I bought and read my first e-book on a phone this year using an iPhone app. I don’t plan to repeat the experience, not because it was horrible but because I know too many booksellers personally and until it’s easy to buy from them I’m not planning to purchase e-books. But I felt as if I needed some experience with e-books.

The good side? It didn’t weigh much when traveling and I could read it in the dark on the long shuttle ride from the airport. The bad side?

Let me count the ways.

First, the pages look ugly. There’s no other way to put it. There is no page design, just letters poured into a mechanical box, no art in the chapter headings, no thought given to initial capitals, words broken in the wrong place, justified lines full of gaps like bad teeth. And of course no page numbers. The design of a page in a printed book is a nearly invisible pleasure. Page design is something I appreciate more since seeing what is lost when it’s absent.

Second, reading on a phone is fine for e-mail and  for short form texts on a web page, but it’s hard to get lost in a book when you have to turn pages every paragraph or so. I also found it strangely disorienting to have only a bar at the bottom of the page telling me where I was in the book. A sense of place, of orientation in the arc of the story is harder to grasp. (I found this also true when I held my most recently published book in my hands for the first time. The last chapters felt different when measured between the thumb and fingers and the growing weight of the left side than when I was scrolling to the end of a document. Though I did read the galleys on paper, I shifted the pages to the back of the stack as I read and so was surprised by how profoundly the anticipation of an ending affects the reading experience.)

Third – I don’t like a future for the book in which sharing is disabled and ownership of an immutable copy no longer exists. It bothers me that a corporation could reach into my personal library and pluck a book back or alter it. I don’t like the fact that there is no such thing as fair use in a world of licensed content and that I can’t give a friend or family member a book I read and loved. Sure, I could buy them a second e-book version, but it’s not the same as handing on the book I read.

Fourth – this post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation spells out just how much we give away to Google and Amazon when we let them be our “bookstore” and “library.” Real booksellers and librarians have stood up for reader privacy. Personal information is a valuable commodity to these corporations. I don’t like the idea of my reading habits becoming a commodity and I don’t like the aggregation of readers’ behavior becoming a huge data mine of our minds.

Google’s new Google Book Search Project has the ability to track reading habits at an unprecedented level of granularity. In particular, according to the proposed Google Books Privacy Policy, web servers will automatically “log” each book and page you searched for and read, how long you viewed it for, and what book or page you continued onto next . . . your Kindle will periodically send information about you to Amazon. But exactly what information is sent? Amazon’s wording — “information related to the content on your Device and your use of it” — reads so broadly that it appears to allow Amazon to track all content that users put on the device, regardless of whether that content is purchased from Amazon. Some security researchers have indicated that the Kindle may even be tracking its users’ GPS locations. Is this the future of reading?

God, I hope not. Cory Doctorow has put some of this in sharp perspective in “How to Destroy the Book” in which he argues that the true pirates are the corporations who are remaking our book culture so that they can be in the center of it, controlling books for the sake of profits. He contrasts this perspective with that of “people of the book” who love books, want to fill their houses with them, and pass favorites on to their children.

Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself. We must stop them from being allowed to do it. The library of tomorrow should be better than the library of today. The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug. We all know this. It’s time we stop pretending that the pirates of copyright are right. These people were readers before they were publishers before they were writers before they worked in the legal department before they were agents before they were salespeople and marketers. We are the people of the book, and we need to start acting like it.

What he said.

photos courtesy of brewbooks and Josh Bancroft.

We all know what happens when the RIAA takes on copyright infringement. After all, that is pretty well documented. But hell hath no fury like the Vatican when it comes to its copyright. Father Guido Sarducci might want to be on the lookout.

According to the Catholic News Agency, the Holy See announced that it will vigorously defend its rightful copyright to the figure of the pope. The Vatican claims that there exists a “great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father” recently. It also observed there has been an increase in attempts to use ecclesiastical or pontifical symbols and logos to "attribute credibility and authority to initiatives" and that was a further reason to establish their copyright to the name, picture and coat of arms of the Pope. From this time unto perpetuity anyone seeking to use any of these will need to get specific authorization from Rome to do so or find themselves facing the wrath of the Vatican. Apparently this means lawsuits, eternal damnation, or both.

So, does this mean that we are to say goodbye to pope on a rope, any use of the word pope or any of its variants such as pontiff, pontifical, or papal?  Maybe not.  In the opinion of British copyright attorney Robin Fry, the Vatican may be up against some problems in enforcing its copyright. First of all, the copyright would only legally extend to the 110 acres of Vatican City, unless they get some other governments to cooperate. Said Fry,

“…this declaration is a brave attempt to control use of the imprimatur and image of His Holy Father, but this can only realistically be done through registration of trademarks.”

“As far as monitoring was concerned, all it needed to do was to set up an enforcement or monitoring body. “Then if someone stepped out of line and the normal religious and spiritual pressures don’t operate effectively then at the end of the day, lawyers can step in and take action,”

Although trademarks do exist, they have never been registered. However, no matter how toothless the Holy See might be in this area outside of the Vatican, perhaps unauthorized use of pope to market things might be treated by the Church as a matter like supporting abortion as a reason to deny communion to unlucky interlopers. And that’s no papal bull.

Now Playing: The Stranglers – La Folie – Non Stop

Last night I got into a discussion about the legality of fan art and wether or not it’s right to post fan art. It seems the legality of fan art is somewhat up in the air.

On Wikipedia it states:

The legal status of fan made art in America may be tricky due to the vagaries of the United States Copyright Act. Generally, the right to reproduce and display pieces of artwork is controlled by the original author or artist under 17 U.S.C. § 106. However, fan art using settings and characters from a previously created work could be considered a derivative work, which would place control of the copyright with the owner of that original work. Display and distribution of fan art that would be considered a derivative work would be unlawful.

However, American copyright law allows for the production, display and distribution of derivative works if they fall under a fair use exemption, 17 U.S.C. § 107. A court would look at all relevant facts and circumstances to determine whether a particular use qualifies as fair use; a multi-pronged rubric for this decision involves evaluating the amount and substantiality of the original appropriated, the transformative nature of the derivative work, whether the derivative work was done for educational or noncommercial use, and the economic effect that the derivative work imposes on the copyright holder’s ability to make and exploit her own derivative works. None of these factors is alone dispositive.

I’m not as concerned with if it’s legal, but I am very concerned with wether or not it’s “right”. These are often two very different things. It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to before. Now that I am posting my own fan art here on my blog it is something I’ve been thinking about. My main concern is how the authors of the original artwork feel about this, second how you the reader feels and my third concern is to make it clear to the reader what is an original drawing conceived of and drawn by me and what is fan art.

My main purpose for this blog is to chart my progression as I learn to master drawing. As such I try to post as much of my work, both the good and the bad, here on my blog. As a person learns to draw it’s common to look to artists that he admires and attempt to emulate their drawings. This plays an important part in learning and so it seems only natural for it to be included here in my blog.

My own policy is that anytime I copy or try to reproduce a drawing by another artist I will credit them and link to the original artwork wherever possible. If the original artist would for any reason ask me to remove my reproduction of their work I would of course remove it immediately. Obviously I don’t seek any sort of profit from these reproductions and they are included here only to show my progress as an artist. Posting fan art is one thing, but making profit on it is just plain wrong.

What do you think?

Instruction

Digital Photography School – Everything from photo tips, to camera equipment to post production techniques.

Amateur Snapper – Photography tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Project Ideas

PhotoJojo – Quoted, “the most kick-ass photo tips, projects, and more…”

DIY Photography – Do-It-Yourself lighting and studio solutions!

Photo Connection – More photo tutorials and fun ideas.

The Photographic Dictionary – Get ideas for an alphabetical photo hunt!

Storage Sites

Flickr – Also home of the GVSU Photo Club group! It’s free to join!

SeeHere Photo Sharing – A place to upload store, and print your photos on different products.

SmugMug – This one costs some money, but has many more features.

Stock Photos

Morgue File – Find resource photos to use in your own image manipulations.

InterfaceLIFT – A great site for photographic desktop backgrounds.

FocalPop – Also great just for project ideas, but if you upload your own stock photos to the person requesting, you could get paid!!

Editing

Mac AppStorm: The Ultimate Setup for Photographers – 50 great free and paid apps for your Mac for post processing and editing photos.

PresetsHeaven – Do you use Adobe Lightroom? Here is a great site for downloading preset photo effects!

X-Equals – More Photoshop and Lightroom presets. All free!

GIMP – A free photo editing software you can download and keep. Often said to be a simpler version of Photoshop.

Picnik – A free in-browser photo editing site. No downloads necessary!

Aviary – A new free in-browser photo editing site.

Pixlr – Another free in-browser editor! Looks very similar to Photoshop.

Printing

Zazzle – Print your photo on anything!

Moo – Create MiniCards, Business Cards, Notecards, Postcards, etc. all with an individual image on each! Easy uploader from flickr, facebook, Etsy, or direct upload. Super customizable and a personal fave of mine. (See photo of MiniCards, right.)

Mpix – Beautiful high quality prints on all types of products. Used for the Photo Club’s Fall ‘09 prints!

Color Inc. Lab – A Grand Rapids area printing company! If you like local, these are your guys. Lovely high quality prints.

ArtsCow – Photo gifts for everyone!

Miscellaneous

DPreview – Digital Photography review. The most in-depth camera reviews and comparisons I’ve ever found. Great for researching a new upgrade.

The Photographer’s Right – Know your photo rights! A lawyer’s website with a PDF detailing where you have a right to shoot as a photographer and when you can an can’t be stopped.

Photo Copyrights – Information about copyrights for your photos in print, on the web, in camera, wherever they are.

DPChallenge – Photography contest site.

Pure Michigan Photo Club – A club contest for Michigan photographers. Prizes!

Lens Pro to Go – Shooting a wedding and want to use that 50mm f/1.2 L lens? Rent it here! Look up any Canon or Nikon lens for rental anywhere in the US.

He’s traveled the world under many different names…

Father Christmas… aka Kris Kringle… aka Sinterklaas… and in Canada he’s called Santa Claus

His image is derived from Coca Cola advertising of the 1930’s.

But the strands of his persona have been drawn together from legends and myths from around the world. Santa Claus is essentially a derivative creation that could have been deemed Intellectual Property and locked down in copyright many years ago.

Had his image had been made copyright, I doubt my amazing mother-in-law would have crafted this wonderful door hanger ornament from a bleach bottle oh so many years ago. In fact, I suspect a copyright Santa would have already gone the way of the Sony betamax machine.

[a “what machine?” ask the younger readers....]

Ralphie vs. Santa Claus

Favorite Holiday Film:

“A Christmas Story“

Classic line:

“You’ll shoot your eye out!”

Fortunately my family still has a working VHS VCR so we can continue to enjoy this wonderful movie.

Hopefully there will not be a day when DRM or anti-circumvention law will make it impossible for my family’s continued enjoyment of this classic Canadian film.

How much change is enough? – article about fair use : (n) fair use (the conditions under which you can use material that is copyrighted by someone else without paying royalties)

http://www.publaw.com/parody.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/shepard-fairey-admits-to-wrongdoing-in-associated-press-lawsuit.html

An Israeli hacker going by the alias “Labba” has become to first person to hack the DRM on Amazon’s highly successful e-reader.

The hack will allow users to transfer .pdf files onto other devices, thereby ignoring the copyrights held by the content providers. Good news for consumers, darn right annoying for Amazon.

No doubt Amazon will be working on a software update to solve the problem, although if history has taught us anything its that another hack won’t be too far away.

SOURCE:
BBC News

Jane Park at Creative Commons has posted an interview with Karien Bezuidenhout, Chief Operating Officer at the Shuttleworth Foundation. From the post:

Well, I think, to begin with, we were open to the commercial angle because in the greater Shuttleworth group we’re the only nonprofit entity. We’ve got venture capitalists that’s part of the group, so commercial pursuit was normal to us, I think that kind of predisposed us to be open to that. I just don’t think that you can separate out education and commercial use so easily.

A second Irish bishop has resigned after a damning report which found that Catholic leaders concealed child abuse.

The Bishop of Kildare, Dr James Moriarty, announced he had offered his resignation to the Pope on Wednesday.

Despite previously insisting he should not resign, Bishop Moriarty said he accepted that he should have challenged Church handling of abuse by priests.

“I know that any action now on my part does not take away the suffering that people have endured,” he said.

“I again apologise to all the survivors and their families. …

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8428289.stm

Putting a “monkey” on a child’s back could mean that the child will carry that burden for the rest of his or her life. Combine that with the normal children’s tasks of “reading, writing and arithmetic” and the child has quite a send-off into life.

Could copyright make this problem better – or at least hide the problem? Should this kind of behavior be “INDEXED”?

It is tough for kids to find role models today. There are no more Gene Autrys, Hoot Gibsons, The Shadow and for the high ranking neocons -  Elliot Ness. The CIA has no “culture” but the FBI does. “The FBI in peace and war” helped guide the behavior of children growing up in America’s past.

So, where do kids look for role models in today’s American environment? Be careful if exploring for new interests in minority areas of Los Angeles, California. The “droppings” from the original neocons(circa 1980) can still be found. And crack cocaine – promoted by the original neocons – is still an illegal drug.

So today’s kids have to successfully navigate the cocaine drug trade, the lack of health care coverage, the sexual desires of adults and reading, writing and arithmetic. No small task.

It’s a no-brainer that the Internet can help you increase your sales and profitability, which in turn can increase the value of your business. According to Forrester Research, e-commerce sales hit more than $75 billion last year.
You should also know that of the more than 300 million people worldwide online today, more than 85 million are in the United States. There are more than 1 billion Web pages in existence. These facts mean you could tap into an amazing opportunity.
Following are some ways the Internet can help you increase your business’ potential:

Increase Sales
A web site can be a very effective means of reaching new and existing customers and expanding your geographic presence. Breaking down geographic barriers is a good thing for any business owner.

A web site provides company exposure that customers can access at any time. Hence, a professional web site is an important first step in tapping the power of the Web. You may wish to hire a consultant to help you with the marketing of your web site. Simple tactics such as utilizing search engine optimization tools — making sure your web site appears toward the top of a list when someone conducts a search — can significantly increase the hit rate on your site. Many larger firms initially gauge the credibility of smaller firms as a business partner by the professionalism of the smaller firm’s web site. Additionally, a web site offers the ability to capture the information of existing and potential customers, which bolsters the efforts of your sales team.

Increase Customer Retention
The Internet provides small businesses with another outlet for customer contact and support. Some businesses give customers access to the status of a job via the Internet. This type of partnership approach with customers builds brand trust and loyalty. Email allows for an expeditious exchange of files or specs, and communication such as job updates, new product additions and other news can be inexpensively distributed to your clients through e-mail campaigns containing links to your site.

Increase Productivity
The Internet also allows you to increase productivity and streamline automation in your business. Consider the ease of being able to order equipment replacement parts online. Larger U.S. manufacturing companies with international organizations now use the Internet to track their supply chain, work flow and available capacity at overseas plants. In some cases, crowded U.S. manufacturers can e-mail the exact job specifications to another plant across the world to keep a job on schedule. In addition, basic site features, such as the capability to accept online orders, can increase sales by allowing for order acceptance at any hour — in a more convenient form than a facsimile. Lastly, a web site can reduce expenses associated with the production of brochures and other collateral materials.

Overall, a web site is essentially another form of advertising for your business, and should be utilized in conjunction with traditional methods to maximize its presence and profitability.

Copyright Yahoo Related Articles.

It’s a no-brainer that the Internet can help you increase your sales and profitability, which in turn can increase the value of your business. According to Forrester Research, e-commerce sales hit more than $75 billion last year.
You should also know that of the more than 300 million people worldwide online today, more than 85 million are in the United States. There are more than 1 billion Web pages in existence. These facts mean you could tap into an amazing opportunity.
Following are some ways the Internet can help you increase your business’ potential:

Increase Sales
A web site can be a very effective means of reaching new and existing customers and expanding your geographic presence. Breaking down geographic barriers is a good thing for any business owner.

A web site provides company exposure that customers can access at any time. Hence, a professional web site is an important first step in tapping the power of the Web. You may wish to hire a consultant to help you with the marketing of your web site. Simple tactics such as utilizing search engine optimization tools — making sure your web site appears toward the top of a list when someone conducts a search — can significantly increase the hit rate on your site. Many larger firms initially gauge the credibility of smaller firms as a business partner by the professionalism of the smaller firm’s web site. Additionally, a web site offers the ability to capture the information of existing and potential customers, which bolsters the efforts of your sales team.

Increase Customer Retention
The Internet provides small businesses with another outlet for customer contact and support. Some businesses give customers access to the status of a job via the Internet. This type of partnership approach with customers builds brand trust and loyalty. Email allows for an expeditious exchange of files or specs, and communication such as job updates, new product additions and other news can be inexpensively distributed to your clients through e-mail campaigns containing links to your site.

Increase Productivity
The Internet also allows you to increase productivity and streamline automation in your business. Consider the ease of being able to order equipment replacement parts online. Larger U.S. manufacturing companies with international organizations now use the Internet to track their supply chain, work flow and available capacity at overseas plants. In some cases, crowded U.S. manufacturers can e-mail the exact job specifications to another plant across the world to keep a job on schedule. In addition, basic site features, such as the capability to accept online orders, can increase sales by allowing for order acceptance at any hour — in a more convenient form than a facsimile. Lastly, a web site can reduce expenses associated with the production of brochures and other collateral materials.

Overall, a web site is essentially another form of advertising for your business, and should be utilized in conjunction with traditional methods to maximize its presence and profitability.

Copyright Yahoo Related Articles.

Earlier I put up a video for friends to see, via a link. All but two images were original. This presented one dilemma. The other was the sounds were created by others. In the postmodern age, litigation preceeds art.

The 21st century will need to find out who we are, what our work is, and where boundaries begin and end threateningly. Our work becomes slaves to be litigated over by antiquated copyright laws, which measures itself solely the bottom line.

The photo above shows a poster done for part of a school day festivity. Should we worry that publishers will come after us for copyright violations? Imagine Warhol going to Campbells for permission, Jasper Johns going to Ballantine Beer, etc. . .?

[ii] Copyright holders are often estates or businesses.

[iii] Buttler, Dwayne, K. “CONFU-sed: Security, Safe Harbors, and Fair Use Guidelines.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50, no. 14 (1999): 1308-1312

[iv] Bielstein, Susan M.. Permissions: A Survival Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006; 166

[v] Ibid 162-163

[vi] Buttler 1310

[vii] Bielstein 106-108

Alas and alack, this ruling doesn’t spell doom for Microsoft Word

Pay no attention to headlines predicting that Microsoft Word will be banished from store shelves on Jan. 11 because of a patent ruling. The widely used word processor isn’t going anywhere; nor does Tuesday’s ruling by the D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit represent any sort of earth-shattering development in patent law. Tuesday’s ruling upholds a judge’s injunction issued after a district court jury found that a feature in Word 2007, and the Office 2007 suite that includes Word, infringed a patent held by i4i, a Toronto software developer. The feature in question governs how programs deal with a specialized data format called XML, short for extensible markup language. It’s arguable, as Computerworld writer Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes, that i4i never should have received this patent in the first place. But there also seems to be solid evidence that Microsoft knew about i4i’s work before adding these features to Word. Either way, though, Microsoft is already moving to get out of the box the court’s ruling put it in. In a statement issued earlier Tuesday, the company said it “had put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature” from Word before the Jan. 11 deadline. The statement added that Microsoft’s upcoming Word 2010 and Office 2010 “do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.” So here’s the upshot: Microsoft spends some time and money removing a feature most people don’t use but doesn’t have to stop selling its product, i4i gets a moment in the headlines and a decent payday, patent lawyers rack up billable hours, and most consumers never notice the difference.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122203107.html?hpid=sec-tech

 Copyright piracy in China remains at “unacceptably high levels,” causing “serious harm” to American businesses, the top US trade official said in an annual report to US Congress.

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in the mandatory report on China’s compliance with its World Trade Organization accession obligations that Beijing was not taking adequate steps to enforce intellectual property rights laws.

He said enforcement of China’s copyright protection “remains a significant challenge.”

The report cited other “priority” trade issues such as industrial policies, trading rights and distribution services, agriculture and services, but indicated piracy is a key issue where China has made little progress.

“Despite repeated anti-piracy campaigns in China and an increasing number of civil IPR (intellectual property rights) cases in Chinese courts, counterfeiting and piracy remain at unacceptably high levels and continue to cause serious harm to US businesses across many sectors of the economy,” the 121-page report said.

File photo shows a vendor selling fake winter jackets at a market in Beijing.

The US copyright industries estimate that losses in 2008 due to piracy were about 3.5 billion dollars for the music recording and software industries alone, it said.

“These figures indicate little or no overall improvement over the previous year.”

China is among nations in the annual intellectual property rights blacklist of the US Trade Representative’s office.

China acceded to the World Trade Organization eight years ago. The terms of its accession called for China to implement numerous specific commitments over time.

All of China’s key commitments should have been phased in three years ago.

Kirk’s report said that while China had put in place laws aimed at protecting intellectual property rights as required by the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights or the TRIPS Agreement, “some critical reforms are still needed in a few areas.”

It cited further improvement of China’s measures for copyright protection on the Internet following China?s accession to the World Intellectual Property Rights Organization (WIPO) Internet treaties, and correction of “continuing deficiencies” in China’s criminal IPR enforcement measures.

The United States obtained a favorable ruling about a year ago from a WTO panel in a case challenging deficiencies in China’s legal regime for protecting and enforcing copyrights and trademarks.

Specifically, in a case in which 12 other WTO members had joined in as third parties, a WTO panel found as inconsistent China’s denial of copyright protection to works that do not meet China’s content review standards as well as China’s handling of border enforcement seizures of counterfeit goods.

The panel also clarified important legal standards relating to China’s criminal enforcement of copyrights and trademarks.

Neither side appealed the panel?s decision, and China subsequently agreed to bring the measures at issue into compliance by March 2010, Kirk’s report said.

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Yes! C64 and weird people freaking out children on television! We’ve seen it before, but this is one is from 1998. The performer is Monotrona and the song is Cadillac Fantasy, from her album Hawkeye & Firebird. The C64-music is not made by her though, it is Hotrod and was made by Jeroen Tel in 1989.

Hailing from the Chicago noise scene, Monotrona was started in 1996 and she used self-built instruments, circuit bent toys, lo-fi keyboards, the Sidstation, MC-505, and of course other people’s C64-music. I also consider it more as “posthuman” than mere goofery: the lyrics are about mechanical beings and computer life, and she apparently had the girl from Fischerspooner replace her when she couldn’t attend her own gigs. A lot of the chip-styled stuff is found on Hawkeye & Firebird and The Might Mun, which you can download here. If anyone has a list of the original songs, please share it. Montrona was discontinued in 2003.

Although I suppose some people are disturbed by this (like the original composers), I think she makes is pretty obvious that she didn’t do the music herself. Also, she includes the original composers’ names in the CD, or so Peter at TCTD told me (who informed me about Monotrona, thanks!). So maybe not so posthuman after all. But maybe it is not much different from what Fitts for Fight did. It’s just that this won’t get the same attention, partly because it’s old, and partly because it is something very different than what FFF did, imho. But I’m biased because I like Monotrona and the music. Then again, I’m the kind of person who puts on Fitts for Fight in a DJ-set…

So, here’s a thought: as far as we are aware, if you are a tattoo artist, and you draw and tattoo your own flash, it is your copyright. But, what if you draw flash for a customer and someone else tattoos it? Who’s is it then?

Naming small time shops usually isn’t my thing, but this is a joke, so I can break my own rules for it. A former employee of our friends at Inkslingers now works at a shop around the corner called Pure Ink. What’s the problem? Their website.

If you take a look at the Pure Ink website, you’ll wonder why people go in there. Their stations seem messy, their prices strange and their attitudes are stupid. “nearly [sic] 50 years experience between all artists!” should mean you’ve been professionally tattooing that long, not how long ago you got your first tattoo. “We specialise in portrait work”, despite one staff member pretending to a customer that it was his first portrait, for an excuse when it went horribly wrong. But the most baffling lie on their site goes back to this debate about copyright.

Remember how we said one member of staff worked for Inkslingers? Well, the work displayed on the site’s gallery, was not only done there, but drawn by Ian and Hayley Parkin. Should this make a difference?

After a conversation with Ian, the owner of Pure Ink added a laughable disclaimer to their site: “artwork on some tattoos, supplied by a third party”. There is no indication to which tattoos this silly comment applies to, nothing to say who exactly supplied the artwork, or even which member of their staff did which tattoo. Should this be enough? Is it legally enough? The laws on copyright, as we know, are sometimes too hazy. They’re sometimes not fair.

Hopefully, this will end up being sorted out. Unfortunately it isn’t uncommon for tattoo studios to do things like this. The poorer the studio, the more likely it is that they’re trying to rip off you and any artist around you. Hunting out the good shops is sometimes hard, but worth your while.

All we can suggest is, next time you’re looking for a new tattoo artist, if you’re on their site and you see something unclear about the artwork, leave the site. If you see a shop who boasts about experience, yet can’t seem to give any information about that experience, leave. If you come across a shop who offers a student discount, you should probably leave too.

The Internet is full of thieves, from Pirates to Plagiarists.  For example, in this episode of the Simpsons, Homer steals copyrighted material from all over the internet.  [Interestingly, this video probably infringes on copyrights held by Fox].

So, how can you, as a contributor to the online marketplace of ideas, protect what you’ve written from this type of thievery?

The law provides that all original tangible works are inherently copyrighted.  You don’t even need to include the © symbol anymore.  Also, the Creative Commons provides an easy way to license your content.  That’s the good news. 

You own your original content.  Fair and square.  If someone is pilfering from your work for their own uses, you have some recourse. 

First, you can contact them directly.  This is intimidating, and might not yield results without a formal demand letter.    You can be as informal as you like in this step, leaving a comment on their blog, for example.  In any case, you should be polite, explain that they have used your content without your permission, and ask them to remove it.  If the user doesn’t respond, take more action. 

Second, you can contact the website owner, registrar or hosting service.  You can find information on the owner of a website by doing a whois search.  Hosting services like GoDaddy and Google, even YouTube, have adopted policies on copyright infringement.  These policies essentially allow for easier enforcement of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, legislation which basically expanded copyright law to accommodate for new technologies.

This type of contact [example] should be at least somewhat formal, signed, and include exactly what the policy requests.  If done correctly, these letters do yield results [the site the example complained of, presumably has been removed by Google].  Google will also remove search results that use your content to compete for prominence in results, but that process is more complicated.

You should know, however, that making this kind of complaint with some companies, like Google, will land your complaint on ChillingEffects.org, a site which “aims to support lawful online activity against the chill of unwarranted legal threats.”  They’ll take your personal information off, but the substance of the complaint will remain.  So be sure, before you send a complaint, that you own the copyright, and there use is unlawful.  There are several ways an infringer can be absolved, through a claim of fair use, but I will not address those in this post.

Unfortunately, while the law provides many safeguards, and many major companies will help you along the way, if you truly believe your content has been stolen, you may need a lawyer to handle the complexities for you. 

If you send all the requests you can muster, and the material remains posted, and you can handle the expenses, you might consider proceeding with legal action.  Lawyers are expensive, so you should be sure that you have exhausted all other options, and consider that the cost of allowing the plagiarism might be lower than the cost of enforcing the copyright.  You should also take any steps you can required for litigation, such as registration with the Copyright Office, before contracting a lawyer to do them for you at a much higher rate.

Next substantive post: How to Ensure You Do Not Infringe on Another’s Copyright.