Nabeel Ansari

Let's have the names of these people. Come on, bring em forth. If they have any legitimate issue, they should have no fear of making the argument themselves. Bring them in to participate in the discussion.

He said it's always been infringement, not it's always been illegal. He said if website ads were ruled illegal, than so would YT ads. And he also said if website ads were ruled legal, than so would YT ads. Fair Use and copyright infringement are not mutually exclusive. Fair Use is a defense for a category of copyright infringement that has been cleared by a court of law; in other words, it's infringement, but the judge says it's okay if he thinks it's Fair Use. OCR has always operated in this manner. Your own arrangements operate in this manner whether or not you make a single cent on them for ANY reason. All of your video game arrangements are copyright infringement, and always have been, and will continue to be even if OCR shut down Patreon, turned off the donation service, and took down all ads everywhere. Nothing you say can get you out of it. It doesn't matter if you release the music for free and non-profit outside of OCR, it's still infringement. Even if it's Fair Use, it's still infringement. There is nothing inconsistent between what Larry and Zircon said.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

I'd like to defend Brandon Strader's claim, and this is the only reasonable defense:

Okay, so answer this other question, then: Why, in your scenario, is compensating other outside parties for doing work for OCR different by principle than compensating OCR's own staff for doing the same tasks (assuming they had time, obviously)?

So why are you participating in this thread if you're not going to say anything of substance and are outright refusing to do so when prompted? Why are you wasting your own time and mine? I asked you to plainly state your point, you continue to demonstrate that you perhaps don't actually even have one. I'm not even disagreeing with you, because I don't know what you're saying, and you're refusing to rephrase it even once. Unbelievable. So I'll ask the question again, for someone else to answer: "Why, in newt's scenario, is compensating other outside parties for doing work for OCR different by principle than compensating OCR's own staff for doing the same tasks (assuming they had time, obviously)?"

Can you please lay out your point in plain english? None of this answers my question. Why are you so hellbent on being cryptic? I ask you how paying outside people is principally different than paying inside people, you tell me that "an organization must act in the interests of its goals not in the interests of its constituent members", so I ask if by that you mean the act of paying inside people for work is acting in the interests of its constituent members (which would, logically, mean that is the principal difference, so perfectly valid point), but you tell me no (so that's not the point, we're back at square one), so I ask you to clarify what you mean then, and now you're linking me to broad topics on wikipedia. At this point I'm actually figuring the answer was "yes, that is what I'm saying" and you're just being needlessly difficult about it and sore about the fact that someone didn't immediately understand the intention of what you were saying and feel insulted that you're being prompted for more detail and clarification.

I'm asking you to clarify what you said, because I don't understand how it answers my question. I asked why contracting outside work instead of internally contracting work is different in principle, and you responded by saying the organization needs to act in accordance with its goals, not the interests of its constituent members. If how I interpreted that isn't correct as you say, then you need to explain what you're saying instead of just saying it.

In other words, you're saying that a staff member being compensated automatically makes it the latter instead of the former?

I'll never understand why people just sit on the internet trash talking other places on the internet.

Re: Who wants a policy that's out of date every time a new & relevant technology comes out? I don't know, actually, because you see policies from games in particular constantly updating and having to get you to agree to them again. I don't think regular policy revisions are actually that wild an idea, and like you said, not in substance/meaning, but in clarified language, with new up-to-date examples. As for 501c3, I'm genuinely interested right now. Is it on the table? Is a specific amount of funds being waited for, or is there a hangup in terms of someone having to complete some necessary tasks? Curious as to the progress on this.

As I've said like 4 times before on this thread, invoking back-handed legal tactics on your community members is the best way to kill member retention and damage your reputation. OCR is not just a business. It's a community; furthermore, its community is its business, and appeasing the desires of its community at least through compromise is a necessary factor in keeping the business running smoothly. Without a thriving community, there's no content being produced. It doesn't matter what objective facts you throw around; if people feel cheated, and there is no attempt to remedy that, either through solution or productive discussion, they will pack up and leave. This isn't directed at staff members, because they already know this. This is directed at people who think "sorry, but we're allowed, it's in the fine print" is a valid defense. That's why this thread exists, to remedy those concerns. Not to make fun of them.

I don't see how any of this is relevant to the question I posed in the thread. Knock it off or I'll notify mods that you're derailing the discussion. If you'd like to start a discussion on what you feel is OCR's dishonest tactics in navigating the legal and financial climate, start your own thread. This makes a lot of sense on one hand, but I'm failing to see something here. There is obviously a clear tangible difference between revenue of remixes going toward OCR's expenses and going toward its staff members as recompense. No one can dispute that. My question is, if the spirit of allowing revenue to go to OCR's expenses and such from things like Patreon and YT ads is that the revenue is that the money is going toward the mission, 100% for the purpose of improving the site, the reach, the distribution of the music, then why does compensating people for their work on the site and tasks involved in distribution on new platforms etc. not fall under this same spirit? Why, in newt's scenario, is compensating other outside parties for doing work for OCR different by principle than compensating OCR's own staff for doing the same tasks (assuming they had time, obviously)?

So, just to be clear, you're saying funds should be used to outsource these tasks to others, instead of compensating the current staff to do them?

Okay, then we're seemingly on the same page. I'm (and you as well are) close friends with many of the staff, it would be absurd for me to assume wrong intentions since I know them personally enough. I'm just expanding on the importance of it. No malice intended.

I wouldn't call those orthogonal, but they definitely exist in a distinguishable manner and independently enough that one can make decisions that affects the other, but also not.

Can you give examples of these things? I had provided examples of things that would be more easily completed by staff members if incentive would increase, so on the other side, what are these things you're referring to that would be paid for, not by compensating staff, but by ______?

The biggest blunder I could commit is trying to enter a discussion with someone who is comfortable painting pages of a complex multi-faceted discussion as a single sentence worded in such a way to intentionally make it seem absurd. The second biggest would be to respond to your claim that feelings do not govern law or morality, which is a utilitarian philosophy, only one of many philosophies that exist, and trying to argue within the confines of your philosophy principles of other philosophy is a waste of time if you're already convinced of your own (a common pattern with utilitarianism, because it has a disproportionate self-perception of objectivity packaged with it, and in this particular thread, self-righteousness as well). So I'm not going to. Read up on the thread, and I'm not going to answer your posts until you become current with what people are actually saying. If you can respond to an argument without rewording it and cutting it down to 100th of its size, it's a sign you're actually listening and not responding just to push your own opinion out.

This is an egregious reductionist oversimplification of all the nuanced discussion that's happened in this 9-page thread.

"I disagree with you, therefore you are emotional and have no logic" is the only baffling recurrent thing being said in this thread. Disagreeing with someone's logic does not make your logic correct and the opposing logic null.

RiverSound is correct as to my intention, but also, the topic isn't limited to fulltime compensation. Salary was not the intent.

Others in the YT monetization thread have brought up valid points that non-profit organizations can and do compensate their employees, and arguments were given that this behavior doesn't preclude a good Fair Use defense. So, let's assume that legally, including Fair Use considerations, OCR could pay the staff based on the monetization methods we're seeing nowadays (YT ads, patreon, etc.) without any community-lethal trouble in court. Assume also the 501c3 designation is already in effect, even though they haven't filed for it yet. Should OCR be compensating its staff? Has it been long deserved? Should it not compensate them out of some principle? Personally, I think it's appropriate to cross that line, and I think it's actually necessary in order for OCR to expand as a community and as a website. Currently, from being close friends with much of the staff, I can say that there's a common thread of a lack of time/resources for the staff to devote to tasks that they want to do to improve OCR (like getting a real submissions form on the website, the visual rework, getting stuff licenses, etc.), because everyone has jobs, a life, etc. and the lack of compensation and that it's voluntary work naturally pushes it down in terms of priority. Personally, I feel OCR's public-facing development has kind of stagnated for a long time because of this (even though backend has been improved, like forums, moving to Discord, and whatnot). I think if compensation were available for OCR staff, it would further incentivise the completion of these cool tasks and accomplishments, either by current staff members or even new ones that would be more interested if compensation were available. I think OCR (site and community) has a lot to gain with either more people working on it, or the current people working on it more (or both). I think also furthermore, the submission policy would naturally have to be updated for it. What do ya'll think? Remember that this discussion is based on the premise that this is already legal to do. Whether or not it's actually legal is probably going to be a hot topic for a while, but for discussion's sake, I want to poke perspectives out here. If OCR could compensate its staff without legal trouble, should they try and move toward doing so, or not, and why?

I spent several whole posts detailing why the submission policy argument is dishonest. The submission policy is too old to assume good faith on; it needs to be updated to match the climate of what's going on right now. YouTube streaming was not a thing when it was written. Spotify was not a thing when it was written. The submission policy as it stands is prohibitive (not legally, but from a community relations standpoint) both to OCR and its artists to continue pursuing more avenues. OCR wasn't making direct money off of the music back when I had submitted music using the submission policy. So you're absolutely correct; if the submission policy doesn't change, I likely won't continue to submit music to OCR under its content policy, in light of the fact that now there is direct monetization of my content on a major platform and they are doing so in a stealthy back-handed way rather than an upfront and honest way. I have no problem with it happening, I simply would have liked to agree to it. Not in a "well this counts as this section of the submission agreement you agreed to like 8 years ago". I would have like to agreed to it in a "we are going to pursue avenues of monetizing the music on different platforms and you are waiving the right to share in the revenue." When I submit music according to a policy I want to know what the extent of that policy is. YouTube monetization didn't exist when I subbed my first remixes, and OCR was not monetizing still even up to my last Apex remix. The content policy allows them to do these things, but it doesn't do it in a way that makes it clear to the artist what's going on. I keep seeing this argument that OCR is within their right to do this given the policy. That's not the point. Saying "but we can, you agreed to it when you hit the button" is not honest. It's legal. It's not honest. The point is that these reactions by artists are genuine, and they feel it is dishonest. Making decisions on cut-throat legal language in the shadows is something a business does. It's not something a community does. A community is supposed to be transparent and make intentions clear beyond the letter of the law, so that everyone is comfortable, member retention is high, and the community and its activities can continue to expand without this ludicrous 200-reply thread controversy happening every single damn time something new is tried.

The relationship (financial and otherwise) between OCR and the artists I said was secondary. It's still of high importance. My concern is not the lack of being paid by itself, my post was pointing out the paradoxical nature of trying to pursue ethical behavior. OCR SHOULD be paying the artists, but it CAN'T (for tons of reasons, the content policy, the lack of infrastructure, copyright infringement, etc.), and I was using that as a reason why the behavior should stop OR some other solution be reached, like Chimp's suggestions. I don't care about not making some bucks off the YouTube videos, I merely care about OCR and its staff pursuing as honest a form of operations as they can, and they want to, I am providing perspective on things that factor into that honesty, to help them make a decision based on more diversified communty member opinion.

I think along with Chimpazilla's suggestions, OCR should probably step on filing the 501c3 designation. I think in light of the discomfort of revenue streams it would make it crystal clear that it's non-profit in any potential legal-related scuffle.