The 501st Post

The previous post was, amazingly, the 500th I've made here. As I didn't want such a milestone to be marked by another whingeing session from me, I instead substituted a piece of topical satire, which also served as a first draft for the latest story over at The Sleaze: The Big Political Sell Out. So, I decided to hold the moaning over until the 501st post. Quite apart from my regular moan about the current lack of traffic (last weekend traffic to The Sleaze plumbed new depths, it looked set to do even worse today, until an incredible turnaround this evening), I'd like to address the issue of people stealing my content. I don't like using the word stealing, but when other web users persist in reproducing, without permission, entire stories from my site, I really don't know what else to call it. Sure, I know that most of them provide a cursory link back to the site, but that isn't the point. They haven't had the courtesy to ask my permission to reproduce something I've spent a considerable amount of time and effort creating. The only place people should be able to read it in its entirety is on my site. By reproducing it without my permission, these people are trying to deny me control over where, and in what context, my own work appears.

All sorts of 'justifications' are used for this theft, most notably the nonsense that is 'creative commons'. This should really only be invoked with respect to the use of excerpts from copyrighted material for educational purposes. Strangely, I don't think that anything in The Sleaze could be classified as 'educational'. I know this whole area is a minefield, in which we are all culpable. Like most web site editors, I frequently use images from the web as the basis for illustrations and graphics. However, I do always try to use public domain material and make some kind of creative alterations so as to, arguably, create a new image. Text-based work is somewhat different, even if you make alterations and thereby claim 'ownership' of a 'new' version, you are still using the bulk of the original, which constitutes plagiarism. The bottom line is that nobody should be reproducing copyrighted material, in its entirety, without permission. If you want to use any of my work and can't be arsed to seek permission, it's quite simple, just reproduce an excerpt with a link back to the original if people want to read it all. I won't come and threaten you with legal action if you follow that rule (unless you take the piss and the 'excerpt' constitutes more than a third of the original). Mind you, if I don't like the nature of your site (if, for example, it promotes racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, fascism or any other form of extremism), I might well demand you remove my material. Obviously, I can't police the whole net, hunting down illegal use of my stories, so, if you come across someone reproducing one of my stories (or anybody else's, for that matter) and you think it's been done without permission, confront them about it. We really do have to get a grip on this issue.