Thursday, June 21, 2007

In the interests of full disclosure, I got called on the carpet today for posting images to this site without attribution--this was my response, which I'm posting here, because it concerns this site and could perhaps be productive.

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Hey ****,

I've wrestled with this, back and forth--you're totally right that I'm certainly not a newbie of any kind.

A couple of years ago the blog began to morph into what is more or less its current form. Basically I wanted to make a blog that serves as an image stream and repository for images I see on the net that inspire/interest me, and articles that do the same. I've always imagined it being a remix product that puts lots of different pieces in close association with one another that may not have happened otherwise, and it also serves as a clearinghouse for this and that, like press on the shows, stuff like that.

Articles have never been a problem, as there is always a natural link back to where the article's extract is from. Images are more difficult: ideally I'd like the image to float free of text, and wanted the images to be able to sit next to one another, or against article extracts. I'll totally admit the issue is from my court half aesthetic, half technical and half laziness--I should have come up with a system that creates links I can live with, but I haven't implemented that. I use ecto and blogger on OS X--I need to monkey with the templates until I can create something that doesn't annoy me, like making the image itself serve as the link to the rest of the work, but don't really know how to do that.

Whenever someone requests I remove anything, or that I add links to work, I do. The issue that people might think I take the photos is more problematic--I've always assumed that the wide range and number of images would prevent that from happening, but I should put a clear disclaimer, perhaps in the footer of the page, that makes clear that this is not the case.

As for how the reposting of my writing or work without attribution would feel for me, that's an interesting question--I work onstage exclusively orally, composing live from an outline, so that the performances themselves dissolve the moment their created--no two are ever the same. So I'm used to the idea that my work has no permanent state, and I expect that anything I do, especially things I post on the web, will have their own life beyond me. When I've seen my work elsewhere unattributed I've either done nothing, or I've contacted the person running the site about it and they've always been eager to link back or attribute things, but most of the time I just let the work go.

Thanks for writing me about this--I've been remiss in dealing with the ramifications and that's not cool. If you have advice, aesthetically or technically, on how I can achieve more information without text links everywhere I am totally interested, as I'd love to implement a solution that makes everybody happy.

Best,

md

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So that's the long and short of how things came to be the way they are now--if readers of this site would like to suggest alternatives to my current system, email me and let me know what you think. In an ideal universe I would have a system that is as swift as my current system (a combination of ecto, 1001 and custom bookmarklets in Camino) so that I can generate links and images the way I do now, so that it takes very little time at all. All suggestions are welcome.