I’ve admitted in the past to being vain enough to Google myself; as I’ve been casting my bread, so to speak, on the cyberspace waters for a while now, it’s always interesting to see both references and links to Smallvoices as well as find my articles on other sites. A while ago I ran across a nice comment by John O’Keefe of Ginkworld:
i love this site – small voices – i got turned on to it when karen ward took the hit on the 7q on ginkworld.net. if you are looking for more – you need to check these people out – thaey are great –
Of course, that was 3 years ago. Today, he doesn’t even link to smallvoices, so perhaps he doesn’t love us anymore…
I have copyright notices on every Smallvoices page, and a few times people have actually respected that and asked for permission to reprint articles, which I truly appreciate. However, more often than not my articles are reprinted without my knowledge or permission – not that I really mind all that much. I think it’s kind of funny, actually. The ones I’ve found do give me credit (I probably couldn’t locate the ones who don’t give me credit), and usually include a link to Smallvoices. I’m not in it for the money anyway; I’ll settle for fame and power.
I’ve sometimes thought it would be fun to post a list of sites where my stuff has appeared without permission, and sometime I might do it. I’ve had entire articles printed in ministry newsletters (not mine, mind you). I once had a lady in The Netherlands e-mail me to say that her pastor had printed out hundreds of copies of one of my articles and handed them out in church. You’d think the pastor would have written to me, but it was nice that someone did. Again, I don’t really mind – copyright infringement is the sincerest form of flattery.
By the way, I am not saying it’s okay for people to steal my stuff, in case you were getting any ideas …
Early this morning I discovered a college student named Jamie L. from Dallas, Texas (aka pwphil413), whose blog apparently linked to Smallvoices. In looking at the blog, it finally dawned on me that a photo I had taken was her background photo. She hadn’t copied it, however, she had just linked to the image on a Smallvoices page. That’s cool – and I’m glad she likes it.
I guess that’s really the point, isn’t it?