-web-dev to create scrolly-format multimedia stories fairly easily with the additional convenience of online hosting. The journalist has to come up with the content and multimedia assets themselves, unless they hire ScrollyTelling to do it. I'm assuming that's not the case here as most independent journalists who cover these kind of stories are capable of collecting video/photos and writing text themselves (I mean, that's the whole damn appeal of being such a journalist). So this journalist "sold" the story to one outlet who already had a hosting deal with scrollytelling. Then the journalist sent the story over to Al-Jazeera -- I'm not sure if anything was really "sold", per se, as Al-Jazeera has a syndication relationship with the original outlet. Either way, someone at AJ thought this meant that the assets that the original newspaper paid for was fair game, and then apparently decided to copy some and hotlink other assets from the newspaper's site. Neither the newspaper nor the journalist nor Al-Jazeera realized that the CSS design (like the little dots used to navigate) and cloud storage was meant to be redistributed. Sure, that's on them, and AJ and the other parties are definitely at fault for not acting sooner. But I could easily see this as being a case of each stakeholder thinking that it's the other parties' job to deal with what seems like a confusing technicality. And this is a case where the stakeholders are a freelancer, a Dutch newspaper, and a global news network, three entities that normally have communication problems.
- frankydp 10y ago
  I agree that ignorance of scrollytelling existence was the most likely cause for the situation. If you put the CDN bandwidth tester file aside. Wouldn't a paying client of scrollytelling be able to distribute that product (CSS included) if they wanted to? If their platform is a content creator/editor then the purchaser should be able to redistribute, and if they are a production shop then the same would be true. If not wouldn't it be similar to photoshop or sublime claiming copyright on something created with those tools, and if they are a production shop something similar to a commercial studio claiming copyright to something they produced and then sold to someone after they resold it. I understand they are providing a service and a value add, but wouldn't the output belong to the purchaser? I assume scrollytelling could have a very onerous license that prohibits this, but it seems if their customers knew those limitation they would probably be hesitant to purchase.
  - danso 10y ago
    I'm assuming that scrollytelling has this as part of their terms. I mean, that's the only way to get customers to pay the €399/month subscription fee [0], which seems to be the minimum offering, i.e. there's no plan for just using the editor and then exporting it as flat files that can be uploaded to any file server. [0] https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing https://www.scrollytelling.io/#pricing