We would like to express our views, concerning some difficulty we are having at www.iskconmedia.com. We worked really hard putting together a nice photo gallery at this site. It contains many photos of our founder acarya, Srila Prabhupada and so many beautiful pictures of Krishna, His pastimes, etc… The BBT has sent an email restricting the site to use only twenty pictures, and other regulations. We can understand the need to have a copyright notice, but to force us to take down the whole website that contains more than 19,000 photos, why?
The reason, they say is for protecting Srila Prabhupada’s rights, but how? If they are referring to losing laxsmi on sales, it is proven that authors now WANT their work distributed widely on the internet. Why? When the author’s works is distributed widely on the internet, it becomes known, and people want the hard copy of it.
Take for example, Paulo Coelho’s strategy:
“I use the internet for distribution. I released one book exclusively on the internet and we had an amazing one million downloads. But even though this is a high number, I didn’t receive a single comment on the book. No one was actually reading the book. In 2001, we had really no readers in Russia. My best seller, The Alchemist was selling a one thousand copies per year. And then it was pirated on Bittorrent and people started to download it. The next year it sold ten thousand copies, the following year, one hundred thousand copies, and today we have sold over ten million copies in Russia.”
Here are just a few advantages of the site:
Any devotee can print high-resolution pictures for their temple. We have not seen another web site like it.
We are now working on a word search, which you can search by locations, people, etc….
It is a fantastic way to distribute Srila Prabhupada’s photos on the internet.
On the other hand, what are the advantages of prohibiting us from putting on these photos on the Internet as we are doing now? What could be the positive result of such actions? How does this restriction enhance preaching?
We would really love to hear your opinion on this matter
Nitai-nam das Said:
February 14th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Unfortunately, though your intent is good, you don’t own any of those images, and since you don’t have consent, we can guess that you hadn’t asked weather you can use them or not.
So, the best course of action would be to comply (because you’re in the wrong).
Of course there is advantages to everyone if these resources are available, and you may feel strongly about that, but you have to go about it the right way, not try and create a rally against the BBT’s policy.
Ys
Nnd
admin Said:
February 14th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
What you say is truth, except we are not creating a “rally” against the BBT, unless you view dissent as attack or harm to the other party.
As BBT is not a pure omniscient spiritual authority, critique might be useful to advance our movement, more so than the politically correct don’t see don’t hear don’t talk course you advocate.
It is interesting you did not give a direct response to the seemingly correct arguments we expose.
As we say in the last sentence, we would love to hear your opinion about our arguments, not the typical “shut-up you are being disruptive-offensive” chanson we are accustomed to.
For example, what is “the right way” you suggest?
a concerned well-wisher Said:
February 15th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I can understand your preoccupation on the matter, and I am with you in the free broadcast of digital content in general, I only see a problem with high resolution Krishna art that might be used by unscrupulous people to print for money, specially in India. Apart from that, Srila Prabhupadas photos should be given free to the world in the highest resolution possible..
Nitai-nam das Said:
February 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am
“The right way” of course would be to consult the BBT with your idea (that these resources should be available to the devotees). Personally i’d love to see it. We need some art & photos for our temple room ATM, but of course it’s impossible to get hold of at any decent resolution (even the images you provide are too small for a decent size print). I have contacted the BBT in the past regarding getting hold of some images that we wanted to use for a festival slideshow, they were glad to help - if I paid a fee. Of course, I choose not to, and just found the best I could online.
admin Said:
February 22nd, 2008 at 7:15 am
did you try downloading the file?
Krishna Art is in high res.
Nitai-nam das Said:
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Is it possible to share as a downloadable zip?
Also, I have some resources like this that you may be interested in, what’s the best way for you? I can upload somewhere. Flick me an email..
Douplererceve Said:
March 25th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Hello
nice site
admin Said:
March 26th, 2008 at 1:56 am
There is an ongoing debate and problem with our site iskconmedia.com and BBT(i)
To date they have not responded our arguments against our knocking down the site
http://www.iskconmedia.com/photos
The last email was a plain “we are not going to discuss until you abide by the “20 photo” limit per site” which is a contradiction. If we take the site down, what is to be spoken about?
In tje link below, you have the whole email exchange for the record, notice the last one, how they refuse to acknowledge our desire to continue via email.
http://www.pariprashnena.com/discussions/?PostBackAction=Download&AttachmentID=94
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