12 March 2009

A Note about Plagiarism

Thursday, March 12, 2009
My husband forwarded me a chain email with photos from zibabin.com (PS. I have removed this hyperlink, because it seems to be unreliable). I wanted to share these photos with you and began to work on a collage for saving space without deleting the watermarks. Some of you might already have seen them on the Web, but I still wanted to know what went on in your mind. You can read what I thought in the comment section. Thank you.

[Here was the collage]

PS. I have permanently removed the collage, because I'm not sure of the original photo sources. The photo of the lion belongs to Darrell Ybarrondo who mentioned about this in my comment section.

I never support plagiarism and always try to put original source links on my posts, if there are any contents which not belong to me. You can browse my blog and see for yourself. Most of the time I use my own photos or some of my close friends (and even these are related to the proper source). I hope that viewing my work throughout this blog will also show that I wouldn't have any intentions to become engaged in a copyright infringement.

My husband received this photo through a chain email called "Who Is The Better Mother?" and I also have seen other blogs and forums with these same photos, when I tried to Google the original source link by the email title. I'm sorry for my unawareness about Darrell. I truly respect his creative rights, because I am a passionate craftier and photographer myself. But I had linked to a source that I thought was the original one. Please, don't give misleads by adding your watermarks on other people's work. Hopefully something like this will not happen again. I'm kind of shocked about this situation and also feel like another victim here. Still, I'm aware that plagiarism is a hardly to avoid issue on this world wide web and we should be more careful. Thank you.

Related Readings:
Copyright Issues (Alex Wong)
Linking Rights (Brad Templeton)

11 appreciated note(s):

RA said...

The advantage of the email was that I saw these photos one by one in a particular order. I think that it might has a more shocking effect, but I finally choose to make a collage and display only one ice bear photo from several ones for saving space. Some of us have a slow Internet connection. I know this because sometimes I also have a hard time to get online ;p. Back to the photos. I was sitting there in my chair, adoring all those wonderful photos of mothers nurturing their little ones, saying "O how cute...o how cute..." and feeling all warm in my heart... until I reached the last one! "OMG are some people really that barbaric compared to all those lovely animals??!" This mother has to learn a lot from mother nature. Even the wild animals seem so caring. What did you think?

Anonymous said...

The picture of Lion with the cub in the bottom left corner of your collage belongs to me and someone watermarked it with zibabin.com. It is definitely NOT the property of zibabin.com. I am not sure how you got it but it is being used without my permission. The photo was taken at the San Diego Wild Animal Park and was posted on Flickr where it was downloaded from originally. I have the original raw file from my camera as proof of ownership. I would like this photo removed from your post or I will seek a copyright infringement. Thank you for your co-operation on this matter.

RA said...

Dear Darrel, I'm so sorry about this matter. I didn't know about this. I will remove it from my collage right away. FYI, there are a lot of emails with these photos (my husband also received it from someone else) and I also found a blog with the same photos. I'm so sorry again for causing you this trouble.

RA said...

There are indeed a lot of blogs with these photos. I hope that they become aware about this important issue. I have decided to remove the collage permanently.

Anonymous said...

Antes de eliminar los collages deberías de cerciorarte que efectivamente te están diciendo la verdad. De todas maneras, muchas gracias.....están fabulosos.

RA said...

Revised Spanish-English translation of Anonymous from http://translation2.paralink.com/:
Before eliminating the collages, you should make sure that they really are telling you the truth. Anyhow, thank you very much ..... they are fabulous. Anyhow, thank you very much ..... they are fabulous.

Dear Anonymous, thank you for your kind support :). It means a lot to me. I would visit your blog and tell you right away, if I knew where... Hopefully you come again to my blog and read this comment here. Best wishes.

RA said...

I'm sorry typo, the translation should be: Before eliminating the collages, you should make sure that they really are telling you the truth. Anyhow, thank you very much ..... they are fabulous.

RA said...

Dear Anonymous, thank you for your kind support :). It means a lot to me. I would visit your blog and tell you right away, if I knew where... Hopefully you come again to my blog and read this comment here. Best wishes.

(I wanted to make sure that my comment could be noticed by anonymous, if visiting again. So I wrote it without the translation above it.)

Anonymous said...

I am sorry people plagiarized your photos. I found great beauty in the pictures of the animal kingdom mothers, and much humor if the collage included the picture of the woman holding a baby upside down by a foot. I have long believed that animal mothers are generally more devoted to their off-spring than human mothers. I remember the mother cat in the Northeast who carried her five kittens one by one out of a burning garage, her ears and eye lids burned off, but saved every one of her kittens, yet during that same time period, new mothers in Atlanta, GA were throwing their just-delivered babies in dumpsters.

RA said...

Yes, I'm also sorry that people had plagiarized the photo of Darrel without permission. May be the others were taken from other people, too. We should respect others creative rights. But I also agree to you Anonymous, the photos of the animal mothers were really beautiful and showing so much affection. Something that some humans seem to forget these days, like you said. The collage gave an important message to me. That's why I had published in the first place and wanted to share. Too bad that it was a plagiary. Thanks for your inspiring comment Anonymous.

RA said...

The photos on the former collage were not mine. I only had displayed them here with a link which I thought was the original source. It turned out that one photo belonged to Darrel and he objected about it. So I put the collage down. All other photos on my blog are mine, unless indicated otherwise.