A dirty big secret of Blogging on Steem
Okay, bloggers, I have got to mention a dirty secret. I am really trying to be as nice as possible. I am perfectly capable of going all over-the-top attack mode.
But I shouldn’t.
You see these dog and cat photos? I didn’t take them on my own camera. They are essentially stock photos. You bloggers … you know who you are … are constantly using photos that you scrape and lift from the web.
Yes, I said it.
You filthy rotten scoundrels!
(ok, some faux vitriol and snark there. Let's keep this light and friendly.)
But everyone is doing it!
(Source: Staff Sgt. Daylena Gonzales,U.S. Air Force, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_military_dog.jpg , public domain)
Indeed almost everyone is. People in the Steemian community, like a lot of other social media and blogging platforms, are prone to taking artwork and re-purposing it for their own use. Essentially every good blog post has to have some form of “eye candy” or artwork to “sell” it to viewers. So you search and search, browse and browse, for that perfect little piece of artwork with the white background and the photoshopped look. I am talking about stock photos and artwork.
(I didn’t swipe this image, either. Credit: www.christianholmer.com, Christian Holmér, CC by 2.0, which is to say it is licensed and legal to post this image here for any purpose. Not all artwork is available this way.)
You take it.
(Not everyone, every time, but this is very common!)
You don’t ask for permission… it was on the web!
Maybe you link to the source that you discovered it from. Maybe you skip the time and effort to do so.
But you plop it near the top of your blog post, and through the wonders of Steemian, “your” artwork is shown next to your carefully crafted Blog post title. You might even use a half dozen of these images.
Congratulations, you are a great blogger, but you may have just robbed a photographer or creative artist of her earned recognition, professional livelihood, or rights. Copyrights are generally perceived to belong to the creator for their entire lifetime, and sometime for decades after their death.
Personally, I struggle with both my unskillful artistry on the one hand and the “borrowing” of the images I find in image searches. But on Steem, we are publishers of content who expect to make money on blogging.
We are professional bloggers, by definition
We make money from posting. The images we use on many of our blog posts are supposed to be properly licensed for web publishing.
But what about Fair Use?
Fair use is a great thing, because it enables us to comment about images and videos and music and the written and spoken content of other people and companies.
But do blog posts even make a comment about the images they use?
Almost certainly, no. There is not commentary about stock images.
Stock images are simply there on a blog to add some flavor and make the content easier to digest for readers.
When @Bitcoin-blogger-expert-guy writes a blog on Bitcoin, he doesn’t say,
“This image is an interesting representation of the bitcoin cryptocurrency. The green and red hues coordinate with the symbology and historical images of accounting ledger sheets and 1980s electronic spreadsheets.”
In other words, the stock photos are being used as part of the content to make his blog stand out. I went out of my way to find free and licensable stock photos for this post.
So in my most recent proposal, I detailed an entirely new system by which bloggers can obtain stock photos for use on Steem. In that proposal, I explained that bloggers can:
- Write an original blog post
- Search for stock artwork relevant to his blog post
- Obtain a license for the artwork
- Support fellow Steemian stock photographers and artists
- Get upvoted by the soon-to-be powerful SSPVM account (and optionally, the artist)
- Give back some of the earnings from the blog to the artist who supplied his stock artwork
Would that make you bloggers feel better?
(I am one, so my answer is Yes)
I am proposing a 6% fee on the final value of your post to be paid to Steem Stock Photos, Videos, and Music (SSPVM), half of which will be sent back to the artist. The other half would be used to maintain a website and storage cloud for licensable, Steemable artwork.
I don’t know about you, but when I put myself into the shoes of a stock photographer or artist, I think I would appreciate a little bit of money for each time others used my work.
I must admit that I want to be fair. I’m trying hard to make both bloggers and artists understand this predicament. I want everyone to come out on top. That includes
- Bloggers (legally and morally, I believe you will want easy licensing of stock images)
- Artists (financially and for the sake of fairness, I believe you will want some of the rewards for your work)
- Me, the developers, and the maintainers of the SSPVM project (financially, legally, and for the benefit of Steem, I think we owe all of the stakeholders a sense of fairness and earning potential)
If anyone questions my credentials as either a professional blogger or as a bad photographer, look no further than some recent posts of mine! I've been a pro and bad for longer than some have been alive! LOL.
Thanks everyone. I tried not to be over-the-top ATTACK dog.... I am right there with you... stock photo swiping is truly a dirty aspect of blogging for me, and