Monday, February 20, 2006

Oops... I just spent my evening blogging.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you please tell me where you get your pictures from? Some of them are really beautiful.

Zoe Strickman said...

After I post the topic, I go to http://images.google.com and type in a keyword related to my post, and then I pick a picture that I like and I copy the web address of the picture (sometimes I copy the image to my hard drive). Then in my post at the top, I use the img src code. Blogger won't let me post it here but it is listed in the blogger help files. I think it works out nicely. I just hope I'm not violating anyone's image copyright rights.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it.

Zoe Strickman said...

Let's rephrase that then -- I just hope I'm not violating anyone's image copyright rights to the point where they would get upset that I am using their images. After all, I took them from the google site which could be argued is public domain. I suppose I can also argue that they put their images in the public domain giving access to anyone to use them by putting them up on the web site and thus into the stream of traffic in the internet. Plus, from time to time I see that there is a copyright symbol on the images, and those images are not used by me because they've marked them properly. On the images I used, there is no marking.

I'm not sure if these are valid arguments or not because I never took copyright law, but my logic is that as you said, if there are damages, they are so miniscule and the traffic I generate is SIGNIFICANTLY LESS than the traffic that a search engine bot like google or the others would generate by just visiting the site and logging the images. Would you agree?

-Zoe

Anonymous said...

"Properly marking" also doesn't have anything to do with preserving copyright. All images have copyright protection unless the creator (or other copyright holder-- like the case where the creater is contracted to produce the image for another party) explicitly puts them in the public domain by saying that they're relinquishing the copyright.

What you're doing is theft of bandwidth and the image, but it's a small and common theft. If it bothers them, they'll either ask you to remove the image or (if you're linking to their site) replace the image with something offensive as payback. Most people don't notice or don't care.

Zoe Strickman said...

Holy smokes BT! I'm wondering if I should commend you for your activism and your strong feelings on the topic of copyright or whether I should bring the word "harping" into our conversations... Or maybe I should just show you the dead horse and hand you the stick.

I am convinced by your arguments that it is morally wrong from a technological point of view to use someone else's images in my blog.

However, I should also ask you for a beracha that this theft of bandwith or this copying other people's images should be my worst sin. The world would be a better place.