A slight adjustment

I love having a site that people enjoy, and I’m flattered when other sites see fit to link back to what I’m doing, but I have seen a couple examples out there of other sites blatantly re-publishing my every post, word for word, images included. I feel that using my work as a source of content without my permission is downright despicable and I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a “Contributor” to any site that takes without asking. Don’t worry if you’ve merely blogged about The Animation Podcast, I like you guys. The real offenders are quite aware of what efforts they make to misappropriate my work for their own profit.

So, like Jim at Seward Street, who is in the same boat and equally unflattered, I’ve made a slight change that I hope you will tolerate. If you subscribe to the RSS feed, you will see that each post will have a copyright message attached to the end. It not a big deal, but I like it when it shows up on those sites I’m talking about, just to let people know what they are reading when they happen to go there.

Also, this has caused me to reconsider how I link to good stuff you might like. Now I will point you to the place where I originally hear about something cool, instead of directly to the file. I’m not doing this to cause you more work, but to honor the work that others do on the web.

2 Comments on “A slight adjustment

  1. You’re kidding…actually, I know you’re not. This situation makes me really ill.
    I used to have one of only two biographical sites on the entire web devoted to a famous, if slightly pop-cultish figure: Ernie Kovacs. Once in a while(the site was up for about 6 years until I took it down to revamp 18 mos ago)I’d do a Google search to see if anyone else had started a Kovacs site or had anything good up to look at; well, on several occasions my writing. MY essays(which I was damned proud of, if I say so myself)were appropriated without any credit at all–that is, STOLEN: once by two radio hosts in Seattle, once by–get this–a Columbia University grad student as a media “project” on Kovacs! Word for word, with my images that I’d collected and scanned myself. Thanks a LOT.
    The thing is, now with my new blog I’m not sure how to “copyright” the images & text. I am totally clueless about even doing RSS feeds or how to globally attatch watermarks, etc…anyway, I’d better figure it out fast. I hate plagarism, and while I believe that 80% of the time people don’t mean any harm and simply don’t understand the concept of “no grab!”, it’s still a gigantic no-no and has to be stopped.
    I’m sorry for the aggravation–you do a fantastic site–please do keep it up.

  2. Jenny – I love your site too. I spent some time the other night reading all your posts and found it very interesting and inspiring.

    With a blog you have three choices:
    1. Don’t publish a feed so that it won’t be reposted elsewhere. I don’t like that because I know how convenient RSS is. Even if you don’t publish a feed they can still scrape the content directly from your site.
    2. Publish a partial feed with exerpts. The problem with this is that the subscribers to your feed have to click through to read the whole thing which kind of defeats the purpose.
    3. Publish the full content in your feed, knowing what can happen. That’s what I’ll do until I can’t stand it any more. The copright solution is just a small way to protect myself.

    Now, I’m not saying I’m writing any groundbreaking stuff, especially in my posts, since it is an audio thing I’m focusing on, but it is something I spend time on and I understand your frustration. I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and not care, but I do. OOOhhhhhmm. Chant with me. OOOhhhhmmm…