Having spent the morning watching people tilting, I’m going to try and come up with something to go with this title, but it’ll be later today…
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Having spent the morning watching people tilting, I’m going to try and come up with something to go with this title, but it’ll be later today…
A Bad Guide
Tilting? Did you offer to prop them up? Were they leaning on you, say for money, and did you in fact offer support of that kind?
Or did you just tender structural advice? I can’t wait to find out!
On the subject of tilting, have you noticed that our American cousins say “careening” when they mean “careering”. It’s entertaining that someone’s spelling error can become a standard usage.
I thought that this usage arose from confusion with career, but Wordnik gives the following usage note from American heritage Dict.:
The implication of rapidity that most often accompanies the use of careen as a verb of motion may have arisen naturally through the extension of the nautical sense of the verb to apply to the motion of automobiles, which generally careen, that is, lurch or tip over, only when driven at high speed. There is thus no reason to conclude that this use of the verb is the result of a confusion of careen with career, “to rush.” Whatever the origin of this use, however, it is by now so well established that it would be pedantic to object to it.
Tilting sounds very tantalizing.
Anticipatorily impatient…please reveal all!
“Careening” and spelling error, when the cousin “means careering”? It ain’t necessarily so. The OED moots that this “chiefly US” sense of careen “as rush headlong, esp. with an unsteady motion” may “belong to the sense” of careen as “lean over, tilt”.
In the past 2 weeks I looked up careen, because I’ve hardly ever used it and wasn’t sure about its meaning, and Nijma had used “careening” recently. In some connection I wanted to write career, which usually for me, when I use it at all, comes in an expression like “career headlong down the road”. I found in M-W that careen can have the (American) meaning of “lurching from side to side”, which was exactly what I wanted. It was the lurching I wanted, more than the plain old careering that led to it. (“The careening carriage being pulled wildly … by a team of runaway horses”). I think that was what Nijma meant too.
Previously, I had always imagined (i.e. quarter-thought, when I half-thought about it at all) that careen is something that a ball can do in a billiard game, or is some special billiard-technical thing that you do to a ball. I must have picked up that sense from reading as a kid: “careening across the baize”, or “he careened the ball in a masterly fashion”, something like that. Also, further confusing matters for me nowadays, I think there is a sound-association in my mind betwwen the German Karambolage and careen. Karambolage is the ball break (“execute the Karambolage“), or a name for any kind of billiard (Billard with one less “i”) where you don’t play the balls into the holes, but just knock them about.
Karambolage is also a pile-up of cars in a traffic accident.
Karambolage is the ball break
I’m guessing there must be some etymological relationship to Carom, the board game that is ubiquitous in the subcontinent and among the desi diaspora?
It is presumed that the red ball is named after the star fruit somehow. The TV show follows French dictionaries in proposing a similarity in shape and color, but it’s not entirely convincing.
Yes, carom is short for carambola and has further changed (in some contexts) into cannon, the name of that shot in English, as Hobson-Jobson points out.
carom… has further changed (in some contexts) into cannon, the name of that shot in English, as Hobson-Jobson points out.
This is amusing because my Anglo-Indian Dad, who gifted me his septuagenarian carom board calls that shot “carom”. In his teens he worked on the docks in a small NZ town and developed some pool/billiards/snooker skill in the frequent down times, but clearly his linguistic roots still came through. I grew up calling the shot by the name he used, the name of the board game he still thrashes me (and most of my desi friends) at.
It’s called carom in American, too. I meant English English (though I’m not sure I’ve heard a contemporary speaker say it, so if someone tells me that’s changed since Victorian books, I won’t doubt it).
And of course the wonderful German/French TV program Karambolage, as MMcM linked to. I get that on the Arte channel here in Cologne.
MMcM’s link was the 100th edition of Karambolage, which I had missed. At the start of it, a group of people count from 1 to 100 in German and French. Each uses his/her native language. Each number occurs only once, and there is no strict alternation (for instance, it is not the case that the odd numbers are in French, the even ones in German). The Arte producers do this kind of thing deliberately, and cleverly. The variety keeps didacticism at bay, although you may indeed be learning something, as intended. Dulce et utile at its most accomplished.
Of course the “Belgian counting system” didn’t get a look-in: septante, huitante, nonante. I read these forms in Belgian newspapers many years ago, and thought I knew all about the “Belgian counting system”. I had even nurtured a vague sense of colonialized fraternity, since Americans have discarded all that Britishy stuff of superfluous “u” in flavour, etc. etc. I imagined the brave little Belgians having gotten rid of the cobwebby French soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, quatre-vingt-dix, etc. etc.
Well, how art the hoity fallen! But only halfway, things are more complicated than I knew. A Wikipedia article explains how the Académie weighed in (GS: on the wrong side) in the 17th century. The septante, huitante, nonante were attempts to simplify things, and so in a sense modernizing attemps. “As recently as 1945” some Instructions officielles or other still recommended them. But today the use of these modernizing forms is considered “regional or antiquated”.
Another example of the vaunted French rationality and clarté. It’s the vaunting that annoys, and leads to taunting.
What happened to Crown?? Here I am tilting at windy French, and still don’t know what he was going to post about. Has he fallen prey to some high-falutin’, postmodernist postpostist craze for pretending to blog about something, then letting everybody else do the work?
I agree with Stuart Grumbly, this is very good of you all to think up your own topics even before the post is complete. I do appreciate it.
I ended up going to IKEA, yesterday evening, to buy a large table. We got a rather nice white one with tubular steel legs, but in order to fit it inside the car the driver and passenger had to sit bolt upright with their foreheads pressed against the windscreen. I had a glass of wine when we got home around ten; after that we watched some inept Scottish detectives on television.
Once on the blog of LeMonde.fr’s proofreaders there was a post that got online by mistake. It was perfectly blank, had no title and couldn’t be linked to. It had more than 75 comments nonetheless. Sometimes you wonder why it’s worth taking the pain to write anything at all.
Grumbly, if you think French is bad, you should read Sili’s account of Danish:
but it’s not entirely convincing
Not entirely? It’s not convincing at all. Have you ever seen a carambole (star fruit) that is round and red?
but it’s not entirely convincing
What do you mean exactly by “not entirely”? For me it’s not convincing at all, pas d’un iota. Have you ever seen a carambole (star fruit) that is red and spheric?
MMcM: but it’s not entirely convincing
What do you mean exactly by “not entirely”? For me it’s not convincing at all, pas d’un iota. Have you ever seen a carambole (star fruit) that is red and spheric?
http://correcteurs.blog.lemonde.fr/2007/01/02/le-poivre-a-5-sous/#comment-33411
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A.J.P., it’s at least the third time I’m trying to post this comment, or his little brother, with various combinations (the link being in the url or not, the Sig-nature being different, etc.) Is it the goats that are eating them as soon as they pop out or is it the fish that stinks a bit too much?
It was perfectly blank, had no title and couldn’t be linked to. It had more than 75 comments nonetheless.
And why not, if an LP of Marcel Marceau sold respectably?
Did you see I corrected the typo in your comment above? Damn good service at this blog.
No, I didn’t see it, and I still don’t see where. But I have already been told that I had Wasser and έλαιον on my eyes, like any stupid corrida bull.
I had Wasser and έλαιον on my eyes, like any stupid corrida bull
OK, now I’m curious – how do corrida bulls end up with German water and Greek oil in their eyes?
Simply because the bullfighters put it there apparently, to blurr their vision. :-) That’s called cheating I believe, bull-cheating.
“Simply because the bullfighters put it there” but why ‘Wasser and έλαιον’ when agua y aceite are surely easier to come by? Enquiring minds need to know, but since it’s nearly midnight, I shall go to bed and dream of the fascinating answer to be discovered in the morning.
Hats off to the calibre of American excuse-making, but pull the other one.
Move fast, and keep ’em guessin’, that’s my motto. How was I to know you were just as nimble?
My, you’ve all been busy while I slept.
For what it’s worth, my experience (NE US, born 1954) of this family of verbs is this: Growing up I was aware of a verb “careen”, which I took to mean something like “zoom around”. Only later, through reading , did I learn (probably in British novels) about a verb “career” that means “zoom around”, and also (through the Patrick O’Brien books) of the “tilt [the ship] for repair work” meaning of “career”.
I have heard “carom(m)ing around” with the stress on the second syllable. (Admittedly, I’ve only heard one speaker say it.)
The stress shows only that the speaker learned the word “carom” from reading and has rarely if ever heard it used, not having hung around much with billiard players.
But this tends to confirm a vague sense I have that there is in the collective American mind a mishmosh at work here, involving (at least, I think) “careen”, “carom”, and “carouse”. Strictly, these can all at least be stretched to mean, respectively, lurching around, bouncing off things, and festively staggering around. Loosely, they feel like an adoptive family of “-ing around” words.
Crown, I just noticed that your server is meddling with my punctuation. In my last post, I used a single vertical quote before em, and a single vertical quote after guessin. Same character each time. The server apparently paired these up, converting the first one into a slanty single quote to signal “here comes a quote, folks!”, and the second one into a slanty-the-other-way single quote to signal “here’s the end of the quote, folks!”.
It does the same with double quotes.
It’s like the old-timey way quotes were handled in German, which is one of my pet peeves – and the first thing I turn off when I get a new notebook with a new version of Word. Not only are the quotes slanted, the start-quotes are below the line!!!
Please tell your server I’m having none of this.
why ‘Wasser and έλαιον’ when agua y aceite are surely easier to come by?
Indeed, Stuart, why? Couldn’t the poor animal get a fairer chance? Here’s what an English matador has to say about it: “[…] Those who want to ban it say the bulls are drugged, their horns shortened, Vaseline put in their eyes and weakened by having sandbags dropped on them. None of that is true.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3637809/Ole-The-Manchester-matador-is-back.html
Whereas why vaseline is a mixture of German water and Greek oil is another one of these language mix-ups.
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A.J.P., while you are at correcting me, couldn’t you give me my proper sig-nature back instead of the thing WordPress wants to use in my name every time I am connected to their website?
And blur, by the way. (I thought I had corrected that one.)
If this quote-meddling doesn’t stop, I’m going to ensure that there are always an odd number of quotes in my posts, so the server will go into a loop trying to find the mistake.
My next escalation step, which may be a little harder to implement, will be to use a fractional quote that the server can’t handle. Crash!
Stuart: why ‘Wasser and έλαιον’ when agua y aceite are surely easier to come by?
Indeed, Stuart, why? Couldn’t the poor animal get a fairer chance? Here’s what an English matador has to say about it: “[…] Those who want to ban it say the bulls are drugged, their horns shortened, Vaseline put in their eyes and weakened by having sandbags dropped on them. None of that is true.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3637809/Ole-The-Manchester-matador-is-back.html
Whereas why vaseline is a mixture of German water and Greek oil is another one of these language mix-ups.
________________
A.J.P., while you are at correcting me, couldn’t you give me my proper sig-nature back instead of the thing WordPress wants to put use my name every time I am connected to their website?
And blur, by the way. (I thought I had corrected that one.)
(((((((((~)))))))))
And there’s definitely a problem with my comments. I’ll try a last time after connecting to WordPress, even if I can’t stand these guys deciding who I must be, and if it doesn’t work it’ll be hasta la vista baby.
Oh shit. “instead of the thing WordPress wants to use in my name every time I am connected to their website”.
So I have to be Siganusk here?
Sig, you may still be logged on to your wordpress site (or another one), so there’s a cookie with that information on your computer. Crown’s wordpress site looks for the cookie, and insists on using the contents.
If you log off all wordpress sites, you can be whoever you want to be here.
Back to business:-
I’m pretty sure that picture is showing us the end of the beginning, and not the beginning of the end. That is, the goat has just clambered up the outcrop.
Strike outcrop. It seems I never knew what it meant, until just now.
But this tends to confirm a vague sense I have that there is in the collective American mind a mishmosh at work here, involving (at least, I think) “careen”, “carom”, and “carouse”.
MWDEU sensibly puts it this way: “Part of the problem in trying to pin down objectively the movement described by careen or career is that since the movement is headlong, reckless, or uncontrolled, some kind of sideways movement may be involved, actually or potentially.”
As to whether the headlong sense of “careen” is a spelling mistake, Grumbly, they say it was “no doubt” influenced by “career,” for whatever that’s worth.
On the next page I just noticed an entry for “careful writer”:
Isn’t it about time you all had copies?
It’s entertaining that someone’s spelling error can become a standard usage.
Almost all of today’s standard usages were once errors of some sort, no? (Which, of course, doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining.)
Fucking itlals!
Jamessal: Fucking itlals!
You mean sales ritals, i.e. bloody Italians?
Well, of course.
so there’s a cookie with that information on your computer
Bougon, I doubt any cookie can stay on my computer for more than ten seconds. As you know I am not very fond of cakes, but I’m a real cookie-monster.
If you log off all wordpress sites, you can be whoever you want to be here.
Even Michael Jackson?
What an interesting discussion. I think I’ll title all my posts “A Tilting Lesson” from now on and just let people have at it. That has been my titling lesson for today.
Sig, you may actually need to “delete all cookies”, if you are still having that nick problem. That does not mean “eat all cookies”.
On the other hand … do you have good cookies? In Munich this week I bought some Saudi “Maamoul” cookies. They have a light crumbly texture, made only with wheat flour and butter and a teeny bit of salt, without any spices, and have a thin layer of fig paste in the middle. I ate the whole frigging box within 5 minutes of reaching my hotel room.
Absolutely, Sig. Anyone. But then I wouldn’t read it.
Where it says:
..all you have to do is click “logout”.
In French:
On the next page, at the top left, you will see:
← Back to A Bad Guide
(In French):
← Retour sur A Bad Guide
…and you can go back to the home page.
The cookies on your computer are very well hidden and I doubt you will find them by accident. In Windows they are hidden under Tools>Clear Private Data>Cookies
From now on, tilting titling is the name for this blogging phenomenon.
Maamoul–excellent choice, and admirable restraint. I have personally never gotten even one Maamoul as far as my abode. Saudi dates are the best in the world–I have sampled them in the Middle Eastern open air markets. The flour is actually semolina, and the best brand IMHO is Sultan. Don’t read the ingredients though, especially the fat content, as they are high in fat and it will go straight to your backside if you know about it. Maamoul are good for a long journey through the bedouin desert, as you can buy one or two at a dukan and it will tide you over until you get to your destination, where you will be expected to exhibit a healthy appetite. Tide me over, actually. It’s much easier for women to get invitations to mingle with the family’s virgins, plus everyone knows that unlike Middle Eastern women, an American wife can confer her nationality on a spouse.
It looks like an outcrop to me.
a rather nice white one with tubular steel legs
i bought one when first came here, not the large one, but with tubular steel legs, so didn’t have a screwdriver yet to assemble it and tried to half-screw the screws without it
left it like that for two days, in the evening i came and nearly fainted coz the table stood on its legs
but larchik prosto otkruvalsya – the plumber who was doing some plumbing changes in the bathroom saw the table and did me that nice favor
i did not know then that the surepintendants have access to one’s apartment when its needed for the communal needs like plumbing or wiring
they notify about the works before hand and still
i try to be present when some works are done, not very comfortable with someone being in the apartment when i’m absent
yesterday the super painted my walls blemishes white, nice
Thanks, dearie. That’s an outstanding photograph. It ought to be some sort of logo.
I wish I had a super or plumber to screw my table legs on, it turned out to be a long and boring job.
Dates? I’m pretty sure it said figs in the ingredient list!? But that was on the foil wrappers in which each cookie nestled individually. I was more interested in penetrating those wrappers than reading their surfaces.
It tasted more like figs, in any case delicate and deelish. Nothing like the Moroccan or Tunisien dates you get in Germany. I see maamoul recipes on the net talking about nut fillings.
That photo may be a major literary discovery. Beckett must have seen it, and used the image in the following passage from Watt (which I quote at every available opportunity):
Mr Hackett did not know whether he should go on, or whether he should turn back. Space was open on his right hand, and on his left hand, but he knew that he would never take advantage of this. He knew also that he would not long remain motionless, for the state of his health rendered this unfortunately impossible. The dilemma was thus of extreme simplicity: to go on, or to turn, and return, round the corner, the way he had come. Was he, in other words, to go home at once, or was he to remain out a little longer?
That may be the best photograph I have ever seen.
Yes, we’d better give it its own post…
If you got the ones with figs, it could explain how you were able to get them to your room without eating them all en route. If you have not tasted the date ones, you have another treat ahead of you.
Watch out for the picture police!!!
It says “Unknown jpeg”.
I say “I am God, so give me your money”. Convinced?
Someone’s rights to intellectual property do not vanish just because someone sticks a post-it on it with the words “Owner unknown”.
On the recent occasion of being busted for my photo of Luhmann that I found somewhere on the net, I learned more than I wanted to know about property rights. There are hordes of lawyers nowadays who make their livings by trawling the internet for picture-appropriating lawbreakers.
Can these parasites cross int’l borders? How can they extort money from you as a ‘fine’ without any judgment being passed against you?
Most countries have their own laws about intellectual property rights. In addition, in a construct like the European Union, there are supranational regulations.
It’s pretty complicated, but the basic principles are simple, and savage:
You cannot take a picture of someone without their permission. You cannot use, in any way or fashion, commercially or otherwise, a picture taken by someone else without first obtaining their permission. If you use someone’s name in a publication, you have to be very careful what you say about them, or how you depict or present them (libel/slander).
This is not surprising, after all. Consider our modern, Western, media-drenched, globalised times: movies in cinemas, pictures, posters, video clips, music CDs, spin-offs from movies, brand names … Everything is a potential money source for whoever can market it. People are no longer so naive about the financial potential of these things as they may have been 50 years ago.
The very fact that we think the goat photo is fantastic means – because we are not any kind of elite with privileged acccess to evaluative criteria – that other people will have thought the same thing, in particular the person who took the photo. Why do you think it’s on the net at all?
I wouldn’t put it past those lawyers to practice entrapment. Put up a fabulous, copyrighted picture on the internet, label it “Unknown jpeg”, and after a few weeks track down sites with links to the picture, and slam a writ on them. It happened to me, it will happen to you. Poor Crown!
my mother told us once that in her childhood they used to live in Altai mountains, so they could see their goats and sheep through the toono of their ger ( a window in the roof ), that steep mountains
recalled this photo
http://on-toli.com/modules/photo/viewcat.php?id=5220&cid=13&min=54&orderby=dateD&show=27
the mountains
I think this is called tort law. It’s not a matter of “fines” without any judgment. Someone enters a charge against you for having violated their rights. You can chose to defend yourself in court, or do a deal with the plaintiff out of court – which is the course I may take.
How much money and time do you want to invest in defending yourself on an individual charge? How many such individual hassles do you want to go through?
Where is SnowLeopard? He could tell us something about American law here. But that doesn’t help us with European, Norwegian and German law.
I had heard of these things, but would have pooh-poohed the idea of their having anything to do with me. Then the poo hit the fan. 400 fucking Euros, man! For a photo of old sweetie-pie Luhmann!! It turned out that the photo was on the front cover of a book by or about him, published in the States.
I take that back about “tort law”. What the hell do I know about the different uniforms worn by my persecutors?
The Belgians say septante and nonante, but not huitante, which is only used in Switzerland: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_(nombre)
Thanks for that picture. Have you ever lived in a ger? If so, did it have a building super?
From photographs I get the feeling that Mongolia has a similar beauty to northern Norway. You don’t see many camels in north Norway, though.
I’m grateful, Grumbly, and I’m sorry that you had to suffer in this way. I would get very depressed if I had to shell out 400 Euro-things for no return (my wife would kill me).
Is that right: you cannot take a picture of someone without their permission? But what about the paparazzi? They don’t get their victims’ permission and they still they get their work published.
Depending on where the persons were when they were photographed, the newspapers who publish the paparazzi photos do indeed get sued, and pay up. In various countries, particularly GB and the USA, the laws are getting ever more stringent.
It seems you are not a regular reader of Paris Match or The Sun.
sure, i’ve lived in a ger, if i go to the countryside i live in it, very cozy
no supers though
Harkened to Grumbly’s call. I’m not an IP attorney, but can share what I know as a courtesy until you find a better source. The usual disclaimers will apply. I’m not clear on what your question is, though.
Thank God, SnowLeopard! Now I can retract my paranoid rants, and perhaps learn something.
Here is the background. For a few months I had a photo of Niklas Luhmann at the top of the home page of my German blogsite (the same picture was on the home page of my English blogsite). I had found the photo by accident somewhere in the internet, with a bunch of other pictures of other things.
Recently the lawyers of a company claiming to hold copyright to the photo contacted the owner of the server where my blogsite resides. They sent a bill for 400 Euros: 200 for “not having permission to use the Luhmann photo in the internet”, and a 200 “surcharge for failure to identify the copyright holder in accordance with the German UfhG (Law of Copyright)”. Accompanying the bill was a photograph of my home page, with the Luhmann photo marked. I immediately removed the photos, and am waiting to see what happens next.
The current questions are Crown’s, from this comment thread, about a photo of a goat at another website. Crown wanted to copy the foto and display it in a blog here.
1) [in my words:] “doesn’t the fact the URL of the photo contains the words “unknown jpeg” free me from liability under copyright laws?”
2) [Crown’s words:] “Can these parasites [he means copyright infringement lawyers, I guess] cross int’l borders? How can they extort money from you as a ‘fine’ without any judgment being passed against you?”
3) I had claimed you cannot take a picture of someone without their permission? Crown asks: “But what about the paparazzi? They don’t get their victims’ permission and they still they get their work published.”
I’ve responded at the bottom of this thread, to avoid all this indentation of posts.
That should be UrhG for Urheberrechtgesetz.
All interesting questions. I’m spending this spectacular Sunday afternoon preparing for court and so can’t research them or pontificate as I’d like. I’m not acting as your attorney, this isn’t my field of expertise, I do not consider myself literate in German, individual circumstances may vary, this is meant to provide general information in an informal manner and is not legal advice, nor is this intended to solicit business or otherwise to serve as attorney advertising (hereinafter, “The Usual Disclaimers”).
The answer to question #3 varies according to your jurisdiction, and likely depends somewhat on the nature of the use made of the photograph. The First Amendment weighs heavily in this. In New York, for example, you can’t use someone’s likeness for advertising purposes without their permission, which will generally mean getting them to sign a contract from which they derive some form of payment. But a public figure, such as a politician or celebrity, would have an awfully hard time arguing that a newspaper or magazine can’t sell copies bearing a newsworthy photograph of them on the cover.
Question # 2: It’s a fair question how “these parasites” are crossing borders; I was wondering the same thing as I read about the recent prosecutions in Sweden of the Pirate Bay crowd. I believe there are international copyright treaties that apply here. Haven’t seen them myself, and would need time to research the issue. As for how they “extort money without a judgment”, I expect that this is simply taking the same form as countless other letters that pass my desk, where some threatening person opines that my client’s liability is a foregone conclusion, that damages are sky-high, and that my client’s one and only change to avoid a devastating trial and ruinous judgment is to cut a deal. Of course they’d like me to believe them, but that’s only one side of the story, and my client invariably contests the claim in some way. Mr. Crown is quite correct that, at least in jurisdictions I’m familiar with, you *don’t* owe anything until a judgment is rendered — everything leading up to the judgment is settlement negotiations, with whatever rules apply to that process where you live.
Question #1: Not so fast. All copyright infringement can expose you to some level of liability, ranging from fines to statutory damages to having to fork over whatever profits you made from the violation to a court ordering you to cease and desist. “Willful” copyright infringement can elevate those penalties in various ways, including being responsible for the other side’s attorney fees. Simply hiding behind the words “unknown jpeg” won’t get you very far for two reasons: (1) it’s not clear what effort, if any, you made to discover who held the copyright before using the photo, and willful ignorance is probably not a defense in your jurisdiction; and (2) lack of intent may or may not absolve you of *criminal* liability, but tort liability is another story altogether. Few car accidents are intentional, for example, but that hasn’t prevented the growth of an entire industry of personal injury litigation.
As a final, preliminary comment before I get back to work, check out the English-language wikipedia article on Luhmann, which sports precisely the same picture you featured on your website. If you click on the picture, there’s an entire discussion of wikipedia’s rationale for posting the photograph. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t look like they asked for permission, either.
Snow Leopard, that’s very generous of you to informally provide us with that general information on a Sunday afternoon. These are very interesting answers to questions that have been bothering both of us, as you might imagine. Thank you very much indeed.
If I can ever return the favor with architectural information, I did practise in NY for 10 – 15 years, so don’t hesitate to ask.
Give our regards to the leopard cub.
AJP — It’s my pleasure to share what I know with the authors/ commenters of such enjoyable websites — and I belong to a profession, after all, which cannot afford to claim ignorance of any subject under the sun. I wish I knew more about these issues, and had the time today to offer something more comprehensive, but I’m afraid it’ll take some study.
The cub, who at 4 months is both adorable and fierce in the nature of such creatures, is taking her much-needed afternoon nap, but I assure you that she returns the sentiment.
Thanks, SnowLeopard! I just wanted Crown to have sufficient neutral information with which to convince himself that he should not take these things lightly. My burnt-finger rants were not necessarily conducive to that end.
My friend who owns the URL of my German blogsite has his own IT business, and has acquired a certain competence in questions of software licencing. He explained certain aspects of German copyright law, and referred me to the English and German Wikipedia articles on Luhmann. He pointed out that the photo appears only in the English-language article. This is no accident: the German and American copyright laws are different.
I think I originally got the photo here. It looked like a grab-bag of stuff, so I grabbed, thinking nothing of it. My friend’s comment about that was: “Your Google link merely shows that other people also are infringing copyright”.
Since you are a subdomain of WordPress, why not look at what they have to say? There are some good links here:
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/photo-copyright-infringement
It looks like if there is some infringement they will take down the photo, or maybe ask you to take it down. The way around it is to identify who has the copyright and ask them if you can use it. Most of my photos I wouldn’t care if someone wanted to use it for a garden variety blog, especially if they link to me, but maybe not if some huge corporation with deep pockets wanted to use it.
If WordPress is based in the U.S., then don’t the fair use laws come into effect?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
I see a lot of photos on blogs with a “caption this photo” type of theme–maybe it’s how they claim it’s a parody, although that does seem to be done more with politicians or public figures who are not covered by the usual defamation laws.
I’ll take the other point of view, just to keep this discussion going and annoying. As someone who makes her living — no, as someone who aspires to make a decent living beyond hand-to-mouth — by writing, I get incredibly annoyed when people keep archives of my work and share it and use it in their classes and quote it and I don’t see a penny or a kopek from it. I don’t mind quotes from time to time, since that increases my readership. But sometimes people seem to think it’s theirs to do with what they want, and that’s just not right.
On photos — if the person’s face is indistinguishable (blurred, looking away, etc.) you don’t need a release from them. I also think this is right (although a pain). Would you like a photo of yourself on, say, a brochure for septic tanks? The exception is “editorial” — when an event is news and there is a photo of it.
I don’t know if you need a release from the goat.
My own view concerning visual work and music is that the idea of copyright is being misused. Currently when I sell the right to use my photo my income is being made at the cost of someone else’s creativity. If they want to use my photo in their work all spontaneity is lost: they have to worry about whether at the end of having done a lot of work they’re going to be allowed to use it, what it’s going to cost them, whether it’s worth the hassle. That’s bad.
A better way to do it on the internet might be to create an international ‘tax’ that is distributed to picture owners on the basis of how many google hits a piece of work gets per year.
I think it’s easier: if you don’t care if someone uses your work — stick it up on a site and say so. If you are looking for free images or whatever — go and find them. There’s also “fair usage,” which isn’t that complicated. Okay, it’s complicated, but usually not if you are quoting something in a review.
What I find just astonishing is when people write things like “someone ought to collect those pieces in a book” as if “those pieces” didn’t belong to someone, like me, the author of them. Or when professors at rich universities use my pieces for an entire class without even giving me a heads up, not to mention paying me $1 for the 35 copies they made and distributed of my work.
Grumble grumble grumble
Probably doesn’t even occur to the professors. The rich universities ought to send round a note telling their professors to watch it. Come to think of it, isn’t it the rich university who ought to be paying and who’re liable when they don’t?
I have copyright to grumbling, mab. I’ll send you my bill.
international tax (on pictures)
Your idea appears to solve the basic question of defining “who does a work belong to” by avoiding the question entirely. But there are slight difficulties, I think.
Every website owner with any cunning would lard his site with as many pictures as he could, so he could cash in on all of them every time someone visited his site. A site owner with even more cunning would illegally copy to his site even more pictures from other places than he has already copied. I, with supreme cunning, would write a program to automatically, and continuously, copy all pictures on all sites to my site. It would hardly be possible any more to prove that a given picture is not a copy of a picture.
It would necessarily lead to deflation, i.e. a reduction in what is payable on each picture. There just isn’t enough money in the world to pay a constant amount for such rapidly multiplying claims.
Ok, good point. I’m only an amateur tax legislator.
“Deflation” is not the right word. More like “the price falls when the supply rises”. But “claims” are not supply!? Economics doesn’t make sense.