When I come across a link to an image on Flickr that is a direct image URL (like this, for example) I consider it a very irresponsible act of internet publishing. I liken it to hot-linking which is already considered a big no-no in respectable circles. To give credit back to the photographers, Jarred Bishop has created FlickFindr, a website that reverse engineers the Flickr image URL to point back to the original Flickr image page (if you’re curious, the image linked previously can be found here). [via]
FlickFindr is certainly a must-have bookmark for me as I seem to come across more and more direct image links on Flickr lately…
So I was browsing the Remnant Westside Church media page to see if the media team has uploaded the senior video yet and what I found instead was a bit disturbing.
It turns out that the video entitled “Praise Night Emcee Intro” features Ryan Cashman’s “Light-Paint Piano Player” almost in its entirety without any sort of credit going back to Ryan whatsoever. What’s even more puzzling to me is that the media team chose this video to draw their overlays on when the original video has been viewed nearly 300,000 times by people on the internet. Did they not think that somebody would notice? How could I be the only one to notice this in a congregation that fills nearly an entire school auditorium?
Seeing this video today really shocked me and I think it shows poor judgment on the media team as a whole (not to mention that it reflects poorly on the church as well). There are so many talented people at RWC that could have created something just as wonderful as Ryan’s video, and I’m having a hard time figuring out why they decided it was alright to blatantly steal another person’s work. Let’s try and stop this sort of thing, yeah? Start giving credit where credit is due.
UPDATE: Esther Lee says she worked on the original video with Ryan. But Ryan does not know that the video was used by RWC. My original point still stands. THERE WAS NO CREDIT GIVEN to the original content creator. Working on something doesn’t give you ownership of it.
Laura Brunow Miner (Space Miner) has a short and well-written suggestion for people posting on Tumblr to get it together and credit your sources for photos and quotes.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve found something very interesting on Tumblr only to have to jump through hoops just to find out who created the original artwork (photograph, image, or quote). It’s very annoying not just from a reader’s point of view but from an artist’s point of view as well because people’s work are often just taken out of context and posted without any recognition of the original artist.
I consider it common courtesy to link back to either the artist’s website or the page from where the artist originally posted their work and at the moment, Tumblr seems to be the largest single site that is guilty of doing neither. It’s always a long line of reblogs and reblogs and reblogs, with no one in the middle even bothering to stop and think about where that image or peice of artwork came from.
I think Jonathan Jarvis does an excellent job in breaking down the basics behind the credit crisis that we’re all being affected by at the moment. As his thesis work while in the Media Design Program at Art Center College of Design, Jarvis successfully turned a complex explanation into a rather straight-forward and simple one using simple illustrations and graphics. Nice job, man!
