A lesson in copyright and blogging, or, How to make your B.A. look like B.S., internet-style.

All credit and respect to Chris Gray. I'm a bonehead.

Somebody somewhere apparently once said something along the lines of "It is better sit in silence appearing stupid than to open your mouth confirming the suspicion." I had kind of forgotten that the internet is a mouthpiece to the world and that blogs are kind of, you know -- public. I also forgot everything I learned in JN 499, apparently. When useless undergrad education combines with new-blog enthusiasm, you get:

A lesson in copyright and blogging,

or,

How to make your B.A. look like B.S., internet-style.

What you need.

• A useless B.A. in something media-related, such as journalism.
• A brand-new blog, with a bio touting your useless B.A.
  
• Unbridled enthusiasm.
• Limited knowledge of Google Image Search and copyright law. Mostly copyright law.
  

The other day I made a to-do/not do list on "How to ride a bike with no handlebars." I didn't have any demonstrative pictures of my own, so I did a Google Image search. Quickly, I looked at the photo thumbnails for cyclists with their hands jammed in their pockets, when I found this beauty and threw it up on my blog. Probably the best part of the post, actually.

Oh, but what's wrong here? Ol' smartie "journalist" forgot to credit the photographer who took the dang picture.

That's the thing with Google Images. You search images, look at thumbnails, skip right on to "see full-size image," copy the image address and forget to bother with photo credits. You do that if you're stupid, anyway.

So, when punmaster left me a kindly blog comment, I did a little digging. I had to, really. Punmaster left no ID. I wondered why that was, then figured, well, I found it so easily and used it so carelessly, the least I could do is put forth some effort and make sure I give credit where credit is due.

First I had to remember what my search terms were. I tried "no handlebars," "biker," "biker no handlebars," "cyclist no handlebars," "cyclist," "riding without handlebars"...dang. Nothin'. Then I remembered one photo of someone riding down a dirt hill with their hands in the air with the caption "Look Ma, no hands!" That was also the caption for the photo I recklessly used.

The phrase "look ma no hands" gave me the thumbnails of the winning search terms. This time, though, I clicked on the actual Web site where city-no-hands-biker-man lives.

Ohhhhh, I thought. Yeah, maybe I could've looked for the author/photographer and, you know, credited him. Her. Person. I remembered that much from Media Law.

The photo lives on TWISIA, or The Way I See It Anyways, a lovely photoblog of Toronto city life by Chris Gray. I had found one of the few photos that didn't have a transparent copyright symbol on it...not that it needs one, though. The photoblog is quite nice, as I am a fan of both Canada and photography, although it renews and furthers my longing for a Canon Rebel XSi.

An added bonus from perusing TWISIA, I learned that the distance (well, time) between Toronto and its neighboring Huntsville is about the same as the distance between here and this Huntsville. Ha! Wonders will never cease, especially to people like me who are easily amused.

So. What to do when finding pictures for your blog.

1. Use your own photos. They're yours. You can do what you want.
2. If you use someone else's, give credit where credit is due. Get permission to use that image, son. Don't want to be upsettin' peoples in cyberspace.
   
3. Don't be stupid. That's about it.
   

I should consider sitting in on a random section of JN 499. Do we have "Internet Copyright 101" here?

Okay. Hope I did this blog right. If I didn't, I will fix it. Or go to jail. Something.