The four major parties vying for control of Montreal city hall (yeah, let’s go ahead and include Louise O’Sullivan) all seemed to have embraced the new online trends. They all have Facebook and Twitter (though some use the latter more than others). The two top contenders also have YouTube channels and upload official candidate photos and campaign photos to Flickr.
But, I wondered, do they really have a firm grasp of social media? We’ll set aside the fact that none of the four websites is fully bilingual, and move on to the fine print: how do the four parties handle copyright?
Since these are campaign websites, one would expect they would want to encourage dissemination of their pictures, slogans and press releases as much as possible. But that’s not exactly the case.
- Union Montreal is the only party to release its content (Union Montreal’s fine print is still French-only) under a Creative Commons license, though it is the most restrictive of such licenses. It does not allow commercial use of the content (which could conceivably mean not publishing candidate photos in commercial media), nor the creation of derivative works (which would prevent activists from creating mashups of those photos). Also, all the party’s photos uploaded to Flickr are still marked “all rights reserved”, which is the default copyright license.
- Vision Montreal’s fine print (the only one available in English, ironically), is complete boilerplate legalese: “All content, including texts, articles, photos, images and illustrations, belongs to Vision Montréal or the appropriate authors. It is forbidden to modify, copy, distribute, broadcast, transmit, represent, reproduce, publish, concede under license, transfer or sell said content without prior authorization from Vision Montréal or its appropriate authors.”
- Projet Montréal’s website has no fine print, no indication of a copyright notice, in either language.
- Parti Montréal Ville-Marie (Louise O’Sullivan’s party) is vague about its copyright license, saying that use and reproduction of its content can be used only for journalistic and activist purposes.
If these parties want bloggers and others to promote them, especially online, they need to be a bit more permissive than that.
I hope they realise that all their photos uploaded to facebook become the property of.. facebook!
Not true – Facebook did not change their terms of service in the end – due to user protest. Your content still belongs to you.
I don’t get it.
From http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf :
For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
ergo, FB owns your pics, no?
You are granting them a license, you still own the content. The license is rescinded when you delete your account or the licensed content. They no more own your content than you “own” a film on DVD.
ah, right. thanks
Speaking for Union Montreal, we do ;-)
Hi!
Thanks for checking on us.
Our copyright policy at Projet Montréal, for web stuff, is: “Go ahead!” Any pictures we post on there, and all content, is free for you to use unless otherwise noted.
Keep up the good work! And please send me ANY comments and suggestions you have concerning our web presence. You know, seeing as we’re doing it for you and all.
Thanks again!
Caroline
Hey Fagstein! Haven’t you heard about Copyleft? Go see La fin du Néandertal at Cinéma du Parc.
Projet Montréal shares it’s program and hopes that, if not elected, its program might be recuperated, the only proof that UM or VM have a green side…!
Did you notice the name change, UCIM lost the Citizens from it’s party to become Union Montréal…
It would be nice if Projet Montréal made this clear on its website.