Pat Hartman has left the building

[sonic8]

Additionally, I am surprised that postings when added don't become the property/copyright of access-programmers.

Pretty sure they do, T&C's of this specific site & general legal precedent.

Copyright law differs quite a bit from country to country in that regard.
In general, it is very unlikely that just the T&Cs of a website are a legally sound basis for a transfer of a copyright.
The likely legal situation is that by posting on the site the author of the post grants an indefinite right of usage of the posted material to the party owning the site. If and when such a right of use can be revoked depends on the applicable law and the T&Cs and may result in complex legal proceedings.

All legal matters aside, in my opinion Jon did the right thing in deleting the posts as he was asked to.

 

[Isaac]

My Civil Procedure professor in law school was a young-ish lady from Harvard, Julie Cromer, whose specialty was IP law. Very easy on the eyes, she was, and she liked me especially because as it turns out, civ pro was my specialty - the one thing I was really good at, ranking at the top of my class at Thomas Jefferson. Leave it to me to be really good at what most people consider the absolute most boring and nearly incidental aspect of the law, but I found it fascinating. I think she would take issue with some of your generalizations, but ok

 

[Cotswold]

It's generally understood and accepted that anything that's published on the web is donated, becomes public domain and can be republished or used in any way without author's permission.

From my experience I do not believe that to be correct. However, I can appreciate that once posted it can be difficult to remove. Which is different.

Does a poster upload with the intention that it is copyright free? Is the post the poster's work or is it owned by someone else. Sections of code from various books, or other websites are often uploaded but a blind eye to that is invariably given in the general interest. Simply posting something online cannot suddenly make it copyright free. In fact a copyright owner could request, its removal and threaten damages.
However, when posting on AW, by custom and practice I think we do in the main understand that we offer it copyright free and without reward.

On AW the T&Cs state : You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

It is in this case that Pat's posts are her copyright but content could be retained and re-used by AW but they cannot be used by a third party for their re-issue, or profit without permission. We can all appreciate just how much time it would have taken to write 48,000 posts. From now onwards all that time has been thrown away. It is a pity that her many solutions are lost but there you go. These things happen.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Simply posting something online cannot suddenly make it copyright free. In fact a copyright owner could request, its removal and threaten damages.

Sometimes I will get on YouTube and find a music reviewer. They are allowed to replay a particular music video but the Fair Use exceptions don't include playing the video in full and continuously. You have to either garble the video or break its continuity. I have seen videos where the reviewer had to re-post with altered replay of the reviewed material. For example, Pentatonix, one of the best a capella groups you will ever hear, DEFINITELY will chase reviewers who fail to edit what they show If you check that video later, the reviewer will admit in their content that their current video was re-posted after editing to comply with the Fair Use limits. In many cases, international reviewers of Pentatonix (a USA group) still run afoul of the copyright issues.

 

[Isaac]

Simply posting something online cannot suddenly make it copyright free. In fact a copyright owner could request, its removal and threaten damages.

Also, don't make the mistake of thinking that simply posting another person's work is violating copyright law. Not all public posting is "unauthorized use"

 

[Isaac]

This is what I'm talking about. People violate the copyright despite, especially if they're in foreign countries. Even when you report the violation, you still have to spend time and money hiring foreign attorneys who specialize in intellectual property, court costs, etc. and they can drag out the process making you spend more money. Does anyone remember the Metallica vs. Napster case? Although Metallica prevailed, I don't think they got anywhere near the $10M they were seeking, and it changed the whole music industry. Artists now only get pennies on the dollar royalties from streaming services and everyone shares free copies. It essentially killed the music industry and artists now rely on tours to make money from concert goers.

Classic example of something that was good for the consumer, but not for the businesses. A lot of consumer protection laws are like this IN MY opinion. It might sound wonderful for the consumer, for example, that you have to provide a one-click cancellation feature. But it's horrible for the businesses, and when you make it more difficult to conduct business, you hurt EVERYONE, as our economy works by way of business being conducted. I'm suspicious of most consumer protection laws, as I feel a majority of them are nonsense. Hippa was a great example. In 20 years of being involved in, or near, the healthcare industry, I have encountered 10's of 1000's of situations where Hipaa was horrible for the business. In those same 20 years, I have yet to meet a single person who thinks or says, "Hippa is so great for me - I'm thankful for it protecting me". No, all it has done is cause trouble. I'm sorry, we can't tell you that b/c of hippa. I'm sorry, we can't email that to you because of Hippa. I'm sorry, you can't make a doctors appointment for your 19 yr old son because of Hippa. I'm sorry, you as the head of the household can't review the claims and EOB's of YOUR OWN dependents on YOUR OWN insurance policy because of Hippa. I'm sorry, we have to create a 20-person team of project managers, programmers and managers to try to figure out how to comply with __________ aspect of Hippa.

I would like to meet the moron that passed that law, and explain to him how it has done nothing but cause trouble.

 

[Steve R.]

I would like to meet the moron that passed that law, and explain to him how it has done nothing but cause trouble.

HIPPA is a joke. Every-time, you see a doctor they gather information and then "share" it with an endless number of "affiliates".

My primary reason for responding concerns the application of HIPPA in the past versus now. When the Aids epidemic first broke-out many years ago HIPPA was used to suppress virtually all discussion. You could not even ask a person if they had Aids. Recently, when Covid broke out, all of a sudden, HIPPA was redefined to so that everyone had to publicly disclose their Covid status to the world. Amazing how a law can be whimsically redifined to achieve political goals.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Yup, every time I go to the pharmacy, they ask if I want a booster (COVID, flu, etc.), so it seems my primary care provider is sharing my medical information with a third party.

 

[Isaac]

Yeah, working with vendors is often a weak spot in the chain of custody when it comes to confidential information. Their systems have to be certified and this and that until you're dizzy with the sheer volume of things to keep up with.

Once I worked for a company that had a vendor to accept Medicare applications and I wrote some SSIS packages to ingest the flat files they would produce via SFTP. It was where I got experience using PSFTP.EXE and PUTTY.EXE, both extremely useful FTP tools!
When it comes to the spectrum of security, the company I worked for was kind of in the middle, lax enough to allow me to use third party tools like psftp.exe. As long as it worked and appeared secure they were happy, and I got a lot of great experience that way. Good memories.

Of course as long as I also programmed the thing to check out reconciliation reports to make sure all the inputs and outputs matched, we were fine. Medicare application processing is a big deal because a legal Timer starts when they submit the app, and all kinds of things have to be done by such-and-such time along the way, kinda like a construction timer. So when my program err'ed, it was a BIG deal and got me a private sit down with high up people!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I had some HIPAA stuff on my Navy mainframe but fortunately, I didn't have to process it beyond just assuring that the system had room for the file to come in and the DB team knew as soon as possible that it was available for their consumption. I still had to take yearly HIPAA training, but it was available online and we were considered as doing legit work under the contract, so got paid for our time. Which was usually less than an hour once per year. I could read the file because at that time we were not encrypting the data. I don't know what they do now because about a year after I retired, the mainframe was decommissioned and everything went to web-based interfaces on a UNIX-flavored box plus ORACLE on another UNIX box. The interface app that ran on my mainframe yielded to the web. But it lasted for 30 years with very good uptime availability and it kept up with the work to be done, so the software costs weren't totally wasted. (Unlike DIMHRS.)

 

[Isaac]

I had some HIPAA stuff on my Navy mainframe but fortunately, I didn't have to process it beyond just assuring that the system had room for the file to come in and the DB team knew as soon as possible that it was available for their consumption. I still had to take yearly HIPAA training, but it was available online and we were considered as doing legit work under the contract, so got paid for our time. Which was usually less than an hour once per year. I could read the file because at that time we were not encrypting the data. I don't know what they do now because about a year after I retired, the mainframe was decommissioned and everything went to web-based interfaces on a UNIX-flavored box plus ORACLE on another UNIX box. The interface app that ran on my mainframe yielded to the web. But it lasted for 30 years with very good uptime availability and it kept up with the work to be done, so the software costs weren't totally wasted. (Unlike DIMHRS.)

What's DIMHRS

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System - and one of the worst software mistakes I've ever had the displeasure to know about. You can look up that acronym in Wikipedia. You should also be able to do a search for DIMHRS on this forum with me as the author. The details are so nauseating that I'll pass on repeating the sad story again. Let's just say that if Congress had seen fit to let well enough alone, it would have been enough money to fund SNAP for a few extra weeks.

 

[Cotswold]

It does appear that after just a fortnight Pat has been forgotten and everyone has moved on!

 

[moke123]

It does appear that after just a fortnight Pat has been forgotten and everyone has moved on!

Why dwell in the past. Besides she's still here under a guest account or new name.

 

[AccessBlaster]

The funny thing about chaos is that it has a cousin named order. Order by nature isn't very fun, but it is calm. It'll be interesting what phase comes next, provided anyone's still awake

 

[Isaac]

I'm dutifully trying to engage and enjoy chatting about AI and rando stuff, probably time to go back to what I had for breakfast.
Oh wait, I skipped breakfast. My wife is trying to convince me how bad sugar free Monsters are for me. She played me a video last night of a guy recommending Saffron instead, I noticed he sells it too, what a coincidence

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Alright dude, she's gone - let it go. Please...

I already hid it Gent!

Not cricket!

 

[NauticalGent]

I already hid it Gent!

Not cricket!

Thanks Tony

 

[isladogs]

Having received an alert email for a now hidden/deleted post, I think that is what you are referring to above and I agree with the action taken.

Whilst I can understand people new to this thread wanting to get some sort of catharsis by venting their feelings publicly, I have felt for some time that all of us need to move on. In my probably biased opinion, this thread has long ceased to have any real purpose.

Perhaps it would be appropriate for the thread to now be closed to make the point absolutely clear

 

[NauticalGent]

Perhaps it would be appropriate for the thread to now be closed to make the point absolutely clear

+1