Last weekend, someone told me about a Facebook page called Remembering Hudson, which she recommended to me because "the person who created it has great photos and some interesting historical things on it that you might like." Curious, I checked it out, only to discover that the "great photos and some interesting historical things" were lifted from The Gossips of Rivertown.
The woman who had created the Facebook page and was doing most of the posting on it was picking up material from my blog and presenting it as if it were her own discovery or her own work. She took not only historic photographs, discovered in my research or sent to me by readers, but also my text and original photographs. She lifted material from other sources as well. I recognized things that I knew had come from Lisa Durfee's blog, Tainted Lady Lounge, and Sam Pratt's blog.
I alerted my fellow bloggers to Remembering Hudson, and one of them posted comments on the page pointing out the need to cite sources. As a consequence, Remembering Hudson has gone underground. It can now be accessed only by those who had joined the group before the page went private. Very likely the pilfering continues, but I'll never know.
When someone produces a creative work--an essay, poem, photograph, short story, even a blog post--in a form that can be experienced by others, copyright protection is automatic. Obviously, the person who created Remembering Hudson was ignorant of this fact. It's possible that others are as well. So from now on, every post on Gossips, as well as every page, will carry a copyright notice as a reminder that this is my work, my intellectual property, and you cannot reproduce it as if it were your own. References and links to The Gossips of Rivertown, on the other hand, on blogs, Facebook pages, and other online publications, are perfectly acceptable and indeed appreciated.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CAROLE OSTERINK
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