amy cham :: bloggy goodness

Web 101: Copyright, model release, and the Internet

Important: I am not a lawyer. This article is meant only to point out key issues pertaining to internet copyrights, not as a legal guide.  Please take this overview as only a starting point in seeking out legal information from an authoritative source. Ideally, you should consult with an attorney before using any material owned by another party.

Updated: I've added the picture of the ad, taken by Brenton Cleeland.

When you go looking for clipart or photos, do you know which ones you are allowed to use?

For many, this is a difficult question to answer; for many more, it's a question that never gets asked.  I frequently find myself explaining to people--friends, clients, other developers--that copyrights do, in fact, remain in effect online.  And copyright is not the only issue; there is also the matter of model release.

This point came to mind today as I watched this clip on CNN, discussing Virgin Mobile's use of a girl's picture in its Australia ad campaign.  In this case, Virgin pulled her picture off of Flickr and made it the primary image in ads placed on billboards and bus stops throughout Australia.  It appears that Virgin believes that it has the right to use the picture; the girl in the picture disputes that.  What is involved here? (There is an extensive discussion thread on Flickr where someone snapped a picture of the ad itself.)

I've gone mobile! (Winksite)

Cool beaners...I was going through my reading list today and found this post about Winksite on Duct Tape Marketing.  It's a free service that converts a blog's feed into a mobile-friendly blog that is easy to read on those eensy screens.

Set up was easy, though I couldn't find any actual help info (the 'help' link doesn't have a FAQ) so there are some features I really didn't know what to do with.  But the blog took maybe 5 minutes to set up as mobile. Neat, eh?

Wanna see?  Point your phone's browser to http://winksite.com/amycham/amychamblog.  There's even a link so you can text yourself the URL right now.

Updated: While the site doesn't have an FAQ yet, there are several places where you can send in a question and get one-on-one help, and founder David Harper has noted that a full FAQ is in the works.

Irked at LinkedIn

'Kay then...in the past I have indicated my affinity for LinkedIn. In general, I really like it, even more so now that it appears they have hired actual customer service people to respond to emails.

Today, however, I am rather irritated with my friend.  I got the following in my messages inbox yesterday:

Now, as one who creates and builds web content, I fully appreciate the need to support free content and services with advertising revenue.  Even those of us who do this because we think it's fun still want to make some money, right? Go forth and prosper!!!

Here's the thing that's bugging me...I'm a paying customer.  If I am not paying for a service or content, I fully expect to be advertised to.  I have no objection to the ads sprinkled through my Facebook stream...it's my payment for a service that I enjoy.  But if I am paying $150 per year for a business account on LinkedIn, I do NOT expect to start wading through junkmail in my messages.  (Why Hilton seems to think I'm an event planner is beyond me.)

LinkedIn, don't waste your goodwill sending ads to paying customers (and brand advocates) like me, especially ones as poorly targeted as this one.  I can live with the on-page text ads, but things like this just gunk up an otherwise valuable and well-purposed communication channel and waste my time.

This is not what we are paying you for.

MirazTutorials.com

Just a quick post about Miraz Tutorials . The blog own invited me to submit the three-column CSS tutorial to her blog.  I took a look and decided to go for it.

Miraz Tutorials is building up a repository of web-related tutorials from all around the internet.  She invites her readers to post requests for tutorials addressing their own web design and development challenges, and other readers grab the topics and create tutorials to address them.

It's a neat concept, and I think it could grow into a very useful resource if it takes off (although I feel like some of the interstitial ads are kind of intrusive...they seem to be on some sort of timer and appear on their own).  There are some great Photoshop tutorials, and the collection of Flash and ActionScript tutorials is growing.

Give it a look!