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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What I think about this whole blogging thing

If you’re also a blogger, you’ve probably heard this before:

I am, to be honest, mystified by the whole blog phenomenon. I’m barely interested in the minutiae of my own day, so why on earth would I want to read about someone else’s?

That’s from an old friend with whom I’ve recently re-connected via Facebook. No, not THAT old friend.

Here’s what I wrote back:

I know what you mean. There’s even a book title on blogging that goes to exactly that: No one cares what you had for lunch.

But scrape beyond the surface, spend some time seriously sifting through the vast array of blogs out there, and you’ll come across gems. I liken it to writing a newspaper column or even doing stand-up comedy. You write about what everyone has experienced sometime or another, but put a twist in it that makes the reader say, hmmm, never thought of it that way before. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but what keeps you going is the challenge. Or you do a bit of a niche thing, like what it’s like to be a gay expatriate. Or an expatriate who is stateless, rootless, godless and gay. Or a funny Canadian freezing his ass off enjoying winters sports in Norway.

Some blogs are as unusual as the jobs held by the people who write them. If you go to my blogroll, check out Gimcrack Hospital. It’s written by this nurse who works in a hospital for old people who’ve literally fallen off their rocker. She’s a psychiatric geriatric specialist. It’s at times hilarious, at others shocking, brutal, touching, whimsical and flirty. I love it. Ummm, NSFW, especially on Fridays.

Some blog for money, and some have made fortunes, but mostly I yawn at their stuff. I mean, I know they have a following of millions, but icanhascheezburger.com - for the past few months consistently the most popular blog on WordPress - is nothing but a bunch of cat pics with mangled English pasted over. I do not find it funny. But people send the stuff in, they post it, a few laughs are had, and the money rolls in.

There are now so many tens of millions of blogs, it’s starting to resemble life itself. You can choose whom you want to read and communicate with, just as in real life you can choose whom you want to be friends with. Some you will find fascinating, others boring, still others disgusting. I like to think there’s room for all of us.

Sometimes I make the mistake of comparing mine to others and think I should have done the usual and invented something really quirky instead of Letters Home (I dropped the To You a while back) but then again, if I called it something funny and edgy and cool like Little Red Rabbit Turds I would have to live up to it - be funny and edgy and cool all the time.

That’s not only impossible to maintain, it isn’t me. I’m political one day, whacko the next, introspective the third, ranting the fourth, dripping with cynicism the fifth… I prefer it that way because some blogs start to look like the same post over and over after a while. This way, even if it’s at the risk of alienating some readers who prefer one type of writing and not others, I can try to keep fresh myself. Besides, I’m not a kid anymore. If I were, I’d be on (retch) MySpace.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m still having fun doing it, though it can piss you off at times when people steal your content and stick ads up beside it, and sometimes you don’t feel like posting, so I don’t. But I’ve met some real-life people - and not just in Dresden this past autumn - and that’s been fun, too.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

PS: Today marks one year since my first post. Thanks for reading, commenting, clicking on links, checking out the blogroll and the photos way down at the bottom, and for just dropping by. -Ian

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Whom would you miss if bloggers went on strike?

Just saw a long list of TV shows hit by the Hollywood writers’ strike. After nearly three weeks of no new jokes, punch lines, plotlines, storylines or storyboards, production has stopped or forced many to go off the air or in re-run, while the launches of 24 and Cashmere Mafia - whatever the hell that is - have been postponed.

As a union member, I sympathise with strikers hitting the bricks for what they believe in, even train drivers who indirectly put my life in danger.

But as an expatriate Canadian living in Germany, the writers’ strike is a faraway sideshow, playing out in a land I’ve never lived in and wouldn’t like to. The only shows I watch out of the whole list are The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - because it comes on CNN and we have that on cable - and The Colbert Report, because I find him hilarious and make an effort to find him on spewtube. The rest? Don’t even recognise them.

But what if bloggers went out on strike? Sound crazy? We’ve got our grievances too, you know! From spammers, sploggers, scrapers and thieves to the petty annoyances of comment trolls, we’ve got every right to lay down our laptops and pick up our picket signs. And just because we have absolutely no hope in hell of ever getting any of our gripes addressed doesn’t mean it should never happen, if only for a week or so.

And if we did, I sure would notice. That’s because I’d miss:

• My nurse, who brings me my daily drip of medical weirdness.
• Bombay Duck, and not only because she’s an old friend from journalism school.
• The oozings of madness pooling from The Leaky Brain.
• The oddball observations of Hermann the German, even though I don’t agree with him half the time, and tell him so.
• Indeterminacy, a blogger who challenges you to write your best.
• The Elle Effect, because I admire raw talent in one so young.
• Charlotte, because she writes so fluently and I learn something new every time I go there.
• The Dilbert Blog.
• Passive-aggressive Notes
• Euro Like Me, whose writing came highly recommended from EuroTrippen.

No particular order, and of course I’ve left out many who should be on the list. But if you head over to EuroTrippen’s write-up of last weekend’s whiney expat meetup in Dresden, you’ll find some more .

Whom would you miss if bloggers went on strike?

© 2007 lettershometoyou

What to do if you’re getting as sick as I am of having your blog copied

1. Get used to it. I still get a little pissed off whenever another case comes up, but a little less each time because it’s becoming so frequent. Latest case: A “travel” blog scraped and copied yesterday’s Dresden bloggers’ weekend post word-for-word.
2. That being said, don’t pass it off as something you can do nothing about, or worse, think it’s some form of flattery. One comment I once received was, “gee, I wish MY stuff were being copied.” If everone had that attitude, blogging would be doomed.
3. Develop a routine so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel each time. I have a form letter on file ready to fill in and fax off to Google Adsense just in case the thief is dumb enough to use them. Considering its mammoth size, Google has been surprisingly quick and unbureaucratic in getting them to pull my content and their advertisements from offending sites.
4. Go to The Blog Herald and read their post on the Five Content Theft Myths.
5. Or save the following. It’s what Google sent me when I complained the first time this happened.

To expedite our ability to process your request, please use the following format (including section numbers):

1. Identify in sufficient detail the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. For example, “The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on (URL to your post)”

2. Identify the material that you claim is infringing upon the copyrighted work listed in item #1 above. You must identify each page that allegedly contains infringing material by providing its URL. Make sure it is the URL of the thief’s post.

3. Provide information reasonably sufficient to permit Google to contact you (email address is preferred).

4. Include the following statement: “I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above on the allegedly infringing webpages is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”

5. Include the following statement: “I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

6. Sign the paper.

7. Send the written communication to the following address:

Google, Inc.
Attn: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043

OR Fax to:

(650) 618-8507, Attn: AdSense Support, DMCA complaints

It’s that simple. I admit it’s not the whole solution, because it only covers Adsense, but it’s a start. I haven’t zapped them all, but if I get a few, it’s worth it.

© 2007 lettershometoyou

Desiderata for bloggers

Said to have been discovered in a Baltimore church cellar in 1692, actually penned in 1927 and cranked out decades later on fake parchment to adorn the bedroom walls of millions of kids like me who came of age in the seventies, Desiderata is a modern junk classic, its bite-sized peace ‘n’ love wisdom wedges one of the last twitches of a sixties generation that had already begun to trade its tie-dyed shirts and cut-offs for leisure suits and MBAs. With bloggers having cut themselves off into their own little world so far they even rate their very own health tips, comes a new Desiderata.

For Bloggers only.

Stumble aimlessly amid the trolls and waste, but remember what peace there be in staring at your toes for a couple of weeks. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all readers. Publish your posts quietly and clearly, and listen to podcasts, even the dull and garbled, for they too have a right to hog bandwidth. Avoid loud and aggressive bloggers. They are pains in the ass.

If you compare your hit count to that of other bloggers, you will become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser counts than yours can muster. Enjoy your favourite posts as well as your drafts. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, for you will probably never make so much as a fucking dime from blogging.

Exercise caution in choosing a provider, for the Internet is full of con artists and thieves. But let this not blind you to the virtues of moving your blog to WordPress.com. Many strive for massive hit counts, and everywhere life is full of miracles. Be yourself. Above all, do not feign knowledge, for readers will not hesitate to tell you that you are full of shit. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all the scrapers, sploggers, and bloggers who never learned the difference between it’s and its and loose and lose, it is perennial as come-ons for Viagra.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in the face of sudden loss of access. But do not distress yourself with thoughts your blog has been deleted permanently. Many fears are born of insomnia and lack of caffeine. Beyond a wholesome wheat toast, eat whatever you like. You are a child of your parents. You have a right to post, and to sometimes state the obvious. And whether or not it is clear to you why or how, no doubt the search engines are making sure that someone looking for porn will land at your blog instead.

Therefore, be at peace with Google, whatever your level of search optimisation may be. And whatever your postings midst the noisy confusion of millions of other bloggers, keep peace with your soul. For all its spam, viruses and broken links, it is still a functional network.

Brush after meals. Strive to post regularly.

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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Google Adsense ads pulled from blogging thief

It looks like our efforts to get Google to take action against that thieving “blogger” in China have paid off. I was going to set up a fax to Google HQ with all the legalese necessary as outlined in Lorelle’s very helpful comment here, but as I see on the site, the Adsense ads are already gone.

Whoot!

I’d break out champagne, but it doesn’t go well with morning coffee, and besides: the stolen writing and photos from dozens of wordpress.com bloggers are still there.

I’m going to bookmark that comment for quick and easy reference for the next time this happens. Thank you Lorelle!

Next question: what to do about scrapers and slimers who steal your stuff but don’t use Google Adsense? My previous post asking for help in the fight against the Chinese thief was stolen by another thief called Buy it or DIE who uses something called Bliggo.

How stupid can these thieves be, anyway? They obviously don’t care whether anyone reads the site or not. My comment asking Steal it and DIE to take down my material is still there.

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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Please help me get Google to pull their ads from a blogging thief

The theft of my material and that of others at wordpress.com by a thief in China continues.

If you are coming to this blog for the first time because you have received an email from me or seen my blog comment telling you that your work has been stolen, once again: I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I have been contacting two or three people a day for the past week telling them the same thing.

He’s trying to make money off YOUR material, but with your help we can get Google to pull his ads.

Your first step if this is the first time it’s happened to you is to read What to do when someone steals your content at Lorelle on WordPress. Follow the instructions, which include telling the thief that the content is yours and that he should take it down immediately.

Next is to click on the Google Adsense logo at the bottom of his Adsense ads on his so-called blog - NOT the ads themselves! - and fill out a violation form on the feedback page which comes up.

This only takes a few seconds and will add to the growing number of people who are sick and tired of seeing their work published by thieves hoping to make money off it.

I’m thinking about going back in and sticking a note at the end of every post, something like: This post first appeared in Lettershometoyou, with a link back to my blog. The copyright thingy isn’t having much effect.

I notice he didn’t steal this post. Wonder why.

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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Has anyone stolen your writing lately?

Well I had a post in the bag all ready to go, and then this comes up…

Lorelle on WordPress said a while ago that getting your blog content stolen isn’t ever going to be a matter of if, but when.

But still, I thought: OK, I’ll deal with it when it happens.

So now it’s happened.

Some”blogger” in China is harvesting WordPress.com blogs at a tremendous rate, sticking them up on his site as if they were his own, slapping Google Adsense ads on it to boot.

I would provide a link to the blog just to prove my point, but therein lies the problem: If you point to him and say “LOOK, he’s stolen my stuff,” and provide a link, all he is going to get are more hits and more money from Google.

Since I raised a stink in WordPress’ forums the past couple of days, the “blogger” has taken down my content, but that still leaves I don’t know how many bloggers on WordPress - and perhaps elsewhere - whose material is being sucked through the intertubes for deposit at some slime-hill called… damn, I can’t say it. I won’t say it!

I left a comment at another WordPress blogger’s blog to let her know that her photos had also been stolen, but I have no time to extend that courtesy to everyone.

So all I have to give is an Open Letter To You, Thieving Blogger.

I’ll make an exception this time. You MAY steal this and place it on your blog front and centre:

I am a thief.

This blog is a fraud.

I am trying to make money off other people.

I have absolutely nothing to contribute to the millions of blogs already out there, so I will be a parasite.

Please click on the Google Adsense ads, which drape these stolen goods like stinking vapour.

I will make money the easy way that way.

That is all.

Perhaps I was just born unlucky.

PS: If you want to check whether your content is being thrown up on another site and passed off as original, check out copyscape. Just type in your URL. Who knows, you might get an eye-opener like I did.

© 2007 lettershometoyou
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