Tag Archives: writing

Who Really Wrote the Blog Posts You Read?

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Copyright infringement is far more prevalent than I thought.

This morning, while going through my weekly routine of checking out who’s been visiting my site, I found myself on another site that featured an article I’d written under another blogger’s byline.

My article, written back in March, can be found here: https://aneclecticmind.com/2007/03/29/how-many-sites-link-to-yours/. It’s a relatively short piece that includes a screenshot. The content thief not only stole every single word of the article, but he also stole the screenshot, which clearly shows my domain name in the Google results. Yet he didn’t even have the courtesy to mention that I’d written the article or link back to my site.

And the article included his byline, as if he’d written it.

I’m sure you can understand my anger at this. As stated in my © page:

The contents of this site are copyright ©1997-2007 by Maria Langer (except where otherwise indicated).

This Web site’s content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

I have sent a takedown notice to him via e-mail. I copied the folks at Plagiarism Today, Google AdSense (since he is violating their terms of service), MyBlogLog (which he is a member of), his ISP, and my lawyer.

But this got me wondering: how much of the other content on his site is stolen? And how much of the content on sites we all read is stolen from someone else’s site?

Has your work been stolen and passed off as someone else’s? If so, please use the Comments link or form to tell us about it. Please don’t include the Web URL of the offending party — I don’t think thieves deserve free publicity.

8:30 AM Update: I received an apology from the thief. He claims he didn’t know it was copyrighted. (That still doesn’t explain why he copied it word-for-word and put his byline on it. I wonder if he went through school like that, too.) I sent him links to Plagiarism Today and Creative Commons, hoping to educate him.

RedBubble

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Another online community.

RedBubbleI recently discovered RedBubble, an online community for creative people. RedBubble offers members and visitors three things:

  • A community of photographers, artists, and writers. This is a place where you can meet other creative people, view and comment on their work, and get feedback on your own work. For me, seeing the work done by other members has re-energized me, giving me a real desire to get back into photography, which has been one of my hobbies since my college days.
  • A place to sell your artwork. One of RedBubble’s draws is that once you have uploaded artwork to their server, you can make that artwork available for sale in a number of formats, including cards, laminated prints, canvas prints, and framed prints. You can take that idea a step farther (as I did) and use it as a place to get quality prints of your own photos for your own use.
  • A place to buy quality artwork by amateur and professional photographers and artists. Just about all the images online are available for sale as cards and prints. On my first visit, I found about a dozen photos I liked enough to order as cards. But not all artwork online is photos. There are also drawings/paintings and t-shirt designs. So if you’re looking for interesting artwork, I recommend giving RedBubble a try.

The community is small and its members are mature and relatively friendly. (Or the ones that aren’t are keeping to themselves.) That alone is a good reason to get onboard.

Selling Your Own Artwork

Here’s how artwork sales works:

You start by uploading your artwork and providing information about it, including a name, description, and keywords. You want to upload the highest resolution images you have; the higher the resolution, the more formats it can be made available in. For example, if you upload a 5 megapixel photo, it’ll only be available as a card or as a small (approximately 8 x 12) print. There just isn’t enough data for the larger sized formats.

As part of the upload process, you specify a markup percentage. All products have a minimum price, which is how RedBubble covers its costs and makes money. The base prices are reasonable (in my opinion, anyway) with cards starting at $2.50 each and small laminated prints starting at $15 each. The markup percentage is the profit you can make on the sale of one of your images. For example, the default 20% markup will earn you 50¢ on a card and $3 on a small print. If you want to make more money, just up the percentage. But keep in mind that if you make your products too costly, you could price yourself out of the market.

My RedBubble PortfolioOnce you’ve saved all this information, the artwork appears in your portfolio. If you’re lucky, it might also appear in the Gallery of featured work, which is how many people find work to comment on or buy. Members and site visitors can look at your work and buy it. Members can also comment on it. In general, members are very polite and complementary. I think that if they see something they don’t like, they just don’t comment. (Isn’t that refreshing in an online community!)

RedBubble’s shipping rates are incredibly reasonable. For example, I ordered 10 cards last week and the total shipping was only $2.73. Shipping is also reasonable on framed prints, which are notoriously expensive to ship. So the cost of buying artwork can be very reasonable.

As for quality, most users seem happy with what they’ve been ordering. I’m waiting for my cards to arrive. If the quality is good, I’ll take the next step and order a print or two. Since I’m extremely quality conscious, I won’t hesitate to let you know if I think RedBubble doesn’t make the grade.

For Writers

As for the writing side of RedBubble, it’s not as obvious, but it’s there. You can find writing exercises and challenges in the public forums. Each member also has a journal — like a personal, RedBubble blog — to share thoughts and ideas. Some folks are using both features to share poetry and very short stories. I wrote my first haiku in years based on a challenge in the forums. (That’s about the limit of my poetry capabilities these days.)

Give it a Try!

If you’d like to check out my RedBubble portfolio, you can find it at http://www.redbubble.com/people/mlanger. You’ll see some of the photos I’ve shown off here on my site, as well as a few that haven’t found their way online yet. I’d be tickled pink (yes, I did say that) if I got some comments or sold a card or two.

Are you an artist, photographer, or writer? If so, I highly recommend checking out RedBubble. I don’t think it’ll disappoint you.

Who Moved My Blackberry?

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by Lucy Kellaway.

While on the plane from Phoenix to Newark the other day, I read Who Moved My Blackberry? by Lucy Kellaway. It was a quick read, primarily because the entire book was written as a series of e-mail messages, most of which were from the main character, Martin Lukes.

It was a great example of the writer’s principle of “show, don’t tell.” By reading Martin’s outgoing messages and a handful of incoming messages he received from others, I got an excellent idea of what Martin was like. He’s full of himself, a chauvinist, not too bright, overweight, a bit lazy, somewhat manipulative, and not very honest to the people around him — or himself. After the first 25 or so pages, was used to the writing style or e-mail as a storytelling device. As amazing as it may seem, the e-mail messages moved a definite story forward, with multiple plot lines. What’s even funnier, however, is that by reading Martin’s answers to e-mail messages he received that weren’t in the book, I knew what other people were thinking about him and got a pretty good idea of what they’d written.

The book is also a look at the corporate culture. Although the book takes place primarily in Martin’s workplace at a multinational corporation, it’s impossible to know what the company does or sells. Martin, a marketing executive, is mostly concerned with corporate branding and public relations. But even though the reader never learns what his company does all over the world, it doesn’t matter. And I think that says a lot for today’s corporations. A lot of the employees are just glorified paper-shufflers that could be working for any company selling any product or service.

The book was very good and I highly recommend it. I left it at my brother’s house for my sister-in-law, who works in Human Resources, to read. I think she’ll be able to identify with what goes on between the lines of all those e-mail messages.

Looking for a fun read? Give Who Moved My Blackberry? a try.

A Real New York Bakery

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The cakes looked so good, I had to take a photo.

A year or two ago, Mike and I went back to New York to do some visiting. While we were there, we downtown in Manhattan for a walk around SoHo.

The SoHo area of New York, as many people, know is the area SOuth of HOuston (pronounced house-tin). It started getting popular with the artsy crowd at least 20 years ago and most of the buildings and lofts have been renovated. There are lots of great shops and restaurants. There’s even an Apple Store down there.

It was a kind of crummy day weather-wise but the light drizzle didn’t bother us. People from Arizona generally like rain — because we get so little of it — and we’re no different. Mike’s cousin Rick was with us and he’s from Seattle so he’s used to rain. We walked around the relatively empty streets, past street vendors who’d given up trying to keep their wares dry and were packing up for the day.

Then we saw this bakery. I wish I could remember its name or where it was. North of Canal, I’m sure. We went in, ordered some delicious pastries and coffee, and sat down to snack out of the rain.

A Real BakeryThis case of cakes and pies and pastries called to me. In Arizona real bakeries are a rarity. Supermarkets here are big and new and almost all of them have a bakery department. Some are actually quite good. Our recently renovated Safeway here in Wickenburg has a nice display case of cakes and cookies these days. But I’ve never seen any bakery in Arizona with a display like this. And I’ve never been to a bakery in Arizona worth writing about.

That’s why I took the photo. To remind me of New York bakeries.

This coming weekend, Mike and I are going back to New York to do some visiting. We’ll only be there two days. But I’m hoping, with my fingers crossed, that we get enough time to drive into Manhattan, perhaps down to Little Italy. There are some Italian pastry shops down there that are to die for. I’d like to put together a little box of goodies to take home on the plane and, if they survive our airline-induced hunger, snack on for a few days next week.

That’s the plan, anyway.

eBook Copyright Infringement

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An author’s worst nightmare.

I use Google Alerts to get a daily list of posts that match keywords I provide. Among the search phrases I have alerts for is “Maria Langer.” Yes, I’m trying to see if anyone else in the blogosphere is writing about me.

Just back from a 2-week vacation, I started going through the alerts. There usually aren’t many for me, so I did those first. And I came across something that made my blood boil: a blog that includes free download links to copyrighted eBooks. And, as you might imagine, one of them was mine.

My book is being distributed as a Compiled HTML Help File (.chm) file, complete with hypertext TOC and all screenshots. Other books are being distributed as PDFs. Where did these books come from? My publisher has not responded to that question. Could it be that publishers are releasing books in unprotected, easily shared formats? Could they be that stupid?

I immediately went into defense mode. First, I confirmed that the download links gave me a free copy of the book in question. It did. Then, I called and e-mailed my editor to tell her about the problem, providing her with a link to the blog. Then I composed a DMCA notice to Google and faxed it to them and my editor. Next, I contacted some of the other publishers whose books appeared on the page. Finally, I went to the sites hosting the ebook files and reported the file links as abuse.

All this ate up about 2 hours of my day — on a day set aside to catch up after vacation.

Now I’m waiting to see what comes of my actions. At the very least, I want the entire blog and files removed. I think that may happen quickly.

But what I really want is for the people who posted the links to be arrested and tried for copyright infringement. I don’t care if they get off — the legal fees alone for their defense should teach them a lesson. But I don’t think this will happen.

The thing that bothers me most is this: I discovered this one pirate blog. How many others are out there that I haven’t discovered?

And how many authors are having their work ripped off?

Update: 2:55 PM

I discovered soon after writing this post that the blog in question is a pirate blog that’s also got a lot of limited interest software available for download. One of the makers of this pirated software is AT&T. I called their sales staff and told them about their software being listed for free download in an effort to get AT&T involved. They have a lot of clout (as you could imagine). The sales guy said AT&T is very interested in this kind of thing.

One of the sites that was hosting my book file has deleted the file at my request. I’m hoping the other two do so quickly, also.