Posted by Lilly | 3 Comments

Ethical Blogging: Attribution does not equal Permission

The bane of a bloggers existence some days is the evolution of the Scraper. The Scraper is someone who has set up a website solely to garner advertisers. They have numerous sites like this and they obviously don’t have time to write their own content, so they “scrape” illegally from others. It’s only scraping, though, if they are stealing your entire post¹. Many times these scrapers have automated the process and will scrape directly from your RSS feed. I’ve added on anti-scraping plugins to WordPress which put in things such as unique keys (so that I can search for that key and find who else is using it) and copyright / anti-scrap notices in the post – they alert the reader that if they’re reading the post anywhere other than Dangerouslilly.com, it has been illegally scraped and please contact me.

Even worse, however, is when a fellow community blogger or sex toy manufacturer/retailer uses your content in entirety without permission. Some are just completely uneducated as to the rights and wrongs of blogging, but really….we all started out in the same clueless space and most of us have gotten where we are just fine without violating copyright, stealing content or plagiarizing, ever.

What is Copyright?

According to Wikipedia, copyright ‘is “the right to copy”, but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights.’

A few years ago when I was dealing with a site that took harassing me to a new level, which included posting my photos without my permission, claimed that all was well and fair in the copyright world simply because they had attributed the photos to me. Nope, sorry, that is not the only condition that must be met. Especially not since I have this copyright notice at the end of every post and at the bottom of my main page: “All text and images on this site require permission before they can be used anywhere. To obtain permission click here to contact me”. Notice how I’ve stated that all text and images on this site require permission before they can be used anywhere? Yeah. That’s kinda the whole key.

Permission.

Consent?

eh. fine line.

There’s an article on Sexis about bloggers and copyright – not necessarily our own copyright but talking about how we steal things. Namely, photos. Some are more guilty than others of course but the fact is, copyright violation in terms of using a photo in your post is pretty rampant. Not just sex bloggers, but any blogger. So while attribution doesn’t equal permission when you’re talking about using someone’s entire post, attribution can equal permission when you’re dealing with photos. It will simply depend on what the copyright holder allows. But if you found the image on Google because hundreds of others have used it without attribution, what can be done? The best we can do is protect ourselves with watermark copyrights on our own photos, and when we use a photo that we know actually belongs to a fellow blogger, retail store or manufacturer…..attribute it. Ask for permission if it is a blogger.

Microblogging vs Blogging

Now, here’s the rub: With the over-saturation of social media sites where you “share” stuff with your followers, you “reblog” on Tumblr, you “retweet” on Twitter…you have a blurry line of kosher sharing when it comes to blogging. When you reblog and retweet on Tumblr and Twitter respectively, you are copying what someone said and providing attribution. The line is blurred even further with Twitter, where “copyright” doesn’t really seem to exist. I mean, how can you possibly lay copyright to a Tweet? On Tumblr it’s a little different I suppose, but many people treat Tumblr as blogging. So if I posted a photo on Tumblr and nowhere else, I still retain my copyright. That photo is my intellectual property and if you post it on your own Tumblr without an attribution link, then you’ve effectively stolen content.

The fine line lays in the type of sharing. Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, even Facebook are all considered forms of “microblogging“; places where the “reblog” is common practice and accepted. Standard Blogging is vast and varied; we’re accustomed to WordPress-based sites, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc but there are many other places as well. Somehow, the concept of “reblogging” seems to have bled over (incorrectly) to regular blogging with the prevalence of microblogging.

Product Reviewing and Ethics

In the past I went toe-to-toe with Lelo when I noticed that suddenly they went from quoting excerpts of reviews to pilfering entire (but slightly modified to remove retailers links and in some cases, had no links to the review itself) review posts. They’d never told anyone reviewing products (given to the reviewer by Lelo) that this would be done; they never asked for permission; and in fact they did this on reviews where the product came from retailers! After raising a fuss like I am wont to do, they apologized and removed it all and now only have excerpts (with links).

I’ve noticed that niche sex toy maker Duncan Charles has been lifting entire reviews², as well, and what’s worse is that they have ignored emails. Back when I posted about Lelo, Shanna Katz commented that it had happened to her a lot over the years as well.  I was offered the chance to do reviews for Nexus and at the time I viewed their site, I noticed that they had full text of reviews with no hyperlink. They had a text-only site address, though. But I wasn’t cool with having my entire review posted so I turned them down.

Ethical Blogging Practices

~Reblogging is NOT copying someone else’s entire blog post without their permission, throwing up an attribution link and calling it well and good. I see this as copyright violation and content theft. Also, just Bad Blogging Manners.  You can quote something from my post, with an attribution and link, and that is a horse of a different color. You can share a photo I’ve posted here via Tumblr, with an attribution and link, and that’s just fine.

~Posting someone’s photo without an attribution is content theft and copyright violation. I don’t care if the click-through link goes to their blog, the attribution line  (and link) is absolutely necessary.

~Creative Commons licenses on someone’s blog does not mean you get to skirt copyright basics or do away with attribution. Creative Commons exists to allow someone the flexibility of letting people know that sharing and even revamping is fine (with attribution) but it doesn’t dissolve copyright.

~And please…don’t EVER think you’re doing someone a favor by putting their content on your site. It’s insulting, it’s copyright violation, and it will earn you a very bad reputation.

 

this post sponsored is by: EdenFantasys (What this means), the place I buy my sex toys

 

 

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All text and images on this site require permission before they can be used anywhere. To obtain permission click here to contact me

Posted by Lilly | 15 Comments

Should we bring back the Sex Blogger Co-Op for a trial revival?

A number of the 100-some original members are long gone and in their place are newer bloggers who don’t know about the thing that was once the Sex Blogger Co-Op on Ning.com. For a refresher or those who don’t know what it’s all about, read these few posts: Blogger Education? talks a bit about the demise andProjects Abound introduces the Co-Op and talks about what it was.

When the Co-Op moved it was because Ning announced it would no longer host their long-time free networks. They were also closing down “adult” communities without warning and that spooked a few people, despite the fact that our group was private, invite-only and not pornographic. The move to a more text-based forum set-up hosted on the e[lust] site spelled disaster as nobody wanted to to go there anymore. It wasn’t easy or pretty. Without any participation from other members, I closed it down.

I still think there is a need for it, for a private place for just the bloggers to go where we can say “Hey, did you get an email from CompanyX? Is this shit for real?” or stuff like that. For those who were not a part of it, some things we discussed were:

• Tutorials on how to do certain things on your blog, like design elements, a clickable header, embedding video
• Discussions on affiliate programs
• Opinions on the latest company/group to hit us up for reviews/exposure
• Discussion on advertisers, like what they were proposing, who was telling them to go to hell, etc
• Blogging prompts

There were debates, arguments, but overall a lot of help being offered and confused questions answered. I’d like to think that it was just as helpful to newer bloggers as it was the veterans. While I don’t expect every sex-type blogger to join I would hope that both veteran and new bloggers would join in, and be active. How active? Whatever you manage….to a point. Since there would be a member cap (150 people) I would have to occasionally weed out those who hadn’t participated in any way for X number of months. It’s not free, of course. The cheap plan (similar to the ToySwap Network, if you’re a member there) allows for forums (including the ability to subscribe to threads or boards to get email updates on new posts) and 150 members. Things that we once had that we would no longer have: The ability for anybody but me to invite people in to the network; chat room; ability to customize the layout. We would lose the few topics that were started or continued once the network moved off of Ning but I don’t think that it’s really a big deal. All the old discussions remain as do your memberships if you were once part of it.

For those who were once a part of it: Would you re-join? It would still be private and invite-only as I feel that it’s the only way we can truly speak our minds on some things. For those who are newer, would you join?

And no, it’s not free. As I said there would be a small price ($3 for me) but the next plan up is a whopping $25 a month and although it will give us many of the features we enjoyed with the free Ning, like chat rooms and customization and no member cap I don’t think that I could get enough people to chip in to come up with a steady $25 a month. I would not require that every blogger contribute something monetarily in order to join but I would greatly appreciate it. I would only ask for a couple dollars per person able to contribute, as it will only cost me $36 a year. And since it’s a month-to-month payment plan if for some reason the whole thing takes off like it never did before and there is a need and willingness to warrant the $25 a month plan, we can upgrade. I don’t see that happening but it’s a door I’m not closing.

If I don’t get much feedback here or much positive feedback then I will allow Ning to delete the network and the contents. I have until February 10th to decide.

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Posted by Lilly | 6 Comments

Scandal Shack Dot Com – Thievery and Copyright Violation!

A lot of my fellow bloggers are having their content scraped and posted on scandal shack dot com – They’re flat-out stealing; they put your words (or photos!) onto their ugly ass ad-laden website without any links to the blogger who wrote it or anything. The only way that you can tell is when someone uses a WordPress plugin that adds copyright protection words/links to their RSS feed (like AAG does).

It’s being done by scraping the content from your RSS feed – they’re pulling from a lot of sites so it’s not being done by hand (quite obviously, or this lovely post by AAG wouldn’t be showing up as a post on SS.com, hehe). I’m posting this warning for you to go check out the site and make sure your content isn’t being scraped. Mina tangled with them directly to no avail, so there’s info in her post on how to report the copyright violations directly to the site’s host. Hopefully with enough complaints the site will go away altogether.

But that only fixes that exact site. And who knows, the guy might do it again. In fact, it’s not the first or last time we’ll ever see our content illegally scraped. I personally use a plugin for WordPress called “No More Frames” which does something to prevent the scripts the scraper is using from pulling your content. My content is, so far, not on the site. It is either because this plugin does actually work OR my feed isn’t worth scraping :)

I guess we’ll find out soon enough, if this post shows up on his site.

This is a lot worse than what a certain vibrator company once did with copyright violation and sex toy reviews, because at least they acted professionally and took things down from their site. This guy is just using it as content filler to fill up the gaps (albeit small) between the garish ads.

 

ETA: The host of the site is on Twitter, perhaps we can employ that method after aggrieved parties have formally sent in their copyright violation email? it’s @Hostgator.

ETA2: I asked, “How many reports of copyright violation does it take for you guys to shut down his site altogether?” @HGSupport, who had been responding to the @Hostgator complaints from bloggers, was asking for support ticket numbers. I personally don’t have one, but others have reported it. Their response to “how many”? -  “Just one, which has not been received at this point. Again, if we can get the ticket it will be handled as quickly as possible.” Which makes no sense, because Mina said in her post that HG removed the posts that she reported as scraped. So they DID have one report. Sadie also sent a complaint on Friday. Are they just blowing smoke, or are they slow?

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Posted by Lilly | 9 Comments

Blogger Education: How to keep your individuality in blog design while maintaining readability for your audience

I write this post with full knowledge that I’m going to offend or at least bruise egos of many bloggers. Our blogs are our homes and how we decorate them says a lot about both us individually and the nature of our blog.

I get it. I DO. My first two blog themes were very dark and sexy and gothy and  I cringe, CRINGE, when I look back at screencaps from those days. Why? Well let’s ignore first that my original banner on my blogspot blog was fucking hideous, and admit that I did the whole all-dark-all-the-time and had white text on a dark background. With the blog design that came before this current, bright (in comparison) color scheme was yet another dark and gothic fantasy world – but I’m still proud of that design. I and CoyPink‘s hubby, Alec, worked quite hard at that and I’m still proud of that header with its clickable words. At least I’d wizened up though and made a compromise – dark on the side, white for the posts. Perhaps some things in my sidebar were still a little hard to read for some, but it was a big improvement over the first real design.

What I hate and why I hate it:

1. You can convey a sexy sex blog without all being in the black/gray/very dark jewel-tones color scheme all the time everywhere. A little goes a long way.

2. For the love of pete please realize that for many people white/light text on a black/dark background is VERY hard to read¹. As is a very bright colored text on a very dark background (red and blue are the worst). I’ve actually had to stop reading a blog because the color choices hurt my eyes so much.

3. Fun fonts are fun. But fun fonts should be used sparingly because they can sometimes be hard to read. Especially when they’re white text on dark background. They should be limited to the blog name in the header and at most the blog post titles or sidebar heading titles. Something that is bigger than your standard 12pt font – a crazy font will be easier to read when it’s larger.

4. Not knowing and respecting the width of your theme’s sidebars and body sections. Learn how to trim down the size of YouTube embedded videos. Keep your photos in posts to half (3/4 at most) of the width of your post body section. And please pay attention to all that crap in your sidebar. You probably CAN change the size of the items, you just don’t know how or don’t think it’s a big deal. It is. At best it just looks like crap, at worst it covers up text in the post body section.

For some of you reading along I might have just inadvertently told you that your blog, your very own blog, hurts my eyes and makes me cringe. I’m not saying this to offend you personally but to offer the wisdom of someone who’s been around the blogging block a bit. Having a blog that is pleasing to the eye and easy to read visually will not only increase your readership but keep them on your blog to explore. I’ve seen some blogs recently that I’d truly like to explore more but I can’t – I absolutely can’t deal with the color and/or design. Don’t take just my word for it, I’ve not designed nearly as many websites as AAG has. I’ve added her comments in below.

My suggestions for making changes:

1. You don’t need to know much about code to make color changes in your existing theme (the only people who can’t do this are the free WordPress bloggers who aren’t able to get into the CSS stylesheet, I do believe that the newer Blogspot dashboard allows you access to the code, be it html or CSS). If you utilize the Firefox browser and then use this add-on called Firebug, you can bring up your blog, turn on Firebug and see the code. You can then go through it and start “turning off” lines of code to figure out what that line of code affects. This won’t actually change your code – just what you see. (I hear that the latest version of FireFox and FireBug make it so that if you’re self-hosted your changes in FireBug CAN be permanent but that’s not my point here). So scroll through it and try to find the sections that are usually labeled “post”. Using this helpful website, pick a new hexadecimal color and replace it (black is #000000 (zero’s, not O’s), white is #ffffff, occasionally coders will abbreviate those two to just #000 or #fff). This way you can change what the post portion of your blog looks like without having to ditch the theme that you like. You can keep the dark background on the sides and top and bottom just have the posts portion be readable.

2. Use your header and graphical design of the blog theme to express your individuality and sexuality, within reason. Also make that header clickable so that it can easily take a reader back to your home page.

AAG sez: a) Reign in the individuality just a wee bit – the header can be sexy but probably shouldn’t be, for example, a close-up lifesize image of your asshole. (yes, this was a true story)

3. Changing to a hand-writing or script-y font just to be different can lead to your blog being even harder to read visually. Sure, it’s different. It’s “you”, even. But it makes me run away very quickly.

AAG sez: a) bear in mind that not all operating systems will display various fonts (used in the body, not in images of course). Check them here.
b) keep in mind that a font that’s awesome today may be passe tomorrow. ask for feedback²
c) Pick a contrasting color for links that does something different yet recognizable upon hover. Check to make sure it doesn’t do something weird after the link is visited. Check this on various browsers as some display visited links differently.

3. Using a lot of banners & buttons and graphical wonders in your sidebar(s)? Consolidate, and change their size so that they’re all the same (or at least so that they fit into your sidebar’s size allotment and don’t spill out into posts or the outer edge). Easy size change tip: When you post the html code into the text box, erase the “height” marker and change the “width” number on them all³. Caution: only go down in numbers, never go up – it’ll look pixelated and cheap.

4. Don’t use lots of colors and/or font styles in one post. It looks high-school-ish (to me), is distracting, doesn’t flow, and doesn’t always translate very well into feeds (why not? see #5). I even run into the problem with my blog that a certain paragraph-styling looks one way on my blog but completely different in the feed.

5. If you insist on having a colored background for the posts section for all that is blog-holy please take caution in forcefully changing the font color of your writing. If the font color is hard-coded into the CSS stylesheet then it will still appear as black text on white background in your feed. However when you go and force the change in your post editor box it will show up in the feed as the color you changed it to – and guess what? Unless it’s a dark color, it’s going to be damn near impossible to read it for those who use feedreaders to keep up with your blog. You think I hate light text on dark background? Bright & light text on white background is even worse!

6. Don’t use a font that is too small. I’ve been to a couple of blogs where the font size is small even for my 21″ widescreen monitor – ok, it was also white on black, so that added to it. But find the Goldilocks Font⁴ for your theme – again this is a change that can be made utilizing Firebug and changing the CSS stylesheet – not too big, not too small, not too hot and not too cold.

I could have screencapped or linked to examples of some of the things I’ve mentioned above in a “don’t do this” sort of way but that’s not the angle I’m going after here – I’m not doing this to be mean or pick on a person. This is just about good intentions turned into bad designs. And just because you have violated my personal font/color mantra doesn’t necessarily mean that your blog design is terrible. It might be really awesome in every other way….just hard to read. If your answer to this is a shrug and “hey subscribe to the RSS feed, it’s plain black text on white background, just like you like it” then you’re missing the point. Don’t you want your readers to interact with you and each other? Don’t you want someone to pour through your archives and become a fan or friend? That won’t happen if they get to your site and their eyes bleed.

Comments are wide open. You can tell me to go to hell and why. You can tell me that you agree with me and give some other helpful suggestions or “Don’t”s. You can say “hey I think I might fit a bunch of these Do-not-do things, can you look at my site and give me your honest feedback?” and I will be happy to do so tactfully. I’d suggest a feedback site that at one point helped me really tweak this current layout and design thanks to honest & anonymous feedback on the design, but I got yanked for being “porn” as did another blogger; you can certainly try your hand and see how long it takes you to get flagged (given how easy they’ve made it to flag for adult content, don’t expect to last long): Feedback Roulette. You look at other people’s sites and tell them what you honestly think, good and bad, and then others do the same for you. Or….just ask me here.

 Go for it.

 Resources:

Color Scheme Designer – This tool allows you to input your primary preferred color and get many options. Various hues of the color, complimentary color, and a whole coordinating color scheme. For best use, enter in the Hex value of your primary color on your blog (next to the RGB work lower right of the wheel).

Colorzilla – An add-in to Firefox that allows you to find the Hex color (or RGB values) of any color on any web page.

Firebug – The most important add-on for Firefox to help you tweak your CSS stylesheet (if you need any help figuring out how to use it, please feel free to email me)

How to make your Header/banner clickable – This tutorial is geared towards WP users (self-hosted). For Blogger users I believe you can set that attribute in the Design Dashboard.

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Posted by Lilly | 18 Comments

Is it unethical or just rude?

Expounding a bit on my prior post on ethics in blogging, after the umpteenth blogger friend told me they’d been given a shady offer on a “permanent” advertising link from the same person/company, I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.

I’ve dealt with a lot of advertisers in my time. Some who are great and respectful, some who haggle or stall at every renewal, and even some who just never respond to your renewal reminder as you let their link continue on until finally giving up and removing it. But never have I had someone offer a one time payment for a link on my site forever. The company owner of sextoy.com (a place I used to review for but he didn’t seem to know that when contacting me) is making the blogger rounds every month with a new batch of people that I can only assume he hopes will net him one who will be newbie enough to take him up on his insulting offer. He’s hit up newer bloggers, established bloggers and everybody in between. He emails you with a dollar amount for a link and he conveniently leaves out his time frame. All other decent advertisers ASK what your monthly rate is, do you offer longer contracts with discounts, etc. No, he pulls up a pathetically small number that basically says “I think your site is only worth $25/$50, period”. He’s never going to pay you again and he will expect you to keep up his link until the death of your site.

Seriously?

I hope against hope that he’s not had any luck and hasn’t screwed over a blogger who’s not dealt with advertising before. I did talk about these “permanent links” before over at the Blogger Education page on advertising, but I know that not everyone reads e[lust] and has seen it.

Let me bottom line it for you:

A permanent link is bad. Unless it’s in the many hundreds of dollars, it’s a fucking insult. The amount that he offered me for my sites was about equal to what I get for 3 months. First he contacted me at the e[lust] address and I couldn’t let it go with just a “no”, I told him off a bit and let him know that it’s insulting to all bloggers, no matter their stats or stature. I also let him know, since he didn’t bother to learn his audience before typing, that I owned this domain as well and already am involved in their affiliate program that he offered (without the offer to review toys, again, insulting as all it gets them is a link and you probably won’t see any sales). He asked for my rates though, and I can only assume that they were too high for this supposed multi-millionaire as he never responded. Until……he emailed me on THIS account a few weeks ago.All brand-new and fresh-like as if he hadn’t already tried to hit me up the month prior.

*headdesk*

He’s not even TRYING to not be an idiot.

Is this post harsh? I’m sure some of you think so. And I realize that by calling this person out this way I might get bitten in the ass somewhere down the road. But I’m pissed. I’m offended. And I’m protective of all my blogger peers. I know that many of you who’ve gotten the offer and have discussed it on Twitter just laugh it off because you know he’s an idiot and you know you’re better than that. Jesus, I hope you know. I’m pissed because he’s trying to take advantage of us and momma bear is growling now.  I don’t care who offers it, permanent links are never good for you and only really awesome for them. A company owner who is trying to take advantage of bloggers in this way makes me never want to support sextoy.com again. So if Dave emails you, either tell him off or just delete it. I don’t care what your stats are: You are worth more than whatever he offers. Much more.

Bloggers, I don’t care what your site is about, if you ever have any questions on advertising and even specific advertisers please don’t hesitate to email me. I will gladly let you know if someone is worth dealing with or a deadbeat, and will help you figure out what to charge. If we don’t stick together…..we all lose out. That’s just my opinion, though.

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