Hello to all the AFI communities on Buzznet!
This is the first in a series of posts to help bring you up to date on what Buzznet is doing with the music communities and make sure you get new information as it's released. I strongly recommend you to keep an eye out for these posts... no one should be caught by surprise by Buzznet enforcing it's Terms of Service, but sometimes a reminder of what they are helps. You can find this link at the bottom of every page on the site---
Buzznet Terms of Use
You can see PanasonicYouth's post introducing the new AFI Community Music Guides here: Say hello to your new moderators! and you can find other helpful information in the discussion in the MCR community announcement: Introducing your new MCR Music Guides!.
First and foremost you may be noticing a lot of photos being deleted by Buzznet from the AFI and band member areas, and other photos that aren't deleted having the tags that place them in the communities removed (they'll still be on the person's account, they just won't be in the community area)... This is happening across the entire site, not just in AFI.
1) Buzznet must delete all image bureau posts on their servers. They have licensing agreements with Getty Images and others and people uploading their photos jeopardizes those contracts and places them at great liability if they aren't removed. It's copyright infringement and theft of intellectual property, plain and simple... and Getty does act to protect their images (see their notices of potential $150,000 per image smack down that can be leveled on infringers)
Please, PLEASE make sure you are not posting image bureau photos on your account, and PLEASE delete any that you've already got up. It doesn't matter if you don't tag them into the community, if your page is private, or if you only put them in private groups (Buzznet employees can see everything that's posted). They have to be deleted from Buzznet's servers, and an Admin has to push the delete button on every one of them. Please help him out and spare him hours and hours and a potential case of carpal tunnel having to do this all himself, and check your galleries for images.
Any of the image bureaus... Getty Images, WireImage, Music Pictures etc have to come down. Many are happily watermarked across the image and easy to identify ... many, many are unfortunately unmarked ones... so if you have something you posted because you usually see it with a Getty watermark and thought it was great to find a nice clean one, it still needs to be removed.
If you aren't familiar with their catalogs, I know it's hard to tell if it's theirs or not.. but c'mon guys, you aren't supposed to be uploading photos you don't own/have permission from the copyright owner (not the person whose Photobucket you found it on, the real owner) to upload. If you didn't realize what you had up, and find those images removed from your gallery, it's because Buzznet correctly identified them and had to take them down, too.
2) Non image bureau copyrighted photos that receive copyright complaints will also be removed by Buzznet, no matter where you've posted them. Please be careful uploading media. I know it's great to find a fantastic old photo of the guys and you want to share it with everyone here... but please try to identify the photographer and get their permission. If it has their name or copyright on it, or you found it on their site, it should be obvious you need to ask them!
3) Images that are tagged incorrectly will be untagged. Right now, the Music Guides are cleaning up and organizing the community tags by removing the tags from mis-tagged and unrelated images that place them in the AFI and band member communities. They will still be in the members personal gallery.
This means (for example) that the thousands of images of Davey Havok that have been posted tagged "Adam Carson" and "Hunter Burgan", so the poster could drive up the number of posts s/he's credited with towards a "Top Contributer" spot, are having those tags removed (unless they're deleted by Buzznet for TOS/copyright issues, they'll still appear on the poster's own site and in the "AFI" and "Davey Havok" tag areas if they have those tags)
THIS MEANS, you will be able to search "Adam Carson" and get a search result that is actually photos of Adam Carson! Seriously, just in the little bit that's been done so far... a few days ago I had to search for a photo with Adam in it I saw posted last year, AND I ACTUALLY FOUND IT. WOOT!!!
We'll have more about what other images may be untagged, some requests on posting your fan fiction (and I have an idea of how to better promote/list your stories so people can find them easier, until such time as a better way to search/preview journals comes along) and other community ideas/news coming up in the next week or so.... so if you've read this far, THANK YOU!
~Misery
