MP v. OB: anyone have feelings to share?

If OB follows through with what is pledged in this letter I'll personally be satisfied.

But it is true that the question of the database structure remains unanswered and I suspect OnX and other users might not be satisfied.

Most organization is probably "fair use" as the letter describes it. For example: Grouping by states/areas/crags or listing routes from left to right. But there are exceptions. An example might be Smith Rock. The sub-areas are listed in a roughly clockwise arrangement which might at first appear logical, but when you dig deeper into the areas that are more outlying or don't "fit" into the basic circle, it becomes obvious the areas are actually just arranged to closely match Alan Watts' guidebook (perhaps he could have his own copyright claims to this) - to which most climbers are already accustomed. There are examples where admins and other contributors had to really hash out these sorts of arrangements and in some cases devote a lot of time into creating new areas, moving routes around, and otherwise reorganizing and rewriting things.

Is it even possible to see who contributed what to organizational changes on MP? The only thing I can find is text suggestions for page descriptions.

Sep Mwrote:

What part of the structure do you object to being re-used? It seems like “y climb is in x state,” or “y climb is left of z climb,” are factual statements that can’t be copyrighted by anyone.

Are you thinking more along the lines of “y area has the sub-areas w, x, and z?” It seems like that would require demonstrating that sub-areas w, x, and z were uniquely created by the admin in question. Which seems hard in many cases, but may be doable in some.

Let me be clear and repeat, this has been a complain from several contributors as well as admins, it's not just an objection from me. And yes, this is along the lines of how the areas and their sub-areas were organized at the time the scraping of the MP database was done. I don't think it is hard to demonstrate anything, Viet is a coder and data scientist, and I'm sure he can figure this out based on the data snapshot that is publicly available at OpenBeta's GitHub repository.

based on a quick search (not a law nerd) scientific taxonomies aren't copyrightable.

and from experience with my partners fiber arts friends, many people seem to not understand what is and isn't copyrightable when it comes to things like facts, recipes, sewing patterns, etc. I would be very surprised if route/area taxonomies were copyrightable.

It is worth noting that nothing on OpenBeta has actually changed yet.  

Based on the speed and responsiveness at OB up until now, I will not be holding my breath for either of the two promised actions to materialize.

It is well within Viet's power and capability to immediately remove descriptions, and subsequently add back only those created by OB users, but that's not the pathway he has taken.

***

We’re planning the following adjustments based on the feedback:

1. Remove descriptions that are not created by OpenBeta users.
2. Create a process for users to import their contributions from other websites.

I've spent a ton of time organizing and arranging areas and subareas in Utah, and I have zero problems with openbeta copying that structure.  If anything, I think that is a positive thing to avoid confusion.  

I'm very glad that they are finally following though with removing data they have no right to have taken and presented without attribution.  

I'd love to see a nonprofit route database website, but openbeta is not it.  For something like that to work, it needs to be a real 501c3 and not a collective operating under the umbrella of whatever nonprofit happens to offer the service at the time, it needs to have a board, and it needs to have sufficient funding to operate more than month to month on a small scale.  It is an awful lot of work to do well though.  openbeta getting mountainproject's traffic would be the dog catching the car - they'd burn through their yearly operating budget in a few days.  most sites like this wither and die pretty quickly - i contributed a bunch of whitewater info to riverbrain and it died, route info to rockclimbing.com and it died, etc.  The longevity of mountainproject and its precursors has been pretty amazing.

4433407 kwrote:

It is worth noting that nothing on OpenBeta has actually changed yet.  

Based on the speed and responsiveness at OB up until now, I will not be holding my breath for either of the two promised actions to materialize.

It is well within Viet's power and capability to immediately remove descriptions, and subsequently add back only those created by OB users, but that's not the pathway he has taken.

OB is a hobby project. Viet has other things going on in his life, likely including a full time job. Even if he dropped everything to address this, time must be spent to implement a solution within the frameworks OB is built on. It is absurd to expect this to be fixed overnight.

Israel Rwrote:

OB is a hobby project. Viet has other things going on in his life, likely including a full time job. Even if he dropped everything to address this, time must be spent to implement a solution within the frameworks OB is built on. It is absurd to expect this to be fixed overnight.

He can simply put the site offline while he gets the appropriate fixes sorted out. The longer he keeps the unattributed data online, the longer he remains liable for it.

Israel Rwrote:

OB is a hobby project. Viet has other things going on in his life, likely including a full time job. Even if he dropped everything to address this, time must be spent to implement a solution within the frameworks OB is built on. It is absurd to expect this to be fixed overnight.

Hiding a text field is a line of code.  Implementing the solution to conditionally display descriptions based on proper authorization and credit is what would take longer.  The two steps can be handled separately, and the first is not an unreasonable ask as a temporary fix.

Plagiarism of route descriptions, beta, or content by OB without attribution to the person that contributed that material is not cool and it's understandable that folks are upset. 

A different concern is about the future of MP and the looming threat of losing free access to the community-created resource we’ve all come to enjoy. 

OB has issues, has maybe broken copyright law, and in its current state is pretty far from an ideal and legitimate MP replacement. Maybe those issues are resolvable, maybe they aren’t. I'm not here to advocate for OB, but it does represent the only open source alternative so far to the paywalled and ad-infested revenue-generating models for when shareholders come knocking at the door of MP’s for-profit owner. Perhaps I'm too cynical but I can't help but see that as inevitable when we know OnX has little incentive to keep MP free and free of ads. Keep in mind, it isn’t just route descriptions that we stand to lose here, but a constantly evolving community interface with route comments, photos, historical tidbits, and decades of community interaction through the forums. That’s something that no guidebook can replace.

I guess I see a few possible longer-term outcomes for MP:

1. OnX keeps MP perpetually free and accessible. I’d certainly be content if things stay this way, and am grateful to OnX for standing by what they've promised us so far. It’s hard to imagine that the financial incentives of a for-profit company won’t eventually take precedence over the goodwill and some non-binding promises we’ve enjoyed for the time being. Maybe we get to keep MP free but stuffed with a bunch of advertisements following the models of social media sites.

2. MP gets paywalled, either by OnX or someone they sell MP to. The OnX business model is literally to take data, much of which is made freely available by those that created it (like county parcel and hunting district boundaries), package them into a slick app, and charge a subscription service. There’s a reason OnX went to the expense and hassle it did to acquire MP and I’d argue it’s naive to believe we’ll keep the current free model forever. What are you willing to pay to regain access to MP? Presumably they’ll ease us in with a palatable low price for a couple years before hiking it to an amount just a little below what would scare us away. Maybe some will try to take refuge with imperfect and incomplete open source alternatives. Many will grit their teeth and resign themselves to paying year after year. 

3. MP is legitimately transferred to or replaced by a long term freely accessible solution. Maybe the community decides to coalesce around some well-managed open source option. Hell, maybe the Access Fund rallies to buy MP and maintain it for the community. This is perhaps the most desirable yet least likely outcome. 

OnX, or the MP Admins if OnX doesn’t, would do individual contributors a solid if they laid out how to identify the content that individuals could share with OB. See Does MP Attribution of User Content Work?  That may mean a nod to consensus from individuals whose names are explicitly attached to a route / area. Or  the deciding vote goes to the “shared by” individual?

I think it is most likely that OnX really valued the other adventureproject sites that fit better with their mapping data, and that mountainproject is the irritating stepchild that came along with it.  They've owned the site for 4 years and haven't paywalled it, so I really don't understand why people are so panicked that they will paywall it when they consistently say they will not.  

In response to Bill, and I am no longer an admin, but I would just say use your best judgment.  Don't copy paste any content that isn't yours.  Feel free to copy paste if you submitted it.  If it has been edited, credit others if they have made really significant updates and you know who they were, but don't worry about minor updates.  Anything else, just paraphrase using your own voice and experience just as you would for a route that you originally learned about from a guidebook.  

Yeah, I think I’ll touch base with anyone listed in the Updates to see if there is any content they provided that they don’t want shared outside MP.

Andrew Gramwrote:

They've owned the site for 4 years and haven't paywalled it, so I really don't understand why people are so panicked that they will paywall it when they consistently say they will not. 

Here is why I am concerned.  These are a lot of users to support, running a site this active is an expense for them, they have raised a lot of private equity money, times might be fine now for them but there will be ups and downs and during downs pressure is high to find ways to leverage additional revenue and when that time comes previous promises and community resistance won't mean a thing to them, if there is revenue to be gained and private equity backing that's the natural path things head. Their revenue is far less than what they've raise and investors are banking on revenue increasing significantly to make it worth their while, it sucks to hear but their money is a lot more important to the company than community members who are actively making this site better for others by contributing.

It's not today I'm worried about and this is the same pattern that has happened again and again to community driven sites.  Just the other day I  was forced to download IOverlander 2.0 which now has a lot of info and features paywalled, all the data was a community driven effort.  Look at reddit, look at basically any social media that started as fun sharing content you created with friends and strangers and now we're so used to the ads being shoved down our throats or requiring to pay for certain features many don't even notice it.   This is no different and thats the path things generally seem to head towards and when it happens it happens fast

For those attached to their descriptions as a creative work, if OB cited you as the author of the description, and gave you some honors on the webpage regarding big contributions, then why wouldn’t you be ok with that? What difference is it to you if to begin with you were contributing these descriptions voluntarily for the climbing community, and they are hosted on one website or another? I would feel like the best thing, if you want that creative satisfaction that has no profit, is to have it be published everywhere? Are you holding out hope that OnX will start placing adverts, monetize your account, and give you a percent of the profit for content creation? Otherwise I don’t see why you are attached to one website that might intend to profit off your data over your head, as opposed to one that does not.

Structure is arguably in the facts zone if people generally see an area in that context, so I wouldn't personally push hard against that use. OnX might have an issue with OB still though if their graphic presentation of it is copied such as the banner breakdown of areas. 

I am glad the letter and our comments got through and Viet seems to have learned from it all. I appreciate his positive moves. We'll see how it is implemented.

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

For those attached to their descriptions as a creative work, if OB cited you as the author of the description, and gave you some honors on the webpage regarding big contributions, then why wouldn’t you be ok with that? What difference is it to you if to begin with you were contributing these descriptions voluntarily for the climbing community, and they are hosted on one website or another? I would feel like the best thing, if you want that creative satisfaction that has no profit, is to have it be published everywhere? Are you holding out hope that OnX will start placing adverts, monetize your account, and give you a percent of the profit for content creation? Otherwise I don’t see why you are attached to one website that might intend to profit off your data over your head, as opposed to one that does not.

Choice

M Spraguewrote:

Choice

I’m well aware of that, I’m just wondering the reason behind that choice. Not a legal or gotcha question, just trying to understand the motivations and interests.

Yuval Bwrote:

Here is why I am concerned.  These are a lot of users to support, running a site this active is an expense for them, they have raised a lot of private equity money, times might be fine now for them but there will be ups and downs and during downs pressure is high to find ways to leverage additional revenue and when that time comes previous promises and community resistance won't mean a thing to them, if there is revenue to be gained and private equity backing that's the natural path things head. Their revenue is far less than what they've raise and investors are banking on revenue increasing significantly to make it worth their while, it sucks to hear but their money is a lot more important to the company than community members who are actively making this site better for others by contributing.

It's not today I'm worried about and this is the same pattern that has happened again and again to community driven sites.  Just the other day I  was forced to download IOverlander 2.0 which now has a lot of info and features paywalled, all the data was a community driven effort.  Look at reddit, look at basically any social media that started as fun sharing content you created with friends and strangers and now we're so used to the ads being shoved down our throats or requiring to pay for certain features many don't even notice it.   This is no different and thats the path things generally seem to head towards and when it happens it happens fast

It would be detrimental to OnX to piss off a whole lot of climbers who are active in the outdoors community and energetic enough to spend a lot of energy posting information into the community.

Hosting MP provides a base of users who are introduced to OnX who may be interested in their other products and be willing to up-subscribe for them. They have acknowledged they are trying to find the best balance of nudging people towards being paying customers and not being oppressive with it, and that there have been a few hiccups while trying to find that balance. I don't see any ill will or nefarious activity. They are a business that needs to be viable in order to host and manage MP. Personally, I think a little bit of commercial interest in MP helps keep the quality up: They have a reputation of quality to uphold and they can make executive decisions when a pure community supported site can get lost in infighting or burned out on managing. 

Redacted Redactbergwrote:

For those attached to their descriptions as a creative work, if OB cited you as the author of the description, and gave you some honors on the webpage regarding big contributions, then why wouldn’t you be ok with that? What difference is it to you if to begin with you were contributing these descriptions voluntarily for the climbing community, and they are hosted on one website or another? I would feel like the best thing, if you want that creative satisfaction that has no profit, is to have it be published everywhere? Are you holding out hope that OnX will start placing adverts, monetize your account, and give you a percent of the profit for content creation? Otherwise I don’t see why you are attached to one website that might intend to profit off your data over your head, as opposed to one that does not.

This train of thought is pretty much why I started this thread. 

I don't understand the support for MP and the hate for OB unless it's emotion-driven based on a perception that OB stole - but that's a bit like a songwriter hating an FM station for playing a song they've already released on an album they wanted the whole world to have the chance to hear.