ファブリス Wrote:If it's any of the decks I've seen those stories are stolen from Kanji Koohii. Just in case you don't know about the website already, there are plenty of alternative stories shared in the Study section.

Are the stories on here copyrighted?

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Stansfield123 Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:If it's any of the decks I've seen those stories are stolen from Kanji Koohii. Just in case you don't know about the website already, there are plenty of alternative stories shared in the Study section.

Are the stories on here copyrighted?

FFS don't get me started. I really don't like your attitude on here so we're 100% clear on that , and I hate it when people "stir the pot" just for stirring 's sake instead of having anything productive to say.

NO the stories are not copyrighted by me. Are you just going to piss me off like you love to do with so many people on here, or are you going to say something constructive? I'd suggest you quit the subject altogether because I just needed to vent, and really don't need your pointless posturing.

When people take the stories away from the site THEY are taking ownership of those stories, ok? Not me. So don't give me B.S. about ownership of stories, or suggesting that I am trying to lock up the stories. I have a goddam right to be angry at the completely self interested, and disrespectful way that people take away content from a site.

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I'm closing the discussion because I really don't need pointless back and forth from people who haven't spent the last ten years taking care of Kanji Koohii.

If you have anything constructive to say regarding how the site's stories should be licensed and the like, you can PM me.

By default, NO I don't own anyone's stories. But if you wan't, no problem, I can put a license that says any published stories are my property, and give you the time to delete your shared stories. How about that huh?

I never put a ownership on the shared content because I want to make clearer to the community that I don't intend making money from it (eg. publishing a book of kanji mnemonics or even give them to third party to make paid decks and the like).

Is it too much to ask for the community to respect my work and the service provided?

End of my rant.

ファブリス Wrote:

Tuutti Wrote:Standard RtK with the Anki deck w/ user-chosen stories

If it's any of the decks I've seen those stories are stolen from Kanji Koohii. Just in case you don't know about the website already, there are plenty of alternative stories shared in the Study section.

If the stories aren't copyrighted, then they're not your property. So the suggestion that they're stolen is silly.

Oh, and you're a ***** douche. So if your attitude is gonna be to insult posters and then close the thread you insult them in, you can take your message board and shove it up your ass.

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Sure have at it.

I was just trying to avoid having to ban you, which is probably what's going to happen since we're on a good start here.

I didn't actually insult you, I used bad language (ffs), and said I don't like your attitude, which is fair, since I am the admin and a moderator of the board. That opinion is based on seeing your interaction in many other discussions, such as recently closed thread.

But let's put aside that for a while. Go ahead, you're wrong anyway. I don't own the stories, neither do any of the people who put up these Anki decks with Koohii stories. By default, every story author has the rights to their own content.

Quote:So the suggestion that they're stolen is silly.

They are stolen from every individual author, as well as ME. Yes, me. Even before I made the Study pages, I had hundreds of stories of my own which I shared on a forum where I gathered the early website adopters. I later converted them all into the website. For example the infamous Mr. T. ("person" kanji). I never authorized anybody to take and use *my* stories in their decks.

And since I can't speak of for every individual author, I would at least have the modesty to contact a website administrator before scraping their content and redistributing elsewhere.

You reopened this thread, Fabrice, so a little white knighting on your behalf. I have said it in other threads, and I will say it again, so you don't get fed up and stuff. What you do here matters to a lot of people, and if some people forget that the world does not consist of them, and them alone, then, please don't let it affect you.

The problem, of course, is that it's only after people have run through RTK that they come to the forums, so you may not see how much the story side matters to serious studiers.

As everyone who did RTK successfully knows, stories matter and almost nothing else does, and without this site RTK is dramatically less useful. (For me, RTK was a great idea that failed in execution until I found this site. Most people even seem to think this site is related to the RTK product.)

So white knight mode on:

Stansfield123 Wrote:Oh, and you're a ***** douche. So if your attitude is gonna be to insult posters and then close the thread you insult them in, you can take your message board and shove it up your ass.

This site is very important to a lot of people exactly as it is. The guy who runs the site gets to do what he wants with it. You want to run your site differently, then build a site, and run it for ten years, and then you can have an opinion about how things are done, there.

You don't like it, fine, go elsewhere. Please. Take your bat and go home. This site matters a great deal to a great number of people. How you feel about the site, and how it is run, matters only to you. The world is a big place. Go see it.

Stansfield123 Wrote:If the stories aren't copyrighted, then they're not your property.

Presumably the stories as a whole constitute a 'collection' which by default is subject to copyright (i.e. unless explicitly waived). So while an individual story or small sample may be subject to a fair use exemption, the collection as a whole is not. AFAIK this is the basis on which copyright is applied to things like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and ... RTK itself.

The decks Fabrice complains about contain > 6000 stories from the site, the *collection* of which is undeniably the product of Fabrice's own work.

Not gonna debate with someone who's first response to anyone disagreeing with him is to throw a douchey tantrum and then close the thread, like he did last night.

Also not gonna bother spending my time writing thoughtful posts on the site of a person like that. Have at it, turn your site into a place where everyone agrees with you. This isn't the only message board where people can talk about learning Japanese. And none of the other ones have the owner closing threads when someone simply asks "Are the stories copyrighted?".

Quote:By default, NO I don't own anyone's stories. But if you wan't, no problem, I can put a license that says any published stories are my property

I'm pretty sure that's not a claim that would ever stand up in court. It's one thing to build a free, open resource onto a copyrighted method (RtK IS under copyright), it's another to license it as your property.

anotherjohn Wrote:The decks Fabrice complains about contain > 6000 stories from the site, the *collection* of which is undeniably the product of Fabrice's own work.

It's the product of many people's work. I'd put them in this order: James Heisig, Fabrice, the deck creators (after all, most of us used pre-made Anki decks when we were doing RtK), the contributors.

And it's all open source work. Only thing that's copyrighted is the code behind the site. Not the content. Can you imagine if wikipedia suddenly started complaining that people steal their content? First off, they could only copyright stuff added from this point on, and second, all their contributors would just leave and the site would die off.

Doesn't take away anything from the work wikipedia's owners put into creating that open resource, but they don't own the content. It's not theft to use any of it on your site, or in an Anki deck. Neither is using this content.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Not gonna debate with someone who's first response to anyone disagreeing with him is to throw a douchey tantrum and then close the thread, like he did last night.

Also not gonna bother spending my time writing thoughtful posts on the site of a person like that. Have at it, turn your site into a place where everyone agrees with you. This isn't the only message board where people can talk about learning Japanese. And none of the other ones have the owner closing threads when someone simply asks "Are the stories copyrighted?".

Points to door. Go on. I am pretty sure no one is asking you to debate anything. Your 'contributions' are overall 気の毒 in a big way.

Seriously, dude, grow up. If you think this is the first time someone has bristled at you, then you need reading comprehension lessons. If this is the first time the mods of a site have told you you are not welcome, I'd be shocked. But *this* site's owner has, with good reason.

"IT"S NOT FAIR!!!" So what. Personal attacks in general are stupid, but personal attacks on the owner of a site are basically insane, and incredibly, breathtakingly selfish. Grow up. Don't mess with other people's future opportunities by yelling at the person paying for the server space.

The internet is a big place. Go explore it, and don't come back.

The fact is, this site is way, way, way, way, more important than you or any other person (other than the person running it) to a bunch of people. In particular, the continued existence of this site is way, way, way, way more important than your opinion of it, or how it is run. Don't mess up future learners chance to use this great resource with your current inability to act like an adult. Sites die all the time when the owners get sick of personal attacks, or even just dealing with ongoing nonsense.

You say that you will leave and never come back. Can you promise to do that, and keep that promise, for the good of people who have not yet started studying RTK?

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Stansfield123 Wrote:And none of the other ones have the owner closing threads when someone simply asks "Are the stories copyrighted?".

That's because they are not the developer and sole maintainer of Kanji Koohii since August 2005.

Stansfield123 Wrote:It's one thing to build a free, open resource onto a copyrighted method (RtK IS under copyright), it's another to license it as your property.

There are many definitions of free. My site is free to use. It is not a paid service. It is not "free for grabs". It does not explicitly state that the content is "open" as you seem to suggest.

Wikipedia's content for example is explicitly shared under CC-BY-SA and some other license. And they require:

Quote:(...) acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included (a link back to the article is generally thought to satisfy the attribution requirement; see below for more details)

So the notion that a "non paid" website, and user contributed content equals to "free for all" resource is wrong.

As for the copyrighted method, I am on good terms with James Heisig, even if we rarely ever exchange emails these days. I contacted him from day one, that is BEFORE I used the RTK keywords and indexes for my Leitner SRS. I got his express permission to use the indexes, keywords. I then got it again when I created the Study section just to be sure that he was OK with people sharing stories mentioning the primitives.

And since DAY ONE, I have maintained my agreement with him, that the site does not feature the RTK stories, nor does it explicitly feature an indexing of the primitives. And obviously none of the guidance from the book as well.

So it's easy for me to demonstrate that I have integrity with my work, and that I respect his work. Heck, the Amazon links don't make me squat (like 15$ a month at best), but I put them there on the homepage just to promote his book more directly and make it clear to visitors the site is a complement to the RTK method.

I also got agreement from Timothy W. Richardson, to use the keywords and index for Simplified and Traditional Hanzi books (before the RTH site failed to grow, sadly). Which was made the easier for him since he knew Heisig trusted me.

And even if Stansfield was looking at it in the perspective of me "profiting" or benefiting from someone's prior work, well that is an incomplete picture. First off, "everything is a remix". No need to go over this. Every creation is a remix of prior creations. But more importantly, I did my work. I did a LOT of work on my site. And as I mentioned above, I also created hundreds of my own stories that I put onto the site.

Of course Kanji Koohii "rode the wave" of the success of RTK you could say. Yet "Reviewing the Hanzi" didin't. I did RTK like many people, and built my site from the ground up. I had fun learning php and web development, and when I realized I could share this, I contacted Heisig about it. And those people who have been here from the beginning, will remember that I didn't even have donate button for a year and a half, as I lacked the confidence to put one up.

I know I don't have to justify me again every time, but it's a reminder for anyone who doesn't know me or the Kanji Koohii website.

Obviously none of that will ever be contested in courts. But I'm not going to just sit here and let some forum agitator suggest I'm the freeloader when I did all my homework with RTK and my heart is where my mouth is.

For what it's worth Fabrice, I like your last response much better than your first one in this thread. I wondered about the relationship between you and Professor Heisig before, so it is interesting to see this information. I would suggest that pointing people to this information in the future would be a better response since your forum does show up pretty well in Google, and therefore your angry responses to a seemingly innocent question might make the wrong first impression.

ファブリス Wrote:As for the copyrighted method, I am on good terms with James Heisig, even if we rarely ever exchange emails these days. I contacted him from day one, that is BEFORE I used the RTK keywords and indexes for my Leitner SRS. I got his express permission to use the indexes, keywords. I then got it again when I created the Study section just to be sure that he was OK with people sharing stories mentioning the primitives.

And since DAY ONE, I have maintained my agreement with him, that the site does not feature the RTK stories, nor does it explicitly feature an indexing of the primitives. And obviously none of the guidance from the book as well.

So it's easy for me to demonstrate that I have integrity with my work, and that I respect his work. Heck, the Amazon links don't make me squat (like 15$ a month at best), but I put them there on the homepage just to promote his book more directly and make it clear to visitors the site is a complement to the RTK method.

I also got agreement from Timothy W. Richardson, to use the keywords and index for Simplified and Traditional Hanzi books (before the RTH site failed to grow, sadly). Which was made the easier for him since he knew Heisig trusted me.

This part here. This part matters.

Every other place I have seen uses Heisig system clearly without consent, and actually reposts text verbatim, from the book. This place has security, with the blessing of the developer of the system.

A different example:

http://hochanh.github.io/rtk/%E4%BA%98/index.html

That site is both scraping content from this site, and verbatim copying from Heisig work. There is no reason to expect that site to be there tomorrow, since it is just a DMCA claim from being legitimately taken down. And that's the part that matters. There is no reason to invest in studying using a site that does not repect copyright because it will get taken down eventually.

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SellingTokyo Wrote:For what it's worth Fabrice, I like your last response much better than your first one in this thread.

I was hoping that it is obvious at least to regular visitors that my reaction has more to do with Stansfield123 than the issue of the shared stories.

Taken out of context, yes, it seems uncalled for. However Stansfield123 has come to my attention numerous times through reports and also my own keeping with the forum, because of his habit of arguing and confronting other people.

I acknowledge that I should have given him earlier warnings. The moderators don't seem any more motivated than I am to do so. That's understandable. I think we all would rather just get on with our days than argue with certain kind of posters.

That doesn't mean I don't notice those posters. If you're confrontational with other members, on a regular basis, don't come complaining that I am suddenly confrontational with you.

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kapalama Wrote:That site is both scraping content from this site, and verbatim copying from Heisig work.

Okay I don't know much about the site. If it features Heisig's own stories that's definitely a concern for them.

However to be fair, it appears the developer (partly) respected the CC-BY-SA requirements I had put up on the site a while ago. I need to fix the license and about pages since I redesigned the site, and think what to do with the license. My point really, is that anyone who cares, should by default contact the website admins when there is no explicit licensing of the content. What I didn't like about the explicit license, is that I never heard about what people do with the stories, and in my opinion that's to the detriment of everybody since there is no beneficial mutual agreements.

So back to that site specifically, he links the individual story author profile, which is what was required by the license page I had put up. However he failed to "Hyperlink each set of stories directly to the original Study page" which was also a requirement.

My preferred approach so far is the one I've used with mobile app authors last year, which is: provide ONE story per kanji, and provide a link back to the site's study page, for each individual kanji. That to me is much more agreeable and beneficial. It means a motivated user will sign up so they can consult these extra stories at will, and the app can provide a selection of 2000+ kanji mnemonics that they didn't have to come up with themselves. In that case I told the app author that with the link to the Study page, it is not essential to credit the story since the full credits of all stories is on the site, which is linked to.

But anyway, I agree. It would be a shame, when you put that kind of effort into a site (pretty nice kanji drawing animation), to not make sure you have consent of all involved materials. Hmm.. his github page states "Although I'm sure it violates some copyrights, I'm still put it here for free-to-learn's sake."..

ファブリス Wrote:I was hoping that it is obvious at least to regular visitors that my reaction has more to do with Stansfield123 than the issue of the shared stories.

It was very clear to me at least. Stansfield seems to not understand the difference between being right and being a pleasure to converse with.

The problem is that the kanji animations are also copyrighted generally, and this has cause several sites to be brought down.

Personally, I think there is a real need for Japanese educators to start forcing the hand of the universities they work for and say "We need to get behind some of stroke order animation efforts, and make them open source." Because brush animated stroke orders are really the only way to understand the order. The typical sudden appearing lines make understanding the flow of the characters really hard. And the numbered ones are of basically no use.

It's really easy to write kanji quickly once you under the brush flow.

The problem with Japanese education is that it is dominated by Japanese people, and they have a bizarre attitude towards their own language. They use it effectively but they teach it so badly.

In the various testing out of Japanese I did, they would ding kanji written as Japanese people write it, which made every studetn incapable of actually using kanji to write anything by hand.

I thought it was worth a mention that another popular language learning forum(HTLAL) retained the copyright for every post their users write on the site. However, the site is one of the most popular, high quality language learning sites out there and people seem to be ok with not owning content they wrote themselves. HTLAL had other problems, but the site thrived dispite the strict copyright policy.

yogert909 Wrote:

ファブリス Wrote:I was hoping that it is obvious at least to regular visitors that my reaction has more to do with Stansfield123 than the issue of the shared stories.

It was very clear to me at least. Stansfield seems to not understand the difference between being right and being a pleasure to converse with.

I got it as well, my point I guess is that next month someone will be googling "Heisig copyrighted stories" and this will be their introduction to the forum.

ファブリス Wrote:If you're confrontational with other members, on a regular basis, don't come complaining that I am suddenly confrontational with you.

Hmm, I guess I had better re-read my posts! I thought I was doing OK.

[ファブリス]

I know you are semi joking, but I had a doubt about "confrontational" maybe having a different meaning but no Google agrees with what I meant: "tending to deal with situations in an aggressive way; hostile or argumentative."

That is not welcome here, and if it is on a regular basis, that will definitely get my attention because that is against the forum rule "no animosity". And that rule was there from the early days of the forum, it's not like I just made it up.

I agree that my response can seem out of context. I am trying to organize things a little bit by making more use of the moving posts feature. I'm not sure it needs editing though.. first impressions will be first impressions.

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kapalama Wrote:The problem is that the kanji animations are also copyrighted generally, and this has cause several sites to be brought down.

On the site you linked? Well that would be a bummer because I was curious, and it appears to be a resource available with MIT and CC-B-SA licenses.

http://drawmeakanji.com/ ( MIT license ) http://kanjivg.tagaini.net/ (CC-BY-SA, ie. attribution)

Stansfield123 Wrote:Are the stories on here copyrighted?

I think thats a yes in the US. Under US law, they are copyrighted unless marked otherwise, as far as I understand the law.

Quote:And it's all open source work.

Where did you get that idea?

Well, if those stroke pictures Creative Commons, then he really has no excuse to not straighten out the rest of things.

Is there a way to download the set, I wonder....

I also wonder how much of a load it puts on the server to have those.