Important Notice: Please Read Before Using Forum, Gallery, Groups, or Blogs

[Amin Sabet]

Having never started a forum that has become as active as this one, I am learning quite a bit as things go along. I want to clarify a few things here for everyone. This list will be updated over time as needed, so please check back periodically.


Regarding copyright (applies to all sections of our site including forums, blogs, groups, contests, gallery, and review section) and our rules related to copyright:

• By posting your own words or images one this site, you are giving permission for those words or image to be shown in the place where you posted them.
• Once posted/uploaded to mu-43.com, your words and images are available to the general public. I have no control over and offer no protection against how anyone utilizes your posts and/or images after obtaining them at mu-43.com, nor can I help you to delete your posts from the internet (Google cache, etc). For all intents and purposes, when you post something here, it is unretractable as with any other forum readable by the public on the internet.
• It is against our site rules to modify and repost a version of anyone else's image without explicit permission to do so.*
• If you would like to grant limited permission for others to edit and repost your images, for critique/illustration purposes, within the same thread where it was originally posted, click here to edit your profile details, scroll to the bottom, check 'OK' under 'Image edit and repost permission', and save changes. "IMAGE EDITING OK" will then be shown next to your name in each of your posts to indicate this preference. This setting does not otherwise affect copyright.
• Do not post anyone else's work, modified or otherwise, in any mu-43 forum, gallery, blog, group, review, or other site section without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.*
• Do not embed anyone else's images from our gallery, blogs, groups, reviews, or other site section in a forum post without explicit permission from the copyright holder.*
• If you post someone else's copyrighted work in the forums, please specify the nature of your use (used with permission of copyright holder, used under creative commons license, etc) and be sure attribute the work properly. Attached/embedded images thought to violate copyright will be deleted.

* Contrary to popular belief, none of these actions are definitively covered under the doctrine of "fair use". To learn more about fair use, a nebulous doctrine developed through numerous and contradictory US court cases over the years, see this U.S. Copyright Office webpage. Although I realize that a case could be made for fair use in some specific situations, Mu-43.com is a privately owned and maintained site, and the above rules are our rules.


Regarding the gallery and attachments:

• Our Gallery space is intended as a space for members to upload their Micro Four Thirds photographs. I understand that there will be certain exceptions, for example a body of work made primarily using MFT but containing a few images made using a different system. As resources are limited, please respect this guideline and limit non-MFT photograph uploads to a minimum.
• The current limit for gallery storage is 100MB per member. That could be five hundred 200kb images, one hundred 1MB images, or ten 10MB images. Site supporters and leading members (those with 2000+ reputation) get 500MB of storage.
• The current limit for attachments storage is 10MB per member (50MB for site supporters). You can manage your attachments in your user control panel or by clicking here.
• Storage and bandwidth have an associated cost. As time goes on and the forum grows, the file size limits and total per-member storage limits may be significantly adjusted to match what I can afford to pay. This includes both storage in our Gallery as well as forum post attachment storage.
• Example: Say you have 100MB of uploaded images in your mu-43 member gallery, and I subsequently find that I can only afford to give each member 20MB of total storage, you may lose 80MB of your uploaded photos when I make that change.
• Therefore, please do not use mu-43 as the sole archive of your images. I cannot be responsible for lost images stored on this site.
• You can help keep bandwidth costs lower for everyone by not using mu-43 as a place to store images for display on other sites. Eventually, I may have to flip a switch to prevent this altogether. For now, I just ask that members be considerate in their practices.

A few more comments about cost (for anyone interested):

• The purpose of giving members image storage space here at mu-43 is to allow a unified community experience and provide space for those who don't want to go to the trouble of registering an additional account elsewhere.
• I cannot afford to provide the amount of storage and bandwidth that a site like Dpreview or Flickr can provide, so if your needs are great, please use those sites. I personally maintain accounts at Flickr, Smugmug, Vimeo, and others. I recommend Flickr as a site for image hosting if you have lots of high-res images and want to share some of them (resized) in posts here at mu-43.
• Bandwidth costs can be a killer. As of March 2013, our server storage/bandwidth costs are ~$6,000/year and increasing steadily.
• The associated costs of success bring many an active internet forum to be closed down. If mu-43 associated costs exceed what I can afford to pay (after factoring in any associated income), I will explore all reasonable means of supporting the site, including but not limited to the following: 1) Ads; 2) Sponsors; 3) Lowering image storage limits.

[Amin Sabet]

Please note the following addition to the above text:

Our Gallery space is intended as a space for members to upload their Micro Four Thirds photographs. I understand that there will be certain exceptions, for example a body of work made primarily using MFT but containing a few images made using a different system. As resources are limited, please respect this guideline and limit non-MFT photograph uploads to a minimum.

[BillN]

If I can I try to post any images that I put in threads on my own purchased web space and just link the thread through to that image.

I try to keep my use of mu-43.com web space to a minimum and to include only stuff that I feel should be semi permanent to this site, as I do respect what you are doing Amin and these Forums can grow like Topsy.

Each week I review the images I have put on this site and delete what I feel are now not too relevant

[Brian Mosley]

Hi Bill, the Galleries are a major attraction to this forum/community... please don't think it's disrespectful to post m4/3rds images here - it helps to attract new members.

Cheers

Brian

[Amin Sabet]

Bill, sincere thanks for the consideration, but we want to enjoy your photographs in our galleries! Please continue to use them without being too considerate of resources . That's what they're here for, and the gallery software will automatically limit the allotted storage to what we can provide.

[Edit: I see Brian beat me to it ]

[kai.e.g.]

It's faily easy to embed pictures hosted at flickr, so for "projects" like the Picture-of-the-Day blog (when I get started with that), I might use flickr to store the image and just embed the link in the daily posts. I'll favour uploading only "highlights" from my m4/3rds collection from time to time to the galleries on-site.

[BillN]

Originally Posted by Brian Mosley

Hi Bill, the Galleries are a major attraction to this forum/community... please don't think it's disrespectful to post m4/3rds images here - it helps to attract new members.

Cheers

Brian

Brian, I'm just mean and I hate to waste resources.................just look at the size of our hard disks these days..........what are they full of?

It's good to review, rethink and prune......and leave the "better" stuff to grow

[Brian Mosley]

All good points Bill, but don't hold back on adding great content to the site!

Cheers

Brian

[squeegee]

ever consider making the gallery a gallery of images hosted by other sites?

As an example, if everyone just used their image hoster, flicker or what ever, then instead of uploading pictures here, in the gallery section just have a "url" line which points to the image... This would allow the galleries to function almost the same as they do now (exif might be a little wonky to sort out).

I know it might be some work to sort that out, (if it were jforums I would have offered to help, but I don't do php or what ever vbulletin is in). It'd save a lot of bandwidth though - and relieve you of the responsibility of managing the image data / storage / etc...

[Amin Sabet]

Thanks, I did consider that, but some members wouldn't want the hassle of registering accounts on other sites. It would be great if the gallery space could do both. For now, images hosted elsewhere can of course be shared in the forums, but not in the gallery.