Thursday, January 16, 2014

Copyright & A Baby

My friend Carol has suggested that I do a blog post a day just to keep my mind sharp while I numb it through breastfeeding, (no really, it's all that oxytocin, your mind is in this happy fog of motherhood... pretty awesome when you think about it).  I'm not that ambitious, but a few things have been rattling around in my head other than rattles, and while the munchkin sleeps in my lap I'll take the opportunity to babble to y'all.

First: Copyright on the Internet.
My friend Bea has gone on quite a rant about it. Here is her polite blog post with links to resources about copyright.  (Bea's blog, you'll love it)
Trystan's is also great http://trystancraft.com/costume/2012/01/18/an-introduction-to-copyright-for-bloggers-especially-costume-bloggers/

I've been considering watermarking the stuff I put on here that's actually mine.  A good bit obviously isn't, as the artists have been dead for ages, though I do try to cite when possible.  Every once in a while I even go back and correct things or update info.  I admit I'm a bit hazy on the sharing of museum owned artwork by long dead artists and Trystan addresses that...
BUT for my purposes I'm totally cool with people using my (personal) images/info for educational purposes via links, excerpts with citations or credited pictures.  This means you credit the source (me) and don't make money off my stuff without express written permission, and this is not that.  If it doesn't come through the USPS in a signed contract it's not written permission.  If you blatantly steal my stuff and put it in a $10 for sale packet I will hate you forever, call you out on your BS and if you don't immediately make it right there will be lawyers... just sayin'.  If you lift my research and turn it in to your college professor as your own without even changing my lame jokes, I will email said professor and let you wonder why you failed that course (yes, I saw that, the costume world is small and the internet is even smaller, Plagiarizers Beware)... My black little heart enjoyed that.  Anyway, I blog tutorials for free for a reason and having someone copy a blog post and then obnoxiously charge people for it is just rude. And illegal.  So don't.

Child break...

Next day... (you see how much I got done?  Amazing, isn't it?)