May 7, 2008

Copyright Violation Enlightenment and Other Odd Ways to Wake Up

I'm going to plug the blog of a wonderful writer who "borrowed" my content without askng me, without link-back, and without compensation. Unless s/he's reading this, I can't even let the blogger know, without raising some sort of stink with Blogger owner Google (a losing proposition anyway), because the comments at his/her blog are disabled and there's no contact link to the anonymous author.

Anyway, once I realized that I was about to go to war with reality, I saw how the friendly universe manifests so beautifully in this "violation." I mean, s/he does, in his/her blogroll, link not only to this blog but to my website; and s/he loves The Work, which can only do me a world of good as well as the author.

If I could, I would give him/her permission to quote the article that has already been quoted in its entirety, and I'd sure like another link-back and my apparently useless copyright info. tacked onto it. :)

Anyway, for your edification, I invite you to visit my anonymous friend's blog, the name of which is also "borrowed": http://byronkatie.blogspot.com. (Katie isn't the author, for the record.)

I just love the way the author finds moments of satori in the mundane world of dead cats on the road, toileting, and a car accident. It's a bit like A Thousand Names for Joy Lite.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not that it matters, but your mystery blogger is a programmer named Paul Chin who lives in Malaysia.

Perhaps copyrights wear off when they have to travel through more than a dozen time zones.

WilleWorks.com said...

Interesting! I tried to leave a comment and got the message ~ Comments on this blog are restricted to team members. I see that Mona has some of her writings copied there too. Sigh. I wish someone would copy me...I'm so NOT famous. :)

Anonymous said...

I love it when copyright is violated - there's just no way to stop the spread of good stuff - and it doesn't look like they are doing it for money or fame either, which is fun :-)

What if it is Katie in disguise? Oh I forgot, it is!

Deborah Osborne said...

Carol - when I saw your Palmolive pictures the other day, I thought there might be some sort of copyright violation....before you posted this lament.

I belong to a writers group and have found many writers fearful of getting their work stolen - I say, steal my work - it isn't mine anyway - is anything mine? That's a thought to work on. "Things belong to me." I don't think so! ~Debbie

Carol L. Skolnick said...

Hi Deborah,

The Madge character, though trademarked, was retired by Colgate-Palmolive about 20 years ago. It is reproduced on a lot of websites with much higher traffic than mine. As an editorial item, reproduction of an image for non-commercial use that is no longer in use by its owner constitutes "fair use." If I used it without permission as the logo of my website, or slapped it on a product for sale, they'd have grounds for lawsuit.

If someone reproduced an image from the current Doris Roberts campaign for Palmolive dishwashing liquid, they'd hear from Colgate-Palmolive's legal team very quickly! So I won't be doing that... :)

Fabrice said...

Carol Dearest,

Isn't it wonderful all the good stuff that comes out of this!

I visited the "violator's" blog, and the top article on his front page says "Here's a wonderful article by Carol Skolnick".

I love it!

--Fabrice