What not being a mummy blogger has taught me

Back from a lovely month’s holiday and straight into some social media controversy generated unwittingly (isn’t it always?) by, um, me.

I run a social media course called How Write a Mummy Blog. When I was writing the page about the course I found a funny video made by some female Australian bloggers. It’s called Shit Oz Bloggers Say – Episode 1.

I embedded it in the page, although they don’t call themselves “mummy bloggers” and I understand why. It was just:

witty
showed blogging and bloggers in a cool light (not the dull loners people who haven’t blogged sometimes say we are)
demonstrated specifically that the sites of mothers-who-happen-to-blog don’t have to be twee, if they don’t want them to be

The page has been up for a while but today I got an email from someone, which was titled “It’s not nice to steal content“.

In its entirety it said:

Just one of many comments made once your blatent stolen video was posted by one of the women in the video.

Do you think ‘mummy blogger’ was his keyword? He used the phrase about a million times. It is very opportunistic of him to jump on the bandwagon like that and use your video without permission. I don’t know if he’s a blogger but he’s definitely not a mummy, so he’s not qualified. Plus, that photo of him on assignment in Thailand is really dicky.

I should have picked this up from Twitter already (I’ve been getting a pasting there, it turned out) but I’ve been off colour since getting back at the weekend, plus trying to catch up on other things, such as (ironically) parenting.

Stealing?

Did I steal the content? No. YouTube generates code anyone can use to embed a video in their website, but it also gives the owner of the video the opportunity to switch that feature off.

By enabling embedding, you’re allowing people to share your video by including it in their website. That’s part of the magic of YouTube and how videos get seen by bigger audiences than if the videos were only on YouTube.

The feature also embeds attribution and linking, so wherever you watch the video you can see exactly who created it and go back to the original.

It’s unkind (and wrong), therefore, to say that I stole it. 

I’m particularly sensitive about this because I found someone today who is essentially serialising the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey on his blog, including even the artwork. I don’t like this, so I certainly wouldn’t do it to someone else.

I don’t even like the idea that I’m perceived as stealing, so I’m more than happy to take the video down, but it’s there now so you can see the original mummy blogging course page for yourself and make up your own mind. [Update: It's gone now.]
Using someone else’s image to promote my course?

Considering he’s using my image to promote it, should I enrol in Steven’s “How to Write a Mummyblog” course? centre.taleist.com.au/event/how-writ…

— edenland (@edenland) October 25, 2012

I hadn’t thought about it that way at all. I really just thought it was cool video. I didn’t think for a second anyone would think I was suggesting these successful bloggers were endorsing my course.

But I see that’s an argument and I’m more than happy to take the video down on that basis if they would like me to. (Or any other basis — it’s their video.)
Can a father teach a “mummy blogging” course?

@amelia_draws @edenland @woogsworld @rule17 personally I am staggered that some bloke thinks he can tell us about mothers, that’s just me.

— Nareen Young (@nareenyoung) October 26, 2012

The course is about the terminology, techniques, and technology of blogging, not about how to be a mother. There’s no suggestion that I’m presuming to teach anyone anything about motherhood.

When I teach a blogging for business course, I’m not teaching them about business, any more than I’d be presuming to tell Pfizer anything about medicine, if I were running a blogging for pharmaceutical companies course (which I’ve done).

I don’t think I can teach mothers about motherhood. That’s not what the course is about, it’s not what it says it’s about, and it would be ridiculous if it were about that.
An apology and a lesson learned

I certainly didn’t mean to misuse or even be perceived as misusing someone else’s work, let alone stealing it. I used it for the reasons I’ve given above and, if its owners would rather I didn’t, I’ll take it down. I’ll still recommend you watch it, because it’s witty.

I do take on board the point that I could perhaps have been seen as using their images to suggest they endorsed the course, although I hope most, if not all, who’ve read the page could see that I was just tipping my hat at a great video.

Nonetheless, I should have been more sensitive to that and asked specifically whether they would see this as in that spirit, rather than doing what I did and relying simply on the embed code being available.
As a result of that, my apologies to:

Styling You
Baby Mac
Woogsworld
Edenland
Bigwords
Where’s My Glow

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