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* The “Invisible Woman* essay was, indeed, written by Nicole Johnson, is fully subject to copyright, and her publicist tells me they were “deeply sad” when it “went global” without Nicole’s name on it.

* The Mommy Monk is one of several blogs which posted Nicole’s “Invisible Woman” piece without her name on it. That blog’s tagline is “MommyMonk: A woman attempting to find inner solitude in the daily self-denial of motherhood.” However, the blog’s author also claims to be a speaker/writer/teacher in addition to being a wife/mother. Not really the MOST solitary or anonymous person, then..

* Julie, who was very kind to comment here a couple of days ago, also posted Nicole’s piece without attribution. She claims this is not plagiarism as she doesn’t claim to have written it herself. Nevertheless, she also cites it as the central premise of her “Building Cathedrals” series of telecourses , for which she charges $20 per hour ($80 for the series). Which she markets under her own name. Nor does Julie seem quite so sanguine about folks resyndicating her own material: at the bottom of each page of her website it says © 2008 Julie L. Ford, All rights reserved

* It took me about 20 minutes to find the author of “Invisible Woman,” and 24 hours to contact and hear back from the author’s publicist. And I was just writing a post, not setting up a business. I’m just saying.

* My history-professor-husband tells me that we do, in fact, know many of the names of the artists, architects and builders who worked on medieval cathedrals. I am not done with this topic yet!

But I can talk about other things, too…

* I went out to lunch today. Why do waiters ask if you want “lettuce and tomato” but never if you want “tomato and lettuce?”

* It’s very funny to accidentally fall in step behind a man heading towards an adult bookstore. I did that today on my way home, and he kept turning around to look at me, nervously, almost as if *he* were the woman and *I* was a large, threatening man. When I realized where he was going, though, it all made sense. I should have followed him right into the store to see what he would do. Some day I’m going to do that, have been wanting to ever since that place opened a few blocks from my house. I think I’ll get all dressed up like a nice church lady, with a cardigan and hand bag, wander in as if by mistake, and start poking around, asking all sorts of questions, like “what is THIS is for?”

You may already have read “Invisible Mother,” (text below). As best as I can tell it’s been circulating online since at least 2005, via email, message boards, and dozens and dozens of blogs — but it is always credited to a nameless author.

Because she’s invisible. Get it?

I do not like to post things without an artist’s permission, much less without attribution. That’s called “plagiarism,” and is a form of theft.

Nevertheless, the hundreds of postings by hundreds of women all happily conspiring with the invisible author to keep her that way is wonderfully ironic, quite aside from the funny loveliness of the piece itself.
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Since you asked, all the photos on this site are either my own or available for use with attribution through creative commons licensing, with the exception of the Elizabeth Dewberry/ Robert Olen Butler portrait and the photo of Anne Lamott’s book I used last week, both of which were already in such wide re-syndication I don’t know their original sources.

I realize I am being more scrupulous than most bloggers. It is also rather painful not to use all of the other glorious and oftentimes-much-more-suitable images that are widely available on the web, but I feel pretty strongly about this.

Pictures are great on a blog, though, and I’ve been putting all my blog photos (uploading them) onto Flickr.com, a free service which is very easy and fast to use. Besides saving server space, Flickr.com does all of the optimizing and resizing for you so you can dispense with photoshopping them first — another time saver! Flickr also carries a large data-base of creative commons photos which you may use — be sure to check the terms first.

To use your uploaded Flickr.com photos:

1. In your Flickr.com account, click the photo you want to use to open it. You can choose one of three sizes — be sure the size you want is open.

Right-click on your photo and choose “properties” to display the URL, (looks like “http://yourphoto.jpg”) Highlight and copy that bit, without any of the stuff after “.jpg”. Paste the URL right into your blog if you’ve got the editor open already in another window, or paste it into “notepad” or something to save it for a minute.

In your blog posting window, click where you want the image to go and EITHER use the “insert image” button or, by hand, insert the following code, changing the brackets from [ ] to < > (I can’t do it here or the web will think it’s code!) Substitute your own photo’s URL and title in place of http://yourphoto.jpg (and keeping all the other quote marks in place)
[img src=”http://yourphoto.jpg” alt=”Name of your photo”/]

Feeling fancy? If you’d like the text to wrap around your photo, try this code instead (remember to change all the brackets from [ ] to < >):
[p align=”left”][img border=”0″ align=”left” src=”http://www.your photo.jpg” alt=”Name of your photo” /]

Do you use photos in your blog? Tell us about it and post a link to your blog here so we can all admire your work in person! (Hint for newbies: leave your blog URL in the space provided when leaving a comment, or use this code in your comment text to make a link:)
[a href=”http://yourblog”]Name of your blog[/a]

I’ve long since learned that when my stomach hurts a certain way, I need to pay attention.  This was especially useful when it came to evaluating boyfriends in the old days (my wise old Yoda stomach always knew when it was time to dump them!)  

And now my stomach has hurt a couple of times in relation to this blog. 

Of greatest concern to my stomach have been a few things like intellectual property, copyright, fair use, and the intersection of these things and blogging.  I think most of us know that quotes should be properly attributed whenever possible.  And the documentation for Wordpress (my blogging host) basically okays the resyndication-by-linkage of YouTube videos (as Wordpress basically handles it by linking to the YouTube videos without actually hosting them)  In other words, if YouTube pulls them (as YouTube will, if complaint is lodged) the video will cease to function in a Wordpress blog, as well. 

There are also many things on the ‘net for which authorship can no longer be determined.  The resume bloopers I posted, for instance, were collected from a number of sites, all without attribution and all appearing on more than one site, as well, thus making it impossible even to identify the original online source.   

Jokes are even older than the internet, of course, and even harder to give sources for:  really, there are only three basic jokes in the world, I think, and all the rest are derived from these three!  (I must confess with some pride, however, that the Marilee Jones joke was almost entirely my own creation…)

Probably the real sticky problem is images, or pictures.  Photographers and artists own their intellectual and creative  property, and may even depend upon their work to make a living,  just as much as writers do.  Of course.  But many (most?) bloggers post other people’s photos and artwork, while very few (if any) of us are paying for them.

I think there are several ways to look at this problem.  “Fair Use” can be a tricky concept, but a great deal depends on whether one is financially profiting from someone else’s work, or using it for educational/instructive purposes, instead.   Blogging is commonly viewed as a kind of news reporting or commentary, and therefore would often seem to pass the 4-factor test for legal fair use

However.  While using properly-attributed images might seem analogous to including properly-attributed quotations, one rarely uses only part of an image.  Therefore, using someone else’s picture is probably more akin to using someone else’s entire poem.  And when is (or isn’t) this an okay thing to do? 

Another way of using images, which I’ve applied to some (non-profit) websites I’ve managed, is to make them into links to (and therefore, promotions of) the source site.  Is that legitimate?   (Then, of course, stealing bandwidth is  yet another issue, and few perps even know they’re doing it.  This is when you link directly to an image online, rather than downloading it first and then loading it to your own host.)

Because of the need to balance the surge of interest in the “open source” democratization of the internet with the need to protect the livelihoods and right of individual artists and authors, an increasing number of images are now made available through creative commons licensing, an alternative to full copyright protection with the goal of encouraging users to “Share, reuse, and remix — legally.”  

Anyhoo, for the sake of my stomach, I am going to go back through my posts and clean up a little. 

But I would also very much welcome further feedback and suggestions from my readers.   How does plagarism and copyright protection REALLY work in the blogosphere, and is it enough?  Is attribution enough?  Is it best to leave other’s work, especially images, out entirely?  (one can always LINK to them instead)

Please weigh in!  My stomach thanks you in advance.