To blog or not to blog - that is the question
The title to this blog has been a serious question in my head for the last couple of days. There's been a lot of crap going on in m/m community but I'm not here to discuss that. If you know me, you know I'm emotional and some of the stuff going on is very emotion-invoking so I'm just keeping my head down and as usual, worrying about other things. This blog is one of those things or more precisely, how I'll go about handling what the following article says:Blog: You can get Sued for using pics on your blog
Feel free to read the article, it's very thought-provoking, and, in my case, made me feel like a moron. To gather it all up and shove it in a tidy little box, if you use pics that aren't yours on your blog there is a chance (no matter how slim) that you can get yourself in trouble from the original photographer or site that you got the pics from.
Some of you may be thinking, "Well, duh K-lee. What are you stupid? Where've you been living? Under a rock?" and I can completely understand those sentiments. But the problem is a) I didn't really think I was a stupid person, b) I haven't been living under a rock (or at least not completely), and c) yes, I do know about copyright since I'm an author, have not been living under a rock and am not stupid.So now you may ask "what's the problem then?" The problem is I can't decide if it's worth going through all my entries and deleting all the pics I used, not to mention getting rid of all my character inspirations on my main page. I'm kind of attached to those pics and a big part of my blog is posting pretty pictures for myself and others to enjoy (even my header is not my photo so what would I use for that?). Or is the easier decision just to delete this blog and start again?
Another problem is I don't really understand what pictures I can or cannot use, except my own (please say hi to Chili way up in the corner - she and the pic are mine). I'm an all-or-nothing kind of girl, something I've tried for years to change (it's part of my disorder as well so it's not entirely an issue of my choice) so for me rather than trying to figure out what I can and cannot post, I'm thinking it's better to just not blog at all or just use this as strictly a writing blog.
I guess I can still post youtube videos - as far as I know - and I can still talk about what I'm writing and what I'm doing but do I go through and delete all the entries that already contain pictures. Or do l leave then and just hope they never get found. As for my home page, I can't really think of anything else to put there besides my books, my wips and a few links. I'm not the most exciting person and there just aren't any men I can go out and take pictures of so I can post them on my blog.And it goes further than just my blog - what about my LiveJournal and FaceBook and Tumblr and how about Twitter? Do all those have to be cleared out as well. Does this also mean when someone shares something on Facebook and you in turn share it, that's bad too? Considering all the problems in the real world, it seems like such a silly thing to spend so much time pondering and worrying about, but in my little world it's important.
This is nothing more than a rambling mess but I'm happy to get it at least partially off my chest. I guess I should just get back to writing and editing, plus I have some word counts I can update on my main page. I can always make these silly decisions later - and hope I don't get sued in the meantime. Have a good week friends.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention my European football story was accepted for the Olympic anthology. :)
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Oh, that's awesome. Very cool to have a story with yours - I can't believe you wrote under 10,000 words though. lol.Yeah, the thought just never crossed my mind even after I'd been published. I certainly didn't intend to infringe on anyone's rights and I think i'll be doing a lot of deleting. :/
*squishes*
K-lee wrote: "Oh, that's awesome. Very cool to have a story with yours - I can't believe you wrote under 10,000 words though. lol..."Um, yeah, well... she let me do 18K. I did it quick - she requested more stories just 10 days before the deadline, and that's how it came out. I told her she could have long and on time or maybe short and really late, or else I'd just take a pass and put it on my website and she asked to look at the long one. I was surprised but delighted that she took it (although I feel a little bad now that she actually ended up with more stories than space.) I do think it's cool we'll share the book though.
I panicked completely about that blog entry and went straight off the deep end.I've checked the terms and conditions of facebook and tumblr and effectively they say that if you post a picture on there you're granting permission to facebook/tumbr and as long as you're only reposting within that framework you're fine.
That means you can share pictures posted on facebook with anyone on facebook and you can re blog photos posted on tublr, but you can't take them off the sites.
I hope that makes some kind of sense.
As far as you tube is concerned there is an argument that the videos are in the public domain and anything in there is fine to use.
It's blogs that are problematic. I'm extremely lucky to have talented friends but it's still hard because how can you ask permission from a photographer when you have no idea who the photographer is.
It's easier to see who posted the picture on tumblr and the answer might be to find photographs on there that you like and ask permission from the photographer to use it on your off tumbr blog. They're mostly amateurs so they will more than likely agree.
The photo issue is kind of hard for those who've been posting pics all along. There are still a lot of royalty-free pics out there, and people are sharing their own Flicker images, but the hot man-candy may be much harder to come by. As a writer who has bemoaned free downloads of my stuff, I'm being careful only to post stuff I have rights to, but then my website is kind of boring anyway. Good luck with deciding what you want to do.