Hi all! As promised, here is the proposed text of the newest version of the rules. The staff has gone through like eight drafts and literally thousands and thousands of matrix posts to get here, so please be kind. You can see @limeey's comment on the transparency post if you want more insight into how this sausage was made.
We are opening these rules to commentary from the community before they go into effect. To be clear, this isn't a vote, but we will take all community feedback into account and answer whatever questions we can before finalizing anything.
Please keep in mind that we are not Reddit, we do not have Reddit's resources, and safety and consent are our priorities.
I'll post the draft in two parts in two comments: The new sidebar, and the FAQ/clarifications page.
Does this mean that we are not allowed to post other OC's content here without their knowledge/consent? what about crossposting a post that an OC has made in a community to other communities within this instance, what about to places outside of this instance?
What if the person/people involved in the post are not members here of this lemmy instance, but elsewhere in fediverse or websites elsewhere - does it make it ok to post their OC then without consent simply because they are not "members"?
What about unattributed photos/images grabbed off the web. How do we get consent?
[Addition] Are moderators primarily responsible for enforcing this rule and banning/removing content posts? Can moderators be reported/removed from comms for NOT enforcing these rules for posters and by allowing posters to ignore this rule and allow such content in their comms?
Yup, if we find out about it, we will remove that image. repeat offenses will result in suspensions or bans. Keep in mind we have no way of knowing whether or not you have consent, so we will assume that you do unless we have reason to believe otherwise.
Super easy to get permission for that, super easy for OP to call you on it if you don't. Just ask!
Nope.
So this is a great question. The very base level of consent we're looking for is "is this person OK with being naked on the internet". If we think that that's missing -- if it's revenge porn, leaked, deepfake, straight up noncon, or if it's ambiguous -- then we will pull the image. If we think the person is OK with being naked on the internet, then we'll probably let it pass unless we have more info. Like I have no idea if that person has licensed this photo CC share alike or all rights reserved, if they want people to spread it around or they don't, and I'm not going to bother investigating because I have a life outside of this site. If that person ever pops up and says hey, this is pirated content, please remove it, I will comply.
Yes, and eventually yes though we would try to work with the mod to solve the issue first. Removal would be a last resort.
Thanks much. This helps. While I personally don't post other OC's content, I mod several communities where the content mix will likely become dominated by mostly OC, so your answers are a good guide for future posters into the communities.
Just as an aside, I've had the following rule on the OC focused subreddits I have on Reddit, mainly to respect OC creators, and at the same time allows us to weed out karma farmers and repost bots:
I plan on adding same rule here to various communities I mod.
love it.
You ask good questions, but I'm afraid they're very hard to answer no matter what the admins themselves believe to be morally correct.
Most of what you refer to is essentially a copyright issue. Unless otherwise specified by the copyright holders/creators of a piece of work, you're not allowed to repost it. In most jurisdictions this is very straight forward. The problem is enforcement, obviously: how are you going to verify that every OP has the right to share the material they're sharing? Excluding OC, you'll find they probably don't. Really determining this is very time consuming at best and impossible at worst.
So I don't think it would make sense to have a strict "you can only post OC or content you have the rights to" because it's just not compatible with a platform like Lemmy (or Reddit, for that matter). And if enforcement is more or less of the table, you might as well not have such an explicit rule and only respond to complaints 🤷