Cultural rights
Who this belongs to
Contributions remain the property of the members who made them. What that means in practice.
Contributions are not surrendered
Uploading something here does not transfer ownership of it. You keep whatever rights you had in a photograph, a recording or an article. The archive is given permission to hold it and to show it to the audience you chose — members only, or public — and nothing beyond that.
Nothing here is licensed onward, sold, or used to train anything.
Some material is not any one person's to give
A genealogy, a funeral song, a ceremony: the person who recorded it holds something real, and so does the family and the community it came from. The archive treats those as overlapping claims rather than ranking one above the other.
In practice:
- A recording can be restricted to members at the request of the family, whether or not the family is the contributor.
- Material can be withdrawn on the request of the people it concerns, not only the person who uploaded it.
- Where a request conflicts — the contributor wants it shown, the family does not — the restriction wins while it is discussed.
Naming people
Name people who are content to be named, and record who told you. Where somebody does not want to be named, describing them without naming is better than leaving the record blank.
For the dead, ask the family. The fact that nobody objects is not the same as consent, and this archive holds a great deal of funeral material.
Withdrawal
You may ask for anything you contributed to be made members-only or withdrawn. Ask an administrator.
Two honest limits. Withdrawal removes material from the archive; it cannot recall copies other members already downloaded. And the audit log records that a withdrawal happened, by design — that record is what makes moderation accountable, and it stays.
Reuse
Material here is for the community and for people researching it in good faith. It is not open-licensed. If you want to publish, broadcast or reproduce something, ask the contributor — and where the material is communal, ask the family or the community it came from as well. An administrator can put you in touch.
Credit the person who made it, and the archive, when you do.
Disagreements
The archive is governed by its members: membership is decided by consensus, and moderation is recorded against the name of the moderator who acted. If you think a decision was wrong, report it or raise it with an elder. The audit log means there is always a record of what was done and who did it.