A few comments on comments

So it is possible to post from bed. Though my lap may be overheating, I have to start hacking away at the backlog of things to post. One of them is about comments on this blog, something I was meaning to get to a month ago.

I used to maintain a really strict commenting policy: No comments posted without moderation. I figured that was the safest way to keep the spammers, psychos and occasional foam-at-the-mouth neo-nazi at bay, as happened when I wrote a series on racism in Germany around the time of those horrendous attacks on Indians last summer.

But one day while rummaging around in the WordPress Dashboard – before the nuclear meltdown latest upgrade – I discovered you can allow those whom you’ve previously approved to post comments immediately, while those posting for the very first time are still held back for moderation.

Wow. Didn’t notice that when I started out, and never bothered to check up on it again.

So I quietly changed the setting to allow regular commenters to have their say right away. I do hope regular readers appreciate this loosening of the tie, so to speak, and hope that new commenters will understand theirs will have to be vetted the first time.

And speaking of new commenters, three comments waiting for me one morning last week were such a welcome gift, they’re worth talking about here.

The first one was most unusual. More than a year ago, I raved nearly uncontrollably about the new ski lift installed in 2007 at St Anton, Austria, our usual ski holiday destination. I was so completely overwhelmed by its design and engineering, I wrote a post about it, complete with photo and video. Well, it took more than a year for the first comment to appear, a thank-you from one of the engineers who worked on it.

Unexpected? I’d almost forgotten I’d written it!

I’d like to thank you, sir, for taking the time to tell me who you are and your connection to it. Great work. I hope to be back there again next year.

Though I hope she doesn’t say it to all the boys, the second one made me smile: I just love your blog. Thanks, Rebecca.

And finally, the third in the queue that morning: a comment that had me sitting up and saying wow. It’s from CaliGerm, a couple who’s recently moved to Lüneburg, which is just down the pike from Hamburg.

It really encourages me to keep doing what I’m doing when I’m told this blog was one of the few which inspired them to start their own.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Lesson learned: do your damn research before posting

My most recent post about the blog Stuff White People Like contained a glaring error that basically blows apart my whole thesis.

As someone – probably Brian from catsandbeer.com who is a contributor – pointed out in this comment, the author is Canadian.   The Assimilated Negro has an interview with the author in which he states that he grew up in Toronto’s East Chinatown and now lives in LA.  Another contributing author lives in Vancouver.

Oops.  The interview post is a week old.  No excuse for poor research.  Thanks, Dude.

Every ecosystem has its predators and bottom-feeders

The comments on my last post about photos and copyright show that there is a lot of confusion about what images you can put in your blog and still sleep soundly at night.

After all, as I pointed out, there are predators and bottom-feeders out there with jaws poised like a spring-loaded trap, ready to sue your butt at the first sighting of your using any of their photos.  The link to the whole show – it’s the first item – is now in the right-hand sidebar of the show’s site.  It’s near the top under Video, which from my advanced language course I learned is German for video.

But even if you don’t speak German, take a look at the TV segment.  You’ll at least get a close-up view of who I’m talking about.  Have a barf bowl ready, just in case.

The show – and I – recommend using only your own stuff if you want to be 100% protected from these, errr… people.  But safe to some is boring.  What if you want to use somebody else’s work, and still be safe from a lawsuit?

Some hide behind the fair use fig leaf.  As pointed out by timethief – a tireless worker in the thankless and never-ending job of helping out wordpress.com users lost in their chaotic forums – as long as you’re not using it to make money you should be OK.

But where does occasionally using a photo or drawing for illustrative, critical or satirical purposes end, and systematically mining someone’s work for publication on your own blog begin?  Take a look at Comics I don’t Understand.  Actually, a lot of the comics on that site I do understand.  What I don’t get is how they can claim fair use.  His entire concept is based on the work of other people.  I asked him in the comments under a post with a full-colour Garfield cartoon what he does about copyright, but got no answer from the blog author.   Someone else in the comments said that since the site is for comment and criticism of copyrighted work, it’s OK to use it.

Buddy, I hope you have good insurance, because if I were the author of any one of those cartoons, I’d tell you to butt out after three posts of my stuff.  Sure, you might not be out to make a profit, but it’s like having a site entitled Photos I think are, like, bitchin’ and posting the collected works of Annie Leibovitz a little at a time. 

Headbang8 of Deutschland über Elvis says that if you’re a serious amateur blogger, get an el-cheapo subscription to clipart.com, where you can choose from more than nine million illustrations and model-released photos.    The catch with that site is, sure you can download as many gigs worth of images you like in one week for only 15 bucks, but if you don’t use them for the first time within the period of your subscription, you can’t use them unless you take out a new subscription.  To do so would be stockpiling, which is against their rules. 

Simon, a caricaturist based in London, is coming at it from the author’s side.  What to do about his stuff being grabbed and used on other sites?  Simon, if you want to make sure your art doesn’t get stolen, don’t post it on the Internet.  Like others pointed out in the comments, whatever you post is going to be scraped and used elsewhere whether you like it or not.  I’ve bitched and whined about this myself, and all I am is some duff blogger.  I’m slowly getting over myself though.

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Speaking of photos, and since recent events have put me in a giddy mood, I will now break two rules.  One: I am going to go completely off-topic within the same post, and two: post what we had for dinner last night.  Ta-da…..!

Sweetie, just take the picture.  My fingers are burning.

Photos and pizza guaranteed 100% home-made.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

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How much is that doggie on the sofa?

I had great laughs this morning reading through B’s latest Eurotrippen post about the celebrity life of her dog, but it also got me thinking about a German TV show I saw on the weekend, which had an item about photos and copyright.

B’s photos are all her own, so she’s free and clear. But what if B didn’t have a dog? What if she had that twisted little idea in her head, but no dog to illustrate it? She could probably find a few pics of doggies dressed in leather and lace and weave a little story around them, right?

Sure, but she’d be putting herself in serious financial peril, not only for the obvious reason that a lot of photos out there have rights on them, but that there are websites out there dedicated to sucking you in to using their photographs on your blog and then turning right around and suing your sorry ass off.

The TV show profiles a couple who started up a little site dedicated to keeping birds as pets. They went a – googling for a few shots of common vegetables so they could brighten up a page on what to feed them. They clicked on one of the top results and found hundreds of photos on the Voldemort of recipe sites, the link to which I not only absolutely refuse to provide, I won’t even mention its name.

If you fail to look for the page that says they don’t give out the photos for free, and take one of their photos for use on your blog, the site tracks the photo’s new location and immediately fires off a bill to you for around €700 euro – or more than one thousand US dollars – per photo! Our pair of budgie boffins were asked to fork over €8600, and they are just one of hundreds the show says the site has already sued.

Since users are most likely to click on the top lines rather than wade through pages and pages of stuff, the shows says the site uses Google-bombing to game themselves into the top ranks of search results. And with more and more people getting into blogging for the first time without a clue as to its many pitfalls, their supply of fresh meat is almost endless.

The experts on the show say that if you don’t want to go to court and risk paying thousands more should you lose, there’s not much you can do besides negotiate the price down. After all, nearly a thousand euro for a fuzzy thumbnail jpeg is pretty outrageous.

So if you want to be like B, do what she does and use your own dog, your own camera, your own frilly clothes, your own electrician’s tape, and your own sofa. That way, the only mess you’ll have to clean up is a few hairs – provided it’s fully housebroken.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

PS: You can tape the show – schade, nur auf Deutsch – in repeat on Wednesday, February 20 around 2345, or Friday the 22nd at 0920 on HR (Hessischen Rundfunk) or simply watch it on the web via the link provided above when they get around to posting it.

PPS: Please see this excellent post on fair use from The Blog Herald, a blog on blogging.

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