Tagged: photos
Take my insects–Please!
Ok, so as a followup on the whole copyright/flamewar/widget fiasco, I have created a new group on Flickr. It’s called:
I invite everyone to add photos they would like highlighted on my blog via my Flickr Widget–the box with the pretty photos in the upper left corner of the blog. The widget displays a LINKED THUMBNAIL of your photo. It’s a great way to get more people to look at your work!
I’m setting up this group to make sure that absolutely everyone who has photos that appear on my blog is totally ok with that. I will use the RSS feed of the group’s photos, so I won’t be hosting your photo or any originals on my blog, nor will I use your photo in a post if it is marked as copyright protected.
While WordPress and Flickr both seem to feel that I am well within my legal rights to keep using the general RSS Insect feed on Flickr, I’d rather avoid future dramafests.
So–Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your bugs!
Photos, Flames, and Copyright
I got to start my Sunday morning with a really angry email:
Hey Bug Girl, practice what you preach!
[reference to my Digital Millennia Copyright Act notice on the sidebar]……I stumbled upon this text by following hits on one of copyrighted Flickr photos that I ultimately found to be displayed without permission right there on the same page of your blog. It looks like that widget you use to scrape Flickr photos and display them in the upper left column of your blog is grabbing other people’s copyrighted work.
Basically, this photographer’s concern relates to the little Flickr Widget in the uppper left corner of this blog. It goes and scrapes this public feed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/insect/ and displays linked thumbnails. He is absolutely correct that the widget doesn’t distinguish between things that are marked as copyright restricted and Creative Commons.
But.
(And here is my question to some of my friends who make money off their photos): How is that different than what happens when I post a link to Twitter or Facebook saying “look at this great photo!”, and those web pages grab a thumbnail of the image, and display it with a link?
Essentially, the photos are “public” on Flickr, and linked, and the Terms of Service for the widget API allow me to display these photos as thumbnails (in fact, their restriction is for displaying over 30 photos, and I have 4 displayed!)
This discussion has happened before among professional photogs; there is a rather disturbing chain of communications with Flickr here discussing unauthorized re-license of photos for cell phone wallpapers. Which could, I guess, be seen as a “thumbnail”, depending on your phone. There is also a court case, Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corporation, which established a precedent for showing thumbnails of copyright protected photos in search results as legally ok.
What say you?
If enough folks say I’m in the wrong here, I’ll remove the widget, since I don’t want to be a content stealer. I hate it when that happens to me.
DISCUSS.
(edited 5/22/11 to add link to Kelly court case after a tip by Sarah–thanks! Librarians FTW!)
EDITED 5/25/2011 to include link to new Opt-in Only Flickr Group: Take my insects! Please!
Pretty Picture Monday (and an argument)
I have a super busy schedule today, so how about you cruise over to Scienceray and look at their pretty photos of…insects eating each other. This lovely robber fly is a great example.
You can also just surf around in stboed’s photostream–lots of neat photos like this one there.
Also, since there are lots of academics here–how do you feel about Ms. Biden wanting her title to be used?
As someone who is always called Miss Bug Girl by students, while my male colleagues get to be called Dr. Whosit, I understand where she’s coming from. (And I bet none of the male faculty I work with have ever been mistaken for a secretary.)
Would anyone have bothered to write about this if Dr. Biden was a dude? (Aside from the wonderful happenstance of a gay couple as VPs during Freedom to Marry Week.)
You might also be interested in Orac’s take on this, as an MD.
Talk amongst yourselves. Back Tuesday!
Pretty Picture Wednesday
I am still too geeked from the inauguration to write anything (this is a pretty good description of how I feel–total emotional rollercoaster).
How about a pretty photo of a moth fly? These tiny little fuzzballs are about 2-3 mm or so in length. Some of them are lovely and iridescent, and up close their antennae are beautiful.
Oh. And:
This cute fuzzy little insect is also known as…
a urinal fly.
Their larvae really like to eat the sludge in your drains.
Just focus on the fuzzy cuteness, ok?
Thanks to G. Yuvallos for the photo!
Insect collections and a new (to me) journal
Found these great collection of photos of….collections…at a blog by KolbyKirk. 
I especially love this photo from the NMNH website.
He also introduced me to a magazine I had never heard of–called Antennae! From their website:
“Antennae is the online Journal of Nature in Visual Culture….The journal combines a heightened level of academic scrutiny of animals in art, (as evidenced by a two-volume issue dedicated to the ways in which our human intellectual and culture models have been influenced by the natural history of insects), with a less formal and more experimental format designed to appeal to audiences of artists and general public alike.”
Most of their back issues appear to be online. I’ve downloaded the “Insect Poetics” issue, and will let you know what I think. There is also a list of books…some of which may be distracting me in the future.
Enjoy exploring!
Pretty Picture Friday
I’m still off at a meeting, so here’s a photo of where I am. Alas, I’m inside most of the day learning….stuff.
You can find more pictures in my Photostream.
Caught in the Bug Net: 3.3.08
So many cool things on the web right now!
Zooilogix has an interview with Justin Schmidt, the originator of the Schmidt pain index.
Ugly Overload reports on a new species of tick spider. (it isn’t really a true spider, or a true tick. It’s one of these.) They also have some very beautiful photos of a spitfire caterpillar.
Gossamer Tapestry writes about the Endangered Species Act. (He also has many pretty pictures from his Caribbean vacation. Grrrr.)
Myrmecos has so many new, lovely photos I’ll just link to the tag page, k?
The NCSU Insect Museum blogs about the heartbreak of mass specimen submissions.
Several interesting papers in Malaria Journal: Host choice in malarial mosquitoes and Relationships between land/water topography and transmission
Deltoid investigates funding of astroturf groups by Tobacco companies
An interesting skeptical note to end with:
A new study finds that aromatherapy might make you feel slightly better, but doesn’t actually do anything else. 
Nikon Small World Photo Contest Winners, 2007
Insects and invertebrates feature prominently in this year’s contest, although regrettably, a photo of a vertebrate took top honors.
Some very lovely photos, including one of an aphid’s shed skin that is magical. The incredible colors immediately mark this as a Tiger beetle (photo by David Almquist), but rarely do you see them actually show up in a photograph.
If you select the slide show, you’ll have at least 20 minutes of beautiful photos on your desktop. My only complaint was that the photos were too small to really see some of the details!
Adventures of Mr. Fly
A very odd photo essay from JPG Magazine:
“On May 16 2007 I met Gerald Fly in my garden as I was shooting some cliché flowers. I had just bought my first cheap macro filters online and was excitingly giving them a try.
Gerald caught my attention as he was sitting on a flowerpot with nothing but a cardboard sign that said “Will work 4 food”. Over the years he degraded from a successful cab driver to a poor lonely insect as he had 173 wives who cost him a fortune on make-up and clothing. Not to mention his 2184 kids, who all needed money for education and iPods….”
Enjoy. [Found via Neatorama.]
Also, a great example of recycling in action: Chipmunks help us recycle
