Thanks for your comments. As we say in the main post, we are only moving archives with the consent of the archivist. Archives have always changed maintainers, hosts, servers, and software, though it isn't always visible, and this is a visible version of that. The Open Doors SSA is not a new archive, but a move of the old one, where works were only archived with permission.
Right now, some archives like the SSA are broken--if a fan wants to remove her works, she might not be able to do so. This change enables her to claim her works and remove them, if that's what she wants.
Along with sending individual messages to the contact addresses on the original archive, we are asking the current custodians to publicize the shift as widely as possible. Even if fans no longer have access to the contact address on the SSA, they can always ask Support to claim, edit, orphan, or delete their works. We think this represents the best balance between preservation of an important fannish resource that is otherwise going to disappear, despite the desires of many authors, and control by individual fans.
I would thank you for your answer, except that it seems that you have not actually addressed any of my concerns.
Server changes are a fundamentally different thing than mass-importing stories without authorial consent to a separate, established archive. You are very clear in your own materials that this will not be a mirrored archive for preservation purposes, but importing to collections on a pre-existing archive, AO3. It's not an equivalent situation.
The republication without consent is the issue at hand. It's not enough to say "Oh, well, if they actually find out, even though they have no reason to go looking and are highly unlikely to know anything about it, because who really goes and looks up old inactive archives they used to use, we'll take them down then once the damage is already done" - consent has to be gained beforehand in order to have any ethical ground to stand on at all. How can someone delete something they don't know is there? That excuse makes no sense.
If consent can not be gained, then it is fundamentally wrong to take the stories. Archivists are responsible for maintaining their own sites, not for giving consent for other people's creative works to be copied to a completely different archive that they may not like or support. In fandom, creators have always retained control over their own works - that is the fannish norm, and fannish ethics.
I don't see any balance here at all, but the blatant disregard for fannish norms, fannish rights, and fannish ownership of their own created material. The only "balanced" approach would be to contact all fans when possible, put the announcements up on the archives ahead of time, giving a reasonable amount of time for fen to respond, and then only copy stories for which explicit permission was given. Not knowing about something =/= consent.
that is otherwise going to disappear, despite the desires of many authors
If the authors wish their works to be on AO3 or any other archive for preservation purposes, then presumably they would archive their works at other sites themselves. There is nothing stopping them, and in fact many authors choose to cross-archive their works. Other authors, however, have made clear decisions as to which archives they wish to use, and have chosen not to use general archives at all. It seems to be readers and the AO3 archive that this is for the benefit, and authorial rights to control our own material seem to have nothing to do with it.
It's extremely disappointing that you have decided on such an unethical approach, while caring to claim about fannish rights and fannish history. I wish that you had actually looked to fannish history, and seen the very different (and much more ethical) approach to bringing the Professionals circuit archive to the internet - nothing is on the Internet archive that was not put there with the explicit consent of the authors, no matter how difficult it was to achieve. That was the "balanced", ethical path.
Again, let me emphasize that Open Doors exists because archivists want to maintain their archives but lack the resources to do so. No work that wasn't digitized and available online beforehand will be digitized or made available online as a result of importing.
Our view is that the archivist has been given the power to make hosting decisions beneficial to the collection and that their choice to back up or archive the collection in the Archive of Our Own is a decision like these others.
It's also worth noting, as I said, that anyone who wanted her stories removed from the SSA because of Minotaur's passing can't have that done as matters stand, because while the current archivists have the database, time and change have made the database hard to deal with. Importing is a way to allow authors renewed control, and we are publicizing that to the best of our ability.
Comment on Open Doors Questions - And Answers
admin-tushnet (Guest) Tue 28 Feb 2012 04:41PM UTC
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Lily (Guest) Tue 28 Feb 2012 09:54PM UTC
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admin-tushnet (Guest) Tue 28 Feb 2012 11:02PM UTC
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