By BitcoDavid
I know you think there’s a huge underground facility, buried under Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain, and called DeafInPrison.com Plaza – but in truth, it’s just me in my underwear, hammering away on a coffee stained keyboard.
There is however, a lot going on in the background. Not everything you see on DeafInPrison.com is actually on DeafInPrison.com. When an article is posted on here, WordPress converts it into HTML code. Many pictures, files and widgets are actually hosted on other sites, and presented to you with the appearance of being local. We call this, embedding.
Back in 2013, I did a piece on the 3 pathological types of mass murderers. For clarification, those 3 types are Serial killers, Spree killers and Thrill killers. The differences in the pathology are significant and important. I could provide no better illustration of the point, than did the DOJ, when they put together the original report that I used for research. So, I chose instead, to embed their version.
Here’s how this works, and forgive me for revealing the man behind the curtain. I find a Web version of the document I wish to post. I convert that from it’s original HTML format, into a PDF. The PDF is then uploaded to Scribd.com, where it is hosted. Although our publisher pays WordPress for the ability to embed files directly, such as video and audio files, WordPress demands that PDFs and other document type files be handled this way.
Technically, WordPress isn’t our hosting site. ImageWorks LLC is. And if we chose to, we could have a private version of WordPress installed, and would have far less limitations on what we publish, and how we publish it. I prefer having the support of a blogging community behind us, so I’ve gone with the option of having WordPress.com serve as a co-hosting site, so to speak.
If you click on the link above – to our story on mass murderers – you will see an error notification informing you that the document has been taken down due to copyright infringement. I have contacted Scribd.com and am in the process of getting this fixed. But I thought I could take this opportunity to explain our policy regarding copyright.
DeafInPrison.com takes intellectual property issues very seriously. We never publish graphics or other content without both citing and linking to our sources. Same with all supporter contributions. All submissions are cited and linked. I also do a whois search on the author’s I.P. address, so I know the legitimacy of our contributors. We don’t pay authors for their submissions, so linking is the only incentive we can offer.
Embedded files that we expressly create, such as Felix’s music video, are published without citation, and are free to our readers to copy, share, embed – do whatever they want with. I would only hope that those individuals link back to DeafInPrison.com and give us the credit due. All other files are cited and linked to their original source. We take these files directly from the Internet, so it can’t be said that the producers of this data don’t want it seen. If ownership was an issue, they wouldn’t have made it openly available to anybody with a Google machine.
DeafInPrison.com costs our publisher to produce, but we do not monetize this site, and we do not operate as a for profit organization. Our goal is to educate, entertain, enlighten and actualize our readership. We provide this service for free. Therefore, we don’t seek license to publish data already available on the Web, but we do recognize the rights of content creators to receive credit, and we do insist on link-sharing and citation.
We also have a commitment to publishing original content. We may use a file or a graphic to enhance an article, but the bulk of our articles are original, and written by our contributors and authors.
No citation required. That’s me.
Sometimes, the law gets caught up, forgetting it’s spirit and dwelling too much in its letter. When I was at my old gym, I shot a few rounds between my Coach and me, and posted them on YouTube. The gym had a radio station playing as background music for all the clientele – those who didn’t have their own iPods. Although you could barely make out this music over the sound of me getting beat like a rented mule, Sony made me take down the video. Stealing illegible copies of top-40 dance tunes wasn’t my intent. Showing an audience some great amateur boxing was. But Sony, and for that matter YouTube, didn’t care.
I sincerely hope that Scribd can understand the situation and rectify it, so that you – our readers – can continue to enjoy embedded documents as rightfully cited and linked enhancements to our original content.
BitcoDavid is a blogger and a blog site consultant. In former lives, he was an audio engineer, a videographer, a teacher – even a cab driver. He is an avid health and fitness enthusiast and a Pro/Am boxer. He has spent years working with diet and exercise to combat obesity and obesity related illness.
Related articles
Pingback: Petitions Delivered | deafinprison
Pingback: We’re Back Online! | deafinprison