Friday, June 03, 2016

COPYRIGHT OR COPYWRONG?

I just received the following email message:  
_______________

"This is to advise you that you are using copyrighted and protected material on your website/blog. Your illegal use of image posted at http://www.zamparelli.us/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=4428   athttp://prairiemary.blogspot.com/2015/05/my-brother-my-cassowary.html s originally from my website www.zamparelli.us. This is original content and I am the author and copyright holder. Use of copyright protected material without permission is illegal under copyright laws.

   Please take one or more of the following actions immediately:

       Provide compensation for use of my copyright protected material of $200 USD paid via Paypal
or
       Remove the plagiarized materia from any blog or book  immediately.

   I expect a response within 5 days to this issue. Thank you for your immediate action on this matter.

__________________

I took the specific photo of a cassowary (quite splendid) off my blog, plus another one that appears to be from her.  I would encourage you to look at her gallery as she does excellent work.

Last night when I googled myself, which is not a sign of narcissism as much as self-defense, and discovered that the University of Calgary Press book of mine, "Bronze Inside and Out" is available as a pdf or some other kind of knockoff at a dozen urls.  So far the Press has not sent me a royalty statement or any money earned.  Last year I earned about $5.  The statement is supposed to be sent in March.  All my self-published books at www.lulu.com/prairiemary have popped up at Google -- not Google Books.

In the Sixties when Bob Scriver's work was pirated, all of it carefully copyrighted, they told us the law is unenforceable unless you have very deep pockets.  It is a function of international agreements and nations no longer defend them.

But I don't want to interfere with an artist, I do not fall under the protection of fair use for education purposes, and it's a lot of work to illustrate my blogs.  I'm considering the idea of just not using illustrations.  I'm in it for the writing anyway.  And I don't even bother to copyright it.  What a fantasy.

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