While it's unclear whether the complaint registered in the Comments section allegedly by the Seattle Times is valid, it does bring up a good point about how to keep this blog active and interesting, while at the same time, respecting the rights and privledges of our internet brethren.This topic actually came up a week or so ago and was being kicked around by the Admins, based on a observation by Mike Sando of the News Tribune about using copyrighted images on our site.
While there are no hard and fast rules and regulations about these things, and the legal ramifications are also pretty fuzzy, I think we all want to "play nice" and keep this site a credible source for Seahawks information, and not thumb our noses at the very sites where we get a lot of our information.
Below are a couple of links that Bluefoot dug up that deal with "best practices" for using images and linking to information from a blog site.
Best Practices Post #1
Best Practices Post #2
For those who are unlikely to click through on these links, or subject to get all glazy-eyed after the first few paragraphs, here's what it says in a nutshell.
1. you should always give credit to your source of information, especially when copying or quoting any of the content
2. if using images, you should condense them to a "thumbnail" size to encourage the blog visitor to click through to see the original (aka the "Good enough for Google" rule)
3. your posts should not provides so much of the source piece that the visitor does not need to click through to the original
4. if someone request that something be removed, you should immediate comply
After reading these best practices, I edited the offending "Hey Koren" post to comply with these suggestions, to provide an example of what they are recommending.
There was also a suggestion awhile ago by one of our contributors that we should be uploading images to free hosting services like www.ImageShack.us instead of directly linking to them, so as not to "steal" the bandwidth of the site, but I'm not sure that this is respective of the original copyright issue.
So, since this issue has been thrust upon us, and seems to be a central concern of all blog sites, I thought I'd put up this post (even though contrary to my initial reaction on the subject!) and see how others feel about the topic.
Once again a subject I was wondering about. I have to hand it to the admins here, you folks are on the ball when it comes to issues like this.
ReplyDeletePosted by PaulieP
By the by, do you think we should put those links in with the blogging tools links? Maybe make them required reading for new contributers?
ReplyDeletePosted by PaulieP
Not to be stubborn or silly, but I personally think that we should simply continue doing what we're doing. Using proper precautions like the thumbnail size pictures, giving credit etc... are terrific rules to follow, but outside of that...not really sure what else can be done. We're not profiting in any way from any of this, and more often than not, the place where we are getting these pics from is actually benefitting from the increased traffic.
ReplyDeleteI guess I feel that as long as we continue to do our best to steer traffic towards the original photo, topic, article etc...and we continue to give full credit to where it's due, I just don't see any other way of doing this. The whole reason that this site's traffic has increased as quickly as it has, is because we are offering a visual presentation to our news, stories, etc... that other fan sites simply aren't. This is simply too big an advantage to us to do away with.
To play devil's advocate, because I don't really disagree with your premise, when we post a picture with our articles, it's not really generating traffic to that site. It's just using that site's bandwidth, disk space, and intellectual property to make our blog article look nice. This is the basis for the host site's complaint.
ReplyDeleteNow, when we say "Peter Boulware Waived" and link to the story on NFL.com or the Ravens.com site, THEN we're driving traffic to those sites.
But when we just life a picture of Mr. Boulware from Ravens.com, use it with our blog article, and not link through to the story, we're reaping all the benefits of teh image, and the Ravens.com site is paying all teh expenses for it.
Would it be different if the link to the sotry went through the picture to your mind then? Because that can easily be done.
ReplyDeletePosted by Anonymous
Sorry, at this point of the night, my mind is strictly 8-bit unidirections serial bus and completely incompatible with any hyperlinks, be they stories or graphics!
ReplyDeletePosted by albaNYHawker