I put a lot of time and energy into giving credit where it’s due.
Roughly, half the things I post are not credited when I encounter them. I’ve gotten really good at sourcing things. There are, however, limitations–Google Image Search has gotten worse; TinEye has improved incrementally.
Point is: wherever possible I include proper attribution. (Further: I admit when I don’t know the source so that A.) the reader can know I’m not claiming it’s mine and B.) that I did make every effort at due diligence as far as curatorial concerns go. (I know Tumblr frequently gives curation a bad name but it is what I am about here in as good of faith as I can manage given that this is one area where I am an autodidact.)
If you see something I couldn’t find the source for and you know the source. Please pass the info along. (Pretty sure anyone who has ever done so will vouch for how approachable I am about that sort of thing and about how quickly I resolve such issues.)
If I included your work and it’s properly credited and you don’t like it living on this site–reach out and let me know. I’m not an unreasonable girl.
I’m saying all of this because I was recently accused of stealing an image despite the fact that it is both credited to the best of my ability and also links back to the original post? (If I was stealing it, why would I have included so many extra steps to credit the author and point back to the original work via a citation? I’d either be a really dumb thief or maybe I wanted to showcase your work and send some of the folks who follow this blog in your direction?
I know the despicable Tumblr trope of stating on your front page that the images on this blog are assumed to be public domain, etc., etc. Fair use is a bit of a different beast, however.
Generally speaking: fair use holds that copyrighted material may be quoted verbatim without seeking the permission of the copyright holder in the cases such as news reporting, teaching, research and criticism/commentary. (Acetylene Eyes is–unless you’re illiterate–decidedly inline with that final example. I’d also argue this site is sometimes didactic but I try not to draw too much attention to that because learning is for squares, daddy-o.)
As far as disproving fair use: you would be required to prove any number of things but two things in particular stand out: there is a burden of transformativeness (i.e. it’s a dumb example but think of a video of how to hammer in a nail; imagine that video is then taken by a sociology teacher and used as an object lesson to illustrate dialectical materialism. Guess what: what’s fair use) and you have to prove that the fair use has created a financial hardship. That’s going to be tough to do when what I posted has double digit notes while the original has 10X as many.
I’d address the accusation that this project is unoriginal except somehow I feel that if you think sharing something with citations that link back to both the creator and the original content is ‘stealing’ then I’m not sure what what I’d take rather a dim view of what you would consider ‘originality’ entails. But that’s not a path I’m interested in taking
Acetylene Eyes 