Nearby Café Home > Art & Photography > Photocritic International

Goodbye to Go Daddy (2)

This blog, its parent website (The Nearby Café), and the three other websites that form the consortium Photo Education Online have become a Go Daddy-free zone. With that said, the cause on behalf of which Go Daddy collaborated in the making of and endorsed SOPA — prevention of internet piracy — is one in which I believe. I’ll continue to sail the online seas and hang anyone pirating my IP from the virtual yardarm here. “Arrr” yourself, matey. You’ve been warned. [...]

Goodbye to Go Daddy (1)

This boycott, and the threat of massive further customer migration, led Go Daddy to reverse its stance and officially withdraw its support of SOPA on Dec. 23, effectively apologizing to the internet community for approving it in the first place and promising to endorse revisions of this legislation, or any similar bills, only “when and if the Internet community supports it” — which, knowing the “Internet community” as I do, will happen on the proverbial chilly day in the hot place. [...]

Self-Plagiarism: Oxymoron Invasion (3)

Reaching out from beyond the grave, the late Ansel Adams self-plagiarized once more by permitting the trust he created during his lifetime to grant permission for yet another use of his classic image ‘Moonrise over Hernandez.’ Including his posthumous record, Adams has now self-plagiarized this image over 5000 times in various media. [...]

Self-Plagiarism: Oxymoron Invasion (2)

I view the term “self-plagiarism” as an oxymoron, and a misnomer. It denotes the commission of an intellectual crime, and indeed a legal one, as well as an ethical breach, where an author most likely has committed none of those offenses. Use of it as a blanket term to paint any and all such repurposing as acts of bad faith that somehow cheat editors, publishers, readers, and one’s fellow professionals only brands the accusers as self-righteous know-nothings while demonstrating a deeply unprofessional failure to research standard practices in the field. [...]

Self-Plagiarism: Oxymoron Invasion (1)

Writers, musicians, visual artists, choreographers, and other “content providers” regularly return to, reconsider, revise, borrow from, and otherwise cannibalize their previous output. No one even marginally literate in the arts can claim unawareness of the copious evidence of this as common practice. So I challenge the concept of “self-plagiarism,” an oxymoron because plagiarism involves taking material you haven’t created and claiming it as your own. You can engage in self-parody, consciously or not; you can repeat yourself, consciously or not; but you can’t plagiarize yourself. [...]