From: Celia McInnis
To: club.forum@ottawabicycleclub.ca Subject: [obc] Avoid Expulsion by Removing TT data? Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:38:30 -0600 (09:38 EDT) Dear President Tom Stratton and other club members: I wish to remain a member of the club, and in fact am interested in running for a board position at this year's AGM. Hence it is important to comply fully with the intent of the following note before Friday at noon, in order to avoid my expulsion from the club: http://www.drmath.ca/~obc/Bored/2008-10-18_ThreatExpulsion.html Clarification is necessary as to which data the OBC Board wishes me to remove from my personal tt web site, since in addition to supporting clubs and individuals of clubs other than the OBC, my software also determines special awards which are given to OBC members and my site provides the ABC 40km data for our BAR award. Some questions needing answers are listed below(*). I have very much enjoyed providing a tt web service to time trialists in the OBC and other clubs for the past 11 seasons, and it is not at all my desire to cease doing so, yet, if it is necessary to stop providing this bonus volunteer service in order to remain an OBC member, I will do so. I must admit that I am a little confused as to why the OBC has cited copyright and privacy violations in labelling me as a "member not in good standing", since I don't think that there have been any such violations committed by myself. First of all, that there is no copyright protection for time trial data is made quite clear at http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/wr02394.html#whatcant which specifically indicates that: "facts, ideas and news are all considered part of the public domain, that is, they are everyone's property". I am also a little surprised to be told that I am violating any privacy policy by having some birth years in my database since I believe that each of the birth years in my database was legitimately obtained. Some birth years are in my database because riders participated in ABC time trials which I officially provide a tt web service for. Others date back to the years when, as the sole provider of a tt web site service for the OBC time trials, the club Time Trial organizers gave me the birth years for my site. More recently, some were given to me by riders when I requested them, while others were determined by my software from publicly displayed data (eg., age handicaps and category changes). Finally, I just store categories rather than birth years for those whose birth years were not available to me in any of the above listed ways. A quick reply is necessary to clarify what the board wants me to do, since the deadline for compliance is very soon, and, as I have already mentioned, I want to remain an OBC member and hence be eligible to run for a board position at the AGM on 2008-Oct-29. Cheers and Thanks, Celia (*) Clarification in answering the following questions is needed, and perhaps input from the time trialists would be helpful: 1. All OBC time trial data from 1998-2002 and 2006, as well as all of the WTT data until this year was entered first into my site and then copied to the OBC site from my site. Can this data stay visible on my site? 2. The WTT special awards are calculated using my software and are not displayed on the club web site. Is there a problem with me showing these pages? 3. Am I allowed to show the BAR rankings and consistency measures which result from our collaborative web work (I manage the 40km ABC TT results)? 4. What about other summaries of the data which my software was written to show and which is not available from the current official site? 5. How about my comments indicating the noteworthy time trial performances? Can I continue to do this and show the supporting tables and graphs? 6. What about data of the ABC people - Since I do the results for the ABC series, is it ok for me to show the results of ABC people in OBC time trials so that they can query all of their results from one web site? Indeed, the OBC is already taking more liberties than this in making full copies of the ABC 40km results from my site. 7. I just completed my 500th time trial in my database ( http://www.drmath.ca/~obc/cgi-bin/ttq.pl?Q_name=celia ). Can I show this on my own personal web site without facing expulsion from the OBC? 8. What about other people who have authorized me to show their data? Can I show their results without being expelled from the OBC? |
Further Clarification Requested
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Answers Received to Questions
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The statements " You were given the results as a volunteer of the Club. You chose to create your own website and post those results to it for many years. Knowing that the Board made it clear to you at that time that it wanted to maintain that information on it's own website." are completely FALSE. The OBC board was NOT at all INVOLVED with my tt web site during its formative years and the OBC Board gave me no direction about it.
It is a lot of work to check and enter the data, and believe me, it isn't interesting work to do. It makes sense to combine this boring, fastidious job with something that is fun, namely the tt web site. It also makes sense to treat those who are willing to do this volunteer work with respect and gratitude. Above all, I would like the harrassment from the Board of the OBC to cease immediately, and instead to have us all focus, as I have always done, on following the objectives of our club. See the constitution. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 05:13:10 -0700 (PDT) Download OBC results on your website.msg From: Tom & Gail StrattonImport addresses tomgails@yahoo.ca Block email tomgails@yahoo.ca Block SMTP relay web30408.mail.mud.yahoo.com To: celia@drmath.ca Subject: OBC results on your website Hello Celia, The Board is disappointed that you has posted OBC results on your website again. We all know you disagree with this decision by the Board. This appeal was to you as a member of this club and it's wishes. Your rights to republish our events is a legal issue and we can only conclude that your action mean you want to take it to a legal authority. Please be assured that if it does, you will be defending that right as a non-member. In the meantime, you will not be asked or allowed to enter, take or handle the results of any club event. Regards, Tom Stratton -----------------------------------------------------------------------