Taringa!
 | |
Type of site | Social network |
|---|---|
| Available in | Spanish, Portuguese, English (Socialphy) |
| Owner | TADROSS Venture Inc. |
| Created by | Fernando Sanz |
| URL | taringa.net |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Free |
Taringa! is a virtual community from Argentina created in 2004 by Fernando Sanz, then acquired in November 2006 by Alberto Nakayama and the Botbol brothers (Matías and Hernán).[2] On Taringa!, users can share all kinds of information through posts. This site is a Web 2.0 website.
Taringa! does not allow the publication of sexually explicit material [3] as a new site -called Poringa!- was created. In Poringa! users can publish this sort of explicit content. While Poringa! is a completely separate site, its users and moderators are the same as in Taringa!.
The popularity of both sites has grown largely thanks to appearance in national media and have been involved in some controversy about its contents.
User Ranks
All users (with the exception of rookies) have a certain amount of points with which to evaluate collaborations (posts) outside. Each time a user gives points to a post, the author's points will increase, which over time allow the user to receive recognition on the site for creating top quality content.
- Administrador (Administrator): Administrators have the same privileges as moderators but also are responsible for the continuing development of the site in technical matters.
- Moderador (Moderator): A moderator is responsible for regulating the site, making sure all of the content and users follow the protocol. They maintain order, peace, and respect in Taringa!. They have 35 points per day to give to posts that they like.
- Great User: is a special rank that is more difficult to achieve. A user can become a Great User if they make a post that is featured on TV, the radio, or in printed media; they find a serious bug or a system error and report it to Taringa!; or if the user is a member who continually makes great posts and the community agrees that he/she deserve this rank. They have 17 points per day to distribute.
- Full User: has the same privileges as New Full Users. Full Users are those who registered before the release of Taringa 3! (March 2007). They have 12 points to distribute every day.
- New Full User (NFU): New Full Users are those users who registered after the release of Taringa 3! After receiving 50 points on a single post rookie users become New Full Users and can make full use of Taringa!, including commenting and creating posts in the general section. They have 10 points per day that they can give to posts they consider deserving.
- Novato (Rookie): These users are newcomers to the community. Their activity is restricted to posting and commenting under the Rookie section, but their access to the site's content is complete. They do not have points to give. They must make a post that receives at least 50 points before they will graduate to New Full User status.
Posts
One of Taringa!'s most important aspects is the Posts. The users create the content themselves and receive feedback from the community in the form of comments, points, recommendations, and favorites. Top rated content gets featured on a special section of the site. Posts can be about many different subjects. They can be created with text, images, gifs, videos, and/or links. Within the post section of the website there are a variety of categories, including art, travel, news, computers and technology, etc.
Communities
Taringa! has a system of user-created groups that are called "Communities." Communities are the space on Taringa! where you can interact and discourse with other users. This is where users can begin discussions with other users about different topics. There are many different categories within Communities, and within each category are a variety of subcategories. These groups are used to share interests, information, ideas, creative content, and others. When you create a Community, you are the owner and the moderator of that Community. Any Taringa! user can join communities, and leave them as well. Visitor, Commenter or Poster can be set as a defaults of a range for each new member. Rookies can't create communities, but they can join and participate in them.
- Administrador (Administrator): They can suspend users within the community; create new topics in communities; edit a community's avatar, description, and other information; change the rank of community members within the community; add topics to the Sticky list (which will always appear at the top of the list as an "important topic"); delete and edit topics from any other member in the community.
- Moderador (Moderator): They have almost all the same privileges as Administrators, but they can't edit the community's information, such as: avatar, description, title, etc.
- Posteador (Poster): They can only create topics and comment. This can be set as the default rank for each new user in a community.
- Comentador (Commenter): They can only comment on topics. They can't create topics in the community. This can be set as the default rank for each new user in a community.
- Visitante (Visitor): They can only view the content in the community. This can be set as the default rank for each new user in a community.
My Taringa!
This new section of the site was released with Taringa! 5. In this section users can post quick messages, images, videos, and links. These messages are called shouts. A user can view all of the shouts and actvity from all the users he/she follows in My Taringa!.
Sharing and Infringement of Copyright
Taringa's users can post links to content created themselves or other content they are able to share without violating copyright law. For example, scanned photographs that are already in the public domain, a linux tutorial, or an article written themselves.[4] When there are links that infringe copyright laws, they should be removed by the administrators and moderators of the page as it states in Taringa's protocol,[5], but in most of cases the vast majority of the contents posted by users are already protected by copyright laws (such as comic books, movies, TV series, books, music and videogames). Usually those links are not removed by the administrators and remain on the page for a long time. [6].
The owners of Taringa allege that the website works as an interchange site, so it does not host any file, but at the same time users sometimes post links that violate copyright. There are also posts with content that has been extracted from other websites or personal blogs, but Taringa! now requires that every post cite their sources. Morever, the owners remark that Taringa only shows links and anyone can search specific contents like music or software, in the same way that those links can be searched on Google or Yahoo. Matias Botbol also adds:
"Sometimes people say that Taringa is a pirate website, but that is not true: In fact, there are people that post pirate content through Taringa. For instance, if I would search only pornography content on Google, then I could state that Google is a porno site. But Google is much more than porno. That is like the Internet works already, in the Net all contents are related, we did not invent this. Therefore, if we closed Taringa, its contents would not disappear, so they could be founded to download on another websites. We are not responsible for the contents posted by users".[6]
About the infringment of copyright, Millé Law Office's representative Alberto Millé stated in an interview:
"Sites like Taringa work neither as discussion forums nor as sites that simply search for contents on the web. Taringa mainly shows posts that include links to contents hosted in other servers and at the same time, this website has a search engine that allows users to find the links of the contents required. Most of those links are protected by copyright and posted or distributed without permission from the authors. Taringa works under the Argentine Law system, and Law protects the copyrighted works like books, music or software, emphasizing the absolute prohibition to reproduce all those contents if the authors have not given their approval previously. Therefore, if Taringa allows users to access to copyrighted material causing that any person may reproduce illegal work, the owners of Taringa are clearly breaking the law and they could be taken to a Court. Taringa should redefine its website in order to the large community of users be able only to share contents previously authorized by their respective owners".[7]
Legal issue
In May 2011, the owners of Taringa (Brothers Hernán and Matías Botbol) were accused of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to pay $ 200,000 (USD 50,000). The Botbol brothers were also prosecuted for infringing article 72 of the 11.723 Law, which regulates copyright activities in Argentina. This article says that "any person who edits, sells or publishes a copyrighted work without permission from its authors will be sentenced to spend a period of one month to six years in jail". [8] [9]
The Botbol brothers were summoned to delete the posts related with copyrighted material. If those posts were not deleted, they could be arrested. The owners of Taringa alleged that they cannot determine if the material uploaded by users was breaking copyright rules, due to Taringa has an average of 20,000 posts a day. They also manifested that they were not able to access to Intellectual Property Office ("Registro Nacional de la Propiedad Intelectual" in Argentina) to know which works are under protection of copyright rules.[8]
In addition, the accused said that on March 23, 2009 the controversial material had been deleted from the website, but "other user uploaded it again on June 19, 2009".[8]
Nevertheless, the court considered that the owners of Taringa were conscious about the infringments committed and in spite of deleting illegal content, they allowed forbidden material to remain on the website without being removed. [8]
On October, 2011, The National Court of Appeals (Cámara Nacional de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional) also prosecuted Alberto Nakayama finding him responsible for publishing links that allowed users to download books without permission from their authors. The court also unveiled three precedent rulings that seized Nakayama's assets for $100,000, $200,000 and $300,000 respectively.
The court, formed by Judges Marcelo Lucini and Mario Filozof, described that the prosecuted, as owners of Wiroo S.R.L., subscribed the hosting services of Taringa (www.taringa.net) offering users "the possibility of sharing and dowloading material with no permission from the authors for its publication on the website. Therefore, they helped users to spread the illegal reproduction of the material published".
On the other side, Taringa published on its website the same note that had been posted on May, 2011, when the prosecuting of Botbol Brothers was confirmed. Once again the owners of Taringa stated they had not commit any offense. They alleged that the works which they were demanded for "were not hosted on Taringa, but in Rapidshare, whose servers are located outside Argentina. So the Argentine law should not apply to this issue".
The resolution stated that Nakayama "is the owner (along Matías and Hernánd Botbol) of the site www.taringa.net, and all of them allowed material which reproduction had not been authorized by authors to be published on the webpage, although the publications redirected to other Internet site, it could not have been posible unless it was done through Taringa".
"It was demostrated that works were illegally reproduced uploading them to a webpage without being authorized by theirs creators", said the ruling. [10]
External links
References
- ^ "Taringa.net Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2012-02-02.
- ^ La comunidad virtual más visitada del país fue creada por tres postadolescentes Diario Perfil, 2008-02-10
- ^ Protocolo de Taringa
- ^ Taringa, el polémico sitio argentino que crece La Nación, 2008-07-02
- ^ Protocolo de Taringa
- ^ a b Interview to the creators of Taringa, Revista Debate
- ^ ¿Es legal lo que hace Taringa? Interview to Alberto Millé, El Argentino, 2009-05-13
- ^ a b c d Procesaron a los responsables de Taringa por violar derechos de autor, Diario Perfil, May 9, 2011
- ^ Taringa sufrió un duro revés judicial - ViaRosario.com
- ^ "Taringa: Fue confirmado el procesamiento de los tres responsables", La Voz del Interior, 2011-10-25