Chris Pirillo

Who owns your comments?

Saturday, June 21st, 2008
by Mark

I was reading Chris Pirillo’s blog today and watched the video that he recorded on his views about who owns the comments on blogs/youtube or such other services. I liked the topic so I thought that I would write a little blog entry about it - and state my thoughts on the matter!

My first thought would be that the writer of the comment would be the owner of the comment, as they are the one that created the original content! There are some people that say the person that is hosting the comment (youtube, blog owner or suchlike) would be the one that owns the comment, due to the fact that you’re using their space - but I strongly disagree with this due to the fact that if you park your car on a public car park it does not belong to the owner of the car park, after all - you’re also using their space… So it is a very similar situation (just with physical objects rather than virtual objects).

What you also have to think about it that not all comments are completely unique, in the way that if you were to comment a blog saying ‘I completely agree, I think the same‘, chances are that someone else has already written the same content on another website/service (or possibly be the same website/service) before you have. Does this mean that you’re in breach of copy right? Does this mean that you co-own the comment?

You also have to think about the fact that the content gets cached around other websites due to search indexing and quotations (if someone was to quote your blog entry in their blog, so they can write a reply to it and possibly send you a link back). Does this mean that they are also in breech of copyright or similar laws? Even though you write where the respective author originates and give them full credit for their content? It also gets cached in search engines like google and yahoo and many many more - they don’t ask you if they are allowed to download and save your content- although you can use a robots.txt file to disallow them, They don’t ask permission first - should this really be allowed?

My opinion is the fact that the person that wrote the content is the person that owns it, whether its a comment, blog post, entry in an online diary system or any other kind of content.

Feeling under the weather

Thursday, June 19th, 2008
by Mark

I’m not feeling too well, started coming down with something yesterday - maybe the night before. Had a bit of the sniffles.

Now I’ve got a fully-pleged cold, sore throat & a very tight chest. Meh, oh well - not to worry eh?

I have been fixing the WicketPixie WordPress theme today - it had a few Database errors on installation and also had a few errors when trying to view it in Internet Explorer - although Chris Pirillo’s live version did not have these errors. I have emailed Chris with the details of what was wrong with it! Im sure the downloadable version will be fixed pretty soon guys!

I think I will write a better post tonight - I’ve got a few things on my mind that I would like to say - but not got the time right now!

Twitter - in 140 characters or less…

Friday, May 9th, 2008
by Mark

Today, I received a Twitter asking me how to describe Twitter in 140 characters or less. I find it very hard, but what I came up with was “Versatile activity blog with the ability to network with others”.

Now, this may not make much sense to many of you - but regardless it is a pretty good sum-up of what Twitter actually is.

More to the point, I think I might be making a miniature application for Twitter, possible even something that could be loaded as a module for forums/bulletin boards and/or blogs/diary’s. Which would simply use the titles of what people are posting/blogging about, as a twitter - with a tiny-URL going towards that particular post. I think this would be something that would combine everything together - using Twitter as the networking hub - which it is in its own right. If I do create this I will most definitely be releasing it on this blog. WATCH THIS SPACE! (Not this very space of course, but I’m sure that you all know what the saying means….)