Piff on your newfangled crowdsourcing.

[snarp]

Cut for vague, incoherent muttering.

Since I put my Flickr stuff under a CC license, occasionally people on this site NowPublic have been requesting to use my photos in news stories they write. It looks like they select a tag relating to the story (the ones that led them to my stuff were "recycling," "tofu," and "Wrath of the Lich King," which is a fair representation of how my neurons are distributed), and then send people who have photos using the tag an automated request for permission to use them, with a link to a page where you can say "yes" or "no."

The first two times I said "yes." But today somebody wanted to use my World of Warcraft screenshots in something with the thesis "Video Games Destroy Lives", which consisted mostly of a list of quotes from news stories and news-like-substance stories about random bad things happening to gamers. I could not countenance this.

My refusal has zero effect on irritating-story-writer-guy - he already has other people's images. Nor does it confirm my journalistic ethics, as I have none. The stories about recycling and tofu are roughly equally frivolous, but I allowed them to use my photos because they appealed to my own prejudices, as the gaming story likely appeals to, say, Mom's. (Mom was reading me the story about the kid who made himself sick playing Lich King too long last night. I was very busy going through low-level Undead quests for rep at the time.)

So basically today crowdsourcing made me vaguely grumpy, and linked to the Daily Mail. Screw you, crowdsourcing.

Comments

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

On a slight tangent, I've been reading up on DRM for a paper for my tech class, and it's been making me feel quite ill, and what I am leading up to with this is that the mention of someone using a CC license is the sort of thing that helps to alleviate the symptoms of DRM-induced nausea.

[snarp]

Whenever I start to write something about DRM, steam starts coming out of my head, so I never end up finishing any posts about it. My lack of self-control has probably saved the internet a lot of silly bullshit. I admire that you can write a whole paper.

I used some CC-licensed images from Flickr in a web design project a while ago, and then kinda felt I should return the favor. You really get how nice they are when you are in the position of needing a picture of an ethnically-and-age-diverse group of casually-dressed smiling people building a two-bedroom house right now.

(Totally random question: I've been wondering, is that Rakka from Haibane Renmei in that icon?)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

No, it's Takumi from either the awful, awful manga spin-off of the fantastic anime Mai-HiME, or from an outtake of some kind of the awful, awful, manga spin-off.

Better yet, it's an "emerging technology" paper that will need to be focused around how a (relatively) new tech can be used in libraries. Which doesn't mean that I'm required to trumpet it, but I can't just write a scathing denunciation, either; I need to actually talk about the reasons why libraries would/will/do use products with DRM. Although that's primarily going to be, "because they have to, even though they think it's icky and an enormous pain."

I love CC because it's concrete evidence that A) people are not selfish shitheels by default and B) that there is another way--there are levels of control besides absolute and non-existent, and people will voluntarily work with them. CC is an enormous blow to the evil, cynical, principles that DRM (and much of modern copyright practices in general) is based on, just by virtue of its existence.

[snarp]

I kept seeing it as Rakka, and assuming it was some sort of tasteful doujinshi speculation about [things that are spoilers].

I'm sure that DRM could be used to good effect by librarians who are, you know, angry at the world. Before, their budgets constrained them from gluing each CD into its own individual CD player, and there simply wasn't time to follow around the people who took out Microsoft Office and make sure they weren't putting it on non-approved machines. Now, technology provides them with cheaper ways to needlessly inconvenience and harass patrons and co-workers! It's an angle.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

It's only a total anathema to everything librarianship represents, but I try not to let it bother me.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

And now I'm seeing that as Rakka, too, and I can't unsee it.