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Copyrights and flattery

midgetbitesdesign_small.jpg

It appears I have a big fan of my Japan photo diary. Big enough that nine of my photos have been incorporated into the site design for this fan’s blog. It’s fairly disconcerting to see your photos plastered all over someone else’s site, and frankly I’ve been a little stymied in exactly how I am to react to such a thing.

Naturally I’m flattered that according to “Chibi Maria” (a self-described 17-year old “short female Anime [etc.] freak in Ocean County, NJ”):

[My photos] are all done by the same fabulous photographer… If you want to see more of his work click the Hmmn… link in the right bar. I swear… THIS is art. I was just shocked that I never seen these pictures before, this guy is a FABULOUS photographer.

Who wouldn’t be happy at such praise? And you know, I’ve always thought I had a pretty liberal attitude about copyright, figuring that as long as someone wasn’t making any money then a picture here or a picture there was about the same as linking to my site.

That said, I have to admit it bothers the heck out of me to see my photos so unabashedly used (admittedly in what is a very flattering site design as well), without my consent being given. “Chibi Maria” writes in her blog that

I tried to contact him if it was all right if I used his pictures in my new design, but his feedback page didn’t work -_-*… So I gave him credit right in the design…

And true enough, there is some small type that says “design photos (c) http://www.easterwood.org/japan02/ (although it would have been nice if that was clickable). As to why my feedback page didn’t work for her, I can’t say (I just tested it and it works fine for me, as well as many other visitors to my site). At any rate, the feedback page (and this blog as well) has my email address prominently displayed. The most basic of effort would have yielded my email address to her, just a tiny fraction of the effort she went through to download my images and retool them for her site. And just a tiny fraction of the effort I had to go through to track down her email address (via WHOIS, and an unusable one at that).

In the end, I posted a comment to her blog, and you can read that yourselves and decide whether I’m being a hardass, or too nice a guy (I basically said I’d let bygones be bygones if she made the “(c)” notice clickable).

The issue has gotten me thinking more seriously about copyrights, not from a legal standpoint, but simply from a personal standpoint. I create these photos (or these words for that matter) and upload them for any old stranger to see, to link to, to download, and to even incorporate into their own personal web site design should they wish. I wonder if I don’t check my “rights” of ownership at the door everytime I hit the “upload” button on whatever part of me I’ve deigned to let the rest of the world look at. I don’t know, frankly. I’m not comfortable with the notion that my work is sacrosanct and therefore belongs to me and me only (again, displaying said work on the Web gives the lie to this concept). Yet I can’t deny that in some way I do feel like I’ve been violated (please excuse the melodramatic overtones of that word).

Further rumination is required. In the meantime, I would love to hear from others on this issue (please click on the “Add comments” link below).

UPDATE: Shortly after I posted this I received a considered and contrite email from Chibi Maria apologizing for the whole episode. I quote from her email (with permission):

As for your request, I immediately made the url in the image linkable so people will be able to click the entire image to view more of your fabulous photographs. I again sincerely apologize, I was careless and inconsiderate and I realize this now. I meant no disrespect, but I did harmful damage that I should of be more cognizant of. Above all, I appreciate your patience with me and you allowing me to showcase your works of art in my design. I can’t draw like others nor can I take photographs like you, so this is how I express myself and my feelings and I appreciate you allowing me to do so. […] thank you for your hard work and dedication [in taking the photos] and apologies for not properly recognizing you for this.

So a happy and satisfying conclusion to the actual episode. I’m still ruminating on the larger issue, and as John Waterman said in his wonderful comment on this post (click the link below), “The conflict between ‘freely given’ and ego is not an easy one to solve and it can ultimately only be resolved internally.”

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Other views from Japan Part 1

There are a surprising (to me anyway) number of blogs or diary sites originating from Japan. Not that I had any illusions that I was the only one (I long ago learned that on the Internet, if you think you’re on to something new and unique, chances are there are at least 10 other sites out there doing the same thing). However, before I moved here there were only a couple I was familiar with (kristen’s Japan and Justin’s Links). Since getting involved in writing this blog I’ve made a conscious effort to seek others out, and have been quite amazed at the variety and creativity I’ve found. Interestingly enough, many of the blogs feature photography, which has been inspiring to me as I continue on my photo blog.

Because a few of these sites have been nice enough to point some users my way, I thought I would go a bit further than my “other views from Japan” link list and do a rundown of some of the Japan-originated sites I check out daily or every other day, in alphabetical order. Here’s part one:

Antipixel

Antipixel is a nicely-designed Movable Type site of the “dotted ant” variety (as an aside, one wonders when these seemingly de rigeur dotted ants will become the left-hand nav bar of web design) by one Jeremy Hedley who is an Australian living in Tokyo. Hedley has been uploading his blog thoughts since last October (though judging from some of the dates on his photographs he’s been in Japan for much longer), and is fairly consistent with posts (a lot more consistent that I’ve been recently, that’s for sure). He’s a passionate Mac user, and has a fair amount of postings on computer-related topics, although it’s not a “tech blog”. There is a photography section called Antipicture with some very nice photographs (see #3 On the streeet, as well as his photography category, for photos taken in Japan). And I must admit I’m very jealous that he recently toured Studio Ghilbi and met Miyazaki Hayao of Princess Mononoke fame.

consumptive.org

James Luckett has been in Tokyo since last November, although his blog pre-dates that by a year or so. A simple but clean design using Blogger, and I love the way his list o’ links cascade down the right-hand side of the page. Speaking of links, I think I could spend my entire net life just thumbing through James’ blog archives and following the links found therein, really an amazing assortment of mostly art and photography-related sites that are usually well off the beaten path. (Two random finds courtesy of James: Nagasaki University Old Picture Database; and this documentation of someone’s Southeast Asia trip using the Lomo camera). Elsewhere in his domain you’ll find of James’ various photographic projects (he works with a lot of found material, and in general his work is very textural), including photos from previous visits to Japan. Recently James has launched a new collaborative blog with a Mr. Cieciel called Spitting Image, which is about “all images all the time – the latest news, thoughts, anecdotes, and imagery of note – plus copious links to archives of vernacular, scientific and artistic interest.”

gmtPlus9

Andrew Abb’s 3-plus year old blog features the tagline “a daily weblog from Osaka”, but that might be the most Japanese thing about it in its current incarnation, at first glance anyway. Which frankly suits this reader just fine, for like consumptive.org, gmtPlus9’s mainly art-related links hold a treasure trove of unexplored web places that are like a needed dose of art history. It’s not unusual for Abb to have a John Heartfield day, for example (scroll down to June 3rd), or to point the user towards sites containing works by Malevich, or Orozco, or Moholy-Nagy, as he has in the last month. With respect to its Japan quotient, once you dig below the surface there’s a lot of Japan-related links. Abb is clearly much more advanced at reading Japanese than I am, and therefore I’ve been turned on to some great Japanese sites that would have otherwise remained behind the great Kanji wall (here’s one, for example, of Japanese chewing gum papers that I pulled from Abb’s archives).

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Blogging energy flagging

It has been a slow week here (on this blog, not my life). I started working this week, which as all work does occupied a nice chunk of my time. However, it really was mindshare that was getting used up in abundance, and so this week I haven’t felt very effusive.

Truth be told as well, I’ve been trying to assess exactly what I want out of this blog. I haven’t been entirely happy with how it has started out, and frankly I don’t have (especially now with employment) the energy to keep it going as some sort of political or news analysis blog. On the other hand, I haven’t been very comfortable with the idea of making it more personal, more like a diary. Lord knows there are plenty of those types of blogs out there, and most that I read bore me to tears when they’re not making me cringe out of embarrassment for the author. (To be fair of course, there are also plenty of politically minded web-rags out there that either bore me or make me cringe). I suppose we’ll just have to see where it goes….

Speaking of work, I went out for beers after my first day of non-on-the-job-training last Friday night, and ended up in a sports bar watching the second half of the England-Argentina game. I’ll admit I got more than a bit tipsy, and at 11:45pm found myself at a crowded Omiya station with a lot of other tipsy members of Japanese society waiting for the last train home. As I stood there on the platform in my salaryman suit and tie trying to stay balanced with my cellphone in hand and my thumb typing out an email to my wife letting her know that I indeed was on my way home, I had an epiphany: I had arrived in Japan. In some small very tiny way, I felt I belonged, that I had passed that grey demarcation line between tourist and resident.

The sports bar itself had been energizing. all these young Japanese inexplicably rooting passionately for England, many of them sporting painted red and white flags on their cheeks. I could have cared less about the outcome, but I found myself by the end rooting for the British side as well. After Beckham and co. came out victorious, I had my British by association hand shaken by a half-dozen or so Japanese who congratulated me on my victory.