wwp@yahoogroups.com:
What Comes Next for the World Wide Panorama and the WWP Foundation? (3 of 3)
G. Donald Bain 2008-Oct-07 01:49:00
The first challenge, obviously, is to secure a replacement server so
that we can keep the site on-line without interruption when the
university cuts us off on December 20. This has already been done - we
now have an account with Dream Host with unlimited disk space and
unlimited bandwidth. Best of all, once our non-profit status has been
certified by the IRS, the account wil be free.
Markus Altendorff has already moved the entire existing site and the
prep server to the new location for testing. The new url will be
WorldWidePanorama.org. (There is nothing there now that you can see,
just a temporary redirect.) We also own the dot-com and dot-net
domains, which will be transferred to the new host and direct to the
same site.
The next item will be to clear up the very important issue of
copyright. The conditions are sufficiently different that we feel it
best to secure a new authorization from every participant for every
entry. We hope that this will not be controversial - the WWP will
still be run by an educational organization, and for the same
purposes. We will, in effect, be running ourselves.
The process of securing all those permissions will be a challenge,
both technical and administrative. Our goal will be to offer as much
of the current site as possible under the new sponsorship.
The next event, "Best of 2008" will be under the new arrangement,
sponsored by the Foundation instead of the university. As much of the
existing site as we can obtain permission for will appear with it, but
the rest will be hidden. The process of reauthorization may go on for
some time.
The geography chairman has promised to sign over all rights to
copyright of the site itself and to the names World Wide Panorama and
WWP. Once we have established our public use of these terms we will
trademark them. With the consolidation of these rights we will be in a
strong position to respond to any sort of infringement (such as the
ZKM incident).
Other than the change of sponsorship the WWP will continue with little
change, running four quarterly events in 2009 and publishing the web
site. But there is great potential for other activities that pursue
the same goals. More about that later.
Don and Landis