Blog — Page 26 — The Web Files

Proper etiquette when using others photos on your site

September 11, 2007 by Tricia

Earlier today I got a message on Mybloglog account. Someone was contacting me through that social networking site requesting that I add them to one of the blogrolls that I run. I must say that’s not how people usually contact me when they want to be listed on one of the five blogrolls that I run. No, they usually either email me or leave a comment on the specific blogrolls information page.

I decided to visit this persons site and much to my surprise I not only saw posts that looked like they might have once been mine, but had been re-written to some degree, but also, the only photograph on the site was a photo that I’d taken of a car in the streets of Toronto that had been converted into a garden. It’s a very cool picture of a very cool car.

I couldn’t really prove that the person had copied and altered my posts, but I could prove that the blogger had taken my photograph so I decided to leave a message for the blogger on their garden car posts comment section telling them that the photo they were using was mine and that it’s normally considered proper etiquette to either ask a persons permission before using their photography or to at the very least link to the page that the photo was found on.

This person wrote back to me all indignant, stating that they’d found the photo on flicr – yes flicr, not “flickr”. LOL They also told me that if I had a problem I’d have to prove the photo was mine, asked for details about the photo and were it was posted and told me to contact their lawyers who’s email was “sales@” some affiliate related sales website that hasn’t even opened yet.

I wrote back to the person stating that well, yes, I store my photos on Flickr. I stated my account user name and gave them the links to three Flickr photo pages in my account where different angles of the car in question was published. I also gave them links to my website posts where I’d used the photos a year ago. All my photos on Flickr are listed with “All Rights Reserved” on them.

My whole point in contacting this blogger was just to inform them that it’s not nice to just take other peoples work. I know that some people don’t realize they are doing something wrong when they use things they’ve found on the internet. Others are fully aware that it’s wrong and do it anyway.

I realize that posting my photos on a public site of any kind puts them at risk of being stolen or used without permission. Still, I don’t agree with the practice.

Some people think that once somethings posted on a publically accessible site that it’s no longer covered under copyright laws. That’s not true. Anything you create – whether it’s a note on a piece of paper at home or a published article is your copyright as soon as it’s created. It’s your intellectual property.

Unfortunately, once a work is stolen or plagiarized the onus is on the person who originally created the work to prove that it’s there own.

The reason why I’m writing this post today is just to remind you that if you see a photo that you’d like to use on your site, you should make an attempt to contact the person who took the photo. If you can’t reach the person who’s photo you are using at least mention and or link to the site where you found the photo.

Got an old cellphone? Check out CellForCash

September 2, 2007 by Tricia

Have you ever wondered what to do with your old cell phone? I’m sure that there’s a lot of people out there with an old mobile phone or two stored in a drawer some where in their home that they’ve kept simply because they didn’t know what to do with it. Worse, there’s a lot of cell phones in landfills throughout North America possibly leaching toxins such as lead into the soil and eventually into the ground water.

I think it would be great if all cell phone providers, when they come out with their awesome deals on new phones that we must have, would offer rebates on our old phones no matter how old they are or their condition. They don’t though, do they?

That’s where CellForCash.com. They’ve create a program that allows US residents to recycle their old cellphones. Simply visit their site and use their mobile phone manufacture and model search to see if your phone is listed and how much of a rebate you’ll receive from CellForCash. You can then finish filling out your contact information, decide if you want the rebate or if you’d like to donate it to a charity called the 911 Cell Phone Bank which benefits seniors and victims of abuse and then CellForCash will send you a free postage paid box with which you can submit your phone.

Cellforcash.com currently lists over 600 cell phone models that will qualify for rebates. The rebate payout ranges from $4 to $300 or more.

Just think about it. When you use Cellforcash to recycle your cell phone, not only will you be protecting the environment by keeping one more old cell phone out of the landfills, but you can also benefit by receiving some money back for your phone or donating those funds to a worthwhile charity.

You should read the article “Why should I recycle my cell phone?” which explains why recycling cell phones is so important. Did you know that each year more than 140 million cell phones are retired and that not even 5% of those old phones are recycled? Isn’t that a terrible shame?

Did you know that the circuit boards and other components that make up cell phones contain toxic materials such as arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, copper, lead, cobalt, copper, mercury, nickel, and zinc, and brominated flame retardants. As I said earlier all of these chemicals and heavy minerals could leach into the ground waters and eventually effect our drinking water or damage the environment in ways that would eventually have an effect on ourselves and our health.

Old cellphones in decent condition might be used in other markets or countries, or the components and materials within your turned in cell phone might be recovered, recycled and then other industries might use those recycled materials to make new products.

Site trouble yet again!

August 31, 2007 by Tricia

I’m having site problems yet again.

This is really starting to tick me off.

At about 9:30 pm last night the index.php file on my main blog domain Feverishthoughts.com was accessed repeatedly. I received a note from Hostgator shortly after this happened telling me about the problem and also saying that they’d shut down access to that directory.

At least this time round it’s a little better than when I was with Lunarpages. They’ve actually been able to tell me specifically what time the problem occurred and which domain was affected. They also only shut down that domain rather than my whole account. So at least I’ve got two blogs and two websites still functioning.

At this point – 3:30 a.m. I’ve been going back and forth with support. I think we’ve exchanged email three times now. The last one stated that they’d let me back into my directory to add the wp-cache plugin to my site and then monitor my directory after that.

The thing is that I’m already using wp-cache. So I just wrote back to them and told them that. I also told them that all my plugins and blogs are up to date.

Hopefully they’ll activate my directory again and monitor it as they said.

I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know if the domain was under some kind of attack or if I just had too many visitors all at once. I really don’t know. I suspect a bot attack of some kind as I’ve been getting hit with a lot more spam across all my blogs lately and bad behavior and akismet just aren’t cutting it.

I know that I certainly don’t need to be having site troubles this weekend! It’s a long weekend and I’ve got a family reunion going on with my brothers and sisters. I won’t be home much and when I am home I’ll probably have guests so if my main blog domain isn’t back up soon and or if it runs into trouble over the next four days I just won’t be able to deal with it. Which sucks.

I keep flirting with the issue of possibly having to move my sites to VPS. Hostgator doesn’t offer VPS. They have Semi-dedicated which is still part of their shared account service and then they have dedicated servers. Their semi-dedicated package offers just about everything I have with my current account but I believe it has much higher CPU resource limits. That’s something I have to check on. Semi-dedicated costs $74.95 per month. Big jump from what I’m paying now.

So again. If anyone has any advice for me or can suggest a hosting company that offers VPS, hopefully at a reasonable price I’d appreciate it. I want to deal with this issue before my sites end up being totally shut down like they were in July with that other webhost I was using.

BTW 4 a.m. my feverishthoughts.com domain is back up and running. Fingers crossed that it behaves now.

Got an old cellphone? Check out CellForCash

Site trouble yet again!

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