Rant on posting other people’s content

Recently, I started following several new blogs, and my old pet peeve on reposting other’s people content resurfaced.
High time to share my thoughts and see, what all of you have to say.

Although I am going to talk about reposting other people’s images or movies, or even blog posts, it will not be about legal issues at all. I know that pictures on Flickr typically have a copyright info, and you can even search only Creative Commons licence images and post those. At the same time, I totally don’t know how YouTube movies are licensed and what is allowed as far as embedding them in your blog post. I want to talk only how I feel about people using other’s people content on their blogs.

Fo me, blogging is about creating content by yourself, a showcase of your work and imagination. That’s how my blog is run. I am posting almost exclusively my images and the text I wrote. The only two exceptions are 1) the book/e-book reviews and 20 occasional guest post. I am sure it is obvious why. If I want to highlight somebody else’s work, I will mention it, link to it, and probably also post on Facebook/Twitter/Google+.

At the same time, many very popular pages are being run as blogs for the sake of blogging, having a web presence, without putting much effort into it. As aggregates for somebody else’s work.

Some of them, based solely or almost exclusively on guest post- I can tolerate that to some extent. I go to those pages because in one spot I can expose myself to the various opinions, styles and learn about different subjects around one common topic. It ultimately has its advantages. But I do not follow too many of those.

The other kind are the web sites, especially photography related. They have the “inspirational” types of posts- nothing more then a collection of random images from Flickr. They might also have a tutorials and how-to posts. Illustrated, again, with random images from different people from Flickr. Some are good, some- not that much. Most importantly, they do not reflect the same skill level, which might be discouraging to a beginner.
I know that there is a saying that “those who can, do, those who can’t- teach”. I actually do not agree with it, and I do not take well advice from the person who apparently has no idea what they are talking about. If they did, they would take the camera into their hands and just use their own advice to create images for the post.

Now, the most irritating are the “YouTube” posts, luckily there are no blogs solely based on those. The post basically embeds a random YouTube movie, connected to blog’s subject in some way. Or not. If the blog owner has time, he will offer some commentary why this movie and maybe why it is worth watching. Or not, again. What’s the purpose?

Really, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Posterous- all those site were invented for brainless sharing of things we like or recommend. Blogs have a different purpose. Express opinion, share thoughts, show what the author is up to.

How about you? Do you agree with me? Do you consider reposting somebody’s content on your blog ethical?
Leave a comment and/or participate in the poll below.

And today’s image is sunrise over Big Badlands Overlook. We caught twilight on our trip there in May. Still dark blue sky contrast with the frist rays of sun, still red, on the rocks of the rugged landscape.

Jeff Revell says:

January 4, 2012 at 11:49 am

Hi Izabela,
I tend to agree with some of the points that you make in your post. Simply re-posting articles or Flickr photos is kind of the lazy man’s way and requires little to no effort on the part of the blog owner. I do however link to interesting things on other web pages from time to time as a way of sharing with my audience. My blog isn’t entirely about my opinion. Sometimes it’s about teaching, sometimes current events, and sometimes just pointing out new gear and accessories. It may not always be original content but things I think are worth sharing with my audience, which is much larger than any of my social media subscribers.

Keep up the good work!

Izabela says:

January 5, 2012 at 7:32 am

Thanks, Jeff.
I cannot recall you ever reposting any content which was not yours, but I guess if you do not do it all that often, it wouldn’t bother me. I also often post links to the sites worth looking at, but those posts are copies of what somebody else did. Just a link with a commentary.