Think it’s probably best here to say very little, and just link the blog. That said, I’ll probably say more. ;> I have a bracelet entered, which I’m sure is immaterial to you, since you all just want to vote for a chance to win the bracelet donated by Heather's Haven.
Stop by, look around and please comment and vote for me.
--Have fun,
Charon
Yep, that’s right. Some pathetic waste of bandwidth and skin set up a crawler to Chainmaille related images over to his own photobucket account, and post them to his site. Around a week ago, Peter Croteau of Virginia made the mistake of stealing images and articles submitted and owned by the members of M.A.I.L. Following him failing to understand the burden of proof, intellectual property laws, or how to conduct himself as a member of a civilized society. His website was shut down.
That lasted about a week.
Now Chainmaille.org is back up online, and using a loophole in the EULA with photobucket and several other free image hosting services. Packed with images owned by myself, and many other maille crafters. The solution, aside from pulling all my images from photobucket, is a bit elusive. I’d move everything from photobucket right away if I could find anything on flickr that allows me to link to my images directly, so they could be used in forum posts and such. Since I haven’t found that yet. I’m left with keeping my hosting private, which revokes the license loophole, but it may for the time being mean until I can obtain another hosting option I’m limited in where I can post my images. Unless I begin leaving them here as blog posts and linking to them.
The rest of the solution, is more important. Association with little Petey and Chainmaille.org should be cut off by anyone with any respect for intellectual property. There’s a reason I’m not linking to him like I try to remember to do with everyone else. His site is an attempt at Search Engine Optimization, without putting any real effort into creating his own content. Search engines require links from outside sources, such as bloggers, community sites, or anywhere else, to partially determine how useful users are likely to find the site in question, and thus the order in which a site appears on a search return.
What Peter wants is to steal traffic from artisans and crafters by appearing in the top slots of search engine results, without actually being a crafter himself. Worse, he wants to steal traffic from you by using your work. Taken without permission through a segment of the EULA that states basically, that while you still own your work on Photobucket, you automatically grant every other Photobucket user the right to publicly display, alter, edit, add to, remove from, etc. He wants your traffic, maillers, for one reason, to generate revenue from advertisement links. Yes, like some of the ads I have here. The difference however is a vast chasm: I’ve made maille, I’ve taken photos, I’ve written articles and the occasional bit of funny; Little Petey there, hasn’t yet shown any ability to make maille, snap photos, or write anything but whiney confrontational blather directed at people who own the things he’s stolen in the past.
What have we learned from this? Peter Croteau is one of the lowest kind of parasites. Photobucket isn’t as cool as it seems. In the end, there’s still assholes on the ‘net. I wonder what Google will think about using the edge of the law to coerce adsense clicks?
Have fun, Unless you’re Peter Corteau of Virginia Beach, VA. If that’s the case, have a stroke, or a cardiac arrest.
--Charon
Okay, not quite true that I haven’t gotten anything done. I put together a pretty awesome stainless bracelet this morning. I’d have photos, but now that I’m awake again and can take photos, I’ve got to go hang out with family again today. As a note, when your family tries to make you feel obligated to show up for something, it won’t be as amusing as showing up voluntarily.
Have fun, I probably won’t.
--Charon
I’ve been toying with live Writer for posting. I haven’t really come to a decision on how much I like it just yet. It does allow you to pre-write updates and schedule them for posting at a specific time, which I’m trying now. If all goes well, this was written about an hour before it was scheduled to appear. I think that’s kindof neat.
If you’re on Blogger too, and have made a few edits to your .css you might have seen how badly that can goof up Blogger’s layout editor. At least I don’t have to risk seeing that all ugly and misshapen.
Speaking of, I have some actual Maille to do. A stupid move on my part caused one of my pieces some damage, and I have alot of rings to replace. Embarrassing and upsetting.
Have fun,
Completely not maille related today. I’ve been distracted by a tragic family event. Which you can go ahead and just read as someone died. I wasn’t completely shattered over it or anything as I didn’t really know her all that well. Even that seems like speaking ill of the dead…
She was family though, and watching the family I do know and love lose someone they were close to is still pretty rough on me. I spent the weekend sortof dazed, reading other blogs outside those I usually visit, and just generally ignoring everything.
I guess it’s probably best not to go into too much detail. It’s enough to say that at driving over to your Great Aunt’s place to see if she’s alright and finding out no one got there in time will screw with you a little bit. I can’t and won’t blame myself, or anyone else, it was just one of those horrible results of a horrible and careless mistake that ended her life.
The real bite of it all still goes back to the rest of the family. What can I honestly say to them? Nothing makes it all-right. I can’t just console people with things I don’t believe to try and make them feel better. I know trying to console them with my own thoughts won’t do anything but cause more damage.
So yeah, I’ve felt pretty useless the last few days, and because of that I’ve been pretty useless. Non productive, reclusive, and generally apathetic about anything I should be doing.
Be well,
--Charon
Posts
