Dutch from Sweet Juniper has a great post up about his Flickr pictures being stolen and used for a certain parenting website. I am so sorry that this happened to him but so glad that he wrote about it.
Blogging about your family and posting pictures seems harmless enough. It's a good way to share your life, stories, writing, photos with people who are far away and it is an excellent place to hone your writing skills. I think when folks start a site they are not thinking about some corporation or pervert borrowing their pictures or words (side note: and it's never who you want borrowing your pics/words, is it? It's not like MOMA is emailing you to say, hey can we include that photo of your little one in our permanent collection?) But it can happen and does frequently, most times without the blogger/photographer knowing it, which is ridiculous because why not take the 5 seconds to email the photographer to ask if perhaps you can publish the picture? So then you are put in the very bummed out position to either make your Flickr photos private (like we did) or to stop posting pictures altogether. It leads to a lot of editing because now you know someone, somewhere out there is maybe trying to rip you off. And that's just a lousy framework to work from.
For me, it's not that someone is gonna steal a photo or an idea (even though that happened once and it felt very, very not nice.) I never thought about that until I starting blogging at said parenting website. It began when some ladies in the playground recognized Mamie and made a comment about her being cuter in person (which I hadn't realized was a backhanded compliment until right now.) I had only published one picture of her, but after that remark, I was like, no mas! There is something lovely when you get a compliment from a total stranger about your kid but there is also something way creepier about someone recognizing your kid from some dumb post that you wrote. After that my posts became very generic and the only photos I posted were copyright free clipart. That sort of defeated the whole personal blogging thing and so I left. But that's me. There are still wonderful bloggers there doing what I wasn't able to.
So it's a slippery slope and one that I didn't encounter when I did the zine and spent many hours laboring over each word, each piece of clipart, each little hand cut thingie to be glued onto another thingie. The act of making the issue gave me the time to slow down and really see what the hell I was putting out there. Desktop publishing is great and immediate and powerful. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it these days. Sometimes I think that writing here is just a way not to write elsewhere. Again, the immediacy of it all is a pull for me. Look, I wrote something! And it will never go away! Even if I want it to! I need to tame my impulsiveness before I blog, I think. "The Save button before the Publish button" is my new mantra.
While reading through the archives of Sweet Juniper, I came across a comment from Dutch about how he thinks the internet is not all full of perverts. He believes in the good of people (forgive me, I'm paraphrasing or perhaps just reading into something). I want to think like that again. I want to write funny stories without in the back of my mind wondering if you-know-who is lurking here and will nick my idea and get a 6 figure deal writing a book based on it. But what's the alternative? Not writing?
Nah. Not writing every little thing publicly. I think I can do that. Without pictures, but I think I can do that.
Blogging about your family and posting pictures seems harmless enough. It's a good way to share your life, stories, writing, photos with people who are far away and it is an excellent place to hone your writing skills. I think when folks start a site they are not thinking about some corporation or pervert borrowing their pictures or words (side note: and it's never who you want borrowing your pics/words, is it? It's not like MOMA is emailing you to say, hey can we include that photo of your little one in our permanent collection?) But it can happen and does frequently, most times without the blogger/photographer knowing it, which is ridiculous because why not take the 5 seconds to email the photographer to ask if perhaps you can publish the picture? So then you are put in the very bummed out position to either make your Flickr photos private (like we did) or to stop posting pictures altogether. It leads to a lot of editing because now you know someone, somewhere out there is maybe trying to rip you off. And that's just a lousy framework to work from.
For me, it's not that someone is gonna steal a photo or an idea (even though that happened once and it felt very, very not nice.) I never thought about that until I starting blogging at said parenting website. It began when some ladies in the playground recognized Mamie and made a comment about her being cuter in person (which I hadn't realized was a backhanded compliment until right now.) I had only published one picture of her, but after that remark, I was like, no mas! There is something lovely when you get a compliment from a total stranger about your kid but there is also something way creepier about someone recognizing your kid from some dumb post that you wrote. After that my posts became very generic and the only photos I posted were copyright free clipart. That sort of defeated the whole personal blogging thing and so I left. But that's me. There are still wonderful bloggers there doing what I wasn't able to.
So it's a slippery slope and one that I didn't encounter when I did the zine and spent many hours laboring over each word, each piece of clipart, each little hand cut thingie to be glued onto another thingie. The act of making the issue gave me the time to slow down and really see what the hell I was putting out there. Desktop publishing is great and immediate and powerful. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it these days. Sometimes I think that writing here is just a way not to write elsewhere. Again, the immediacy of it all is a pull for me. Look, I wrote something! And it will never go away! Even if I want it to! I need to tame my impulsiveness before I blog, I think. "The Save button before the Publish button" is my new mantra.
While reading through the archives of Sweet Juniper, I came across a comment from Dutch about how he thinks the internet is not all full of perverts. He believes in the good of people (forgive me, I'm paraphrasing or perhaps just reading into something). I want to think like that again. I want to write funny stories without in the back of my mind wondering if you-know-who is lurking here and will nick my idea and get a 6 figure deal writing a book based on it. But what's the alternative? Not writing?
Nah. Not writing every little thing publicly. I think I can do that. Without pictures, but I think I can do that.
