Responsibilities of a Blogger: Shares/Reposts & Crediting

In a nutshell: There are many reasons and ways to use the internet; rules and guidelines that govern it exist for courtesy as well as legal reasons.

Don’t be an inconsiderate asshole and repost/reblog/feature images, video, and other content on your blog without proper credit!

The intent of these long winded posts is not to rant- putting off a bunch of people is really not why countless hours have been invested in this blog. However sometimes the growing trends of the internet (which I am basically tethered to these days) get the best of me and I need to set some things straight from my point of view.

As a person who has been involved in many aspects of the internet for many years (from personal use to professional use, social media to web site development) I am pretty constantly bombarded with visual and aural stimuli. Striking photography, well planned out and moving videos, songs composed with care and talent… all things we want to share.

Ladies and gentleman, having an unbridled urge to share something simply because it’s message or beauty speaks to us is a great thing. However, if we continue to share with no regard for the creator, the choke hold these creatives have on the internet is going to get tighter and tighter. While no amount of watermarking will ever stop someone from ripping off photography for their advertising (I’ve had it happen more than once in my short career) photographers still do their best to head off copyright infringement.

Above is a photograph of Kylie Shea Lewellen on the Ducati 1199 Panigale that I shot for MotoCorsa last year. Ducati Fashion Sexy on facebook cropped out the MotoCorsa and Ducati logos on the bottom section of the photo.

From the perspective of a blogger… doing a reverse image search is not that difficult. Check it out. While tumblr and other blogging platforms encourage reposting without credit easily following through, it’s actually our own responsibility as reposters to find out where it came from. No, you’re probably not going to get sued, but technically you could… if someone wanted to be a real dick about it, or if you’re a real dick about it. The bigger your blog, the more followers and readers you have, the more you should care about finding out where the images you post came from. One reason the MotoLady blog has gone from 3+ posts a day to 1-2 is because of the fact that each entry is carefully curated. Extra effort is taken in every case to find out the original source post, and if I can’t… one of my readers usually helps me out (thanks guys!) and gets the creator the credit they deserve.

From the perspective of a photographer… it’s just plain fucking rude to reuse photos and strip credit from the post and/or photo by removing or cropping out watermarks. In some cases I’m flabbergasted to find that someone took extra effort and time to cover up my watermark or someone elses. Just because your website has 100k visits a month doesn’t make it okay for you to ignore your responsibilities. On a rather frequent basis I see well known blogs, facebook pages, and websites reposting other people’s photography with their watermark added onto it. Unless you asked the photographer or graphic designer for permission to share and rebrand, you’re breaking the law doing so… and you’re also being an asshole.

The entire reason this website exists is to share cool stuff, good people, and beautiful imagery. Spreading the love of the motorcycle community and giving people a place to learn more about creators and motorcyclists all over the world.

Be a dear and take an extra few minutes to type out and link to the people who worked on the project / photo / writing. Middle school taught you that plagiarism is wrong, why would you do it now?