Not Sure How this is Going to Work

Today, I am endeavoring something new on my blog, make that every one of the three of my websites (My Ambiance Life, At Home with Tricia's Baskets, and P. Lynne Designs). It is a hazard that I will take. All things considered, they are my sites, however, there are additional standards of leadership in the blogging scene. One of those principles is about copyright, and yes, and I am going to endeavor a copyright encroachment…. On myself. First off, let’s look at copyright.

What is copyright

I do not have to fully explain what copyright is, but in its simplest of forms, it is basically copying another person’s work, style, everything that is on a picture, a document, piece of music, dance routine, THAT IS PUBLISHED.  This is the key element, it has to be published.  So, when you see a court case by an unknown who files a complaint on Billy Joel because his music, Uptown Girl, sounds similar to this unknown’s music, Girl from Upstate New York, that is a case of a possible copyright infringement.  The music may have the same beginning but sounds totally different towards the end of the two songs in question.  The most recent famous case of this was Marvin Gay’s family filing a lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for Blurred Lines (2015).  I do not have to explain the verdict in this case, but the family won.

So, What does This have to do with Blogs

Everything, but what is being able to use this information that another person without letting them know that you are using it.  When this happens, and it is a written piece, it called plagiarism.  Teachers warn you about it from the moment you start writing a research paper that needs a reference point in it.  In the U.S., that is around the 2^nd grade (for me it was in the 4^th grade, kids are so much advanced now than I was, LOL). If you get information from Google, Bing, Alexa, Siri, or Safari to name a few, you better back that information up, or you will get dinged by your teacher.  The same thing for any written piece of work that you do not have an expertise in.  Even if you are an expert on the subject, you need to have documentation on where you based your theory from. 

So, What does that have to do with my Three Blogs?

Look, Google is no dummy.  It does treat my three blogs as if three Patricia L. Logans have written the blogs.  So, they would want me to cite that I got it from my own website.  Now there probably will not be too many times when two of my posts will refer to each other.  For now, it is just this post.   I am still trying to figure out what style I want to go with the other websites.  This is the part where I am copying myself.  I want you to know where you can find the information you need to do, act on, and share my information so you will not get confused. 

The Real Reason Behind this Blog Post

Before I get to that, I want to let you know that the blog links will be cited at the top of the page of each blog.  For right now, let me introduce to you where you will find all the goodies.  I know, I might be rehashing what I said in a blog post a couple posts ago, but this is in more detail:

My Ambiance Life

Page from My Ambiance
Life.

This blog will continue with writing tips, blog tip, and how to posts on how to increase traffic on social media (including the blogs), as well as inspirational messages.  What is gone for good are the current events, celebrity bad person/good person posts, and other controversial posts (I will be doing a sweep of old posts and deleting them).  Why?  The world is negative enough without me adding to it.  There are enough people who talk about the Donald Trumps and the Bill Cosbys of the world without me adding to it.  I want to promote peace within all my posts and blogs.  Does that mean that there will not be any situations that I am just dying to write about?  Sure, but I should not add to their misery.  It is no longer relevant to this blog (or any of my other blogs for that matter). If you see a post that you are not happy with, please let me know in the comments section or email me. I will address the issue and make it right.  I am here to give you a pleasant experience and to make you smile.

P. Lynne Designs

P. Lynne Designs

My main focus is for all the crafters who do papercrafting.  I am still developing what I want to bring to you, which is the crafting tutorials, how to organize your craft room, and how I do things in my crafting world.  This is actually the first blog that I started in 2009, and things have been halted for over a year due to some things in my life that happened. 

I do not need to continue to explain this.  Sometimes in your life, you need to take care of things that matter, not that my audience mattered, and I know that those who have been patient with me understand while others have moved on.  It is a fact of life.

At Home with Tricia's Baskets

Changed for this Year to At Home With
Tricia's Baskets 

Is this a new blog?  No, it is not in sorts.  It is a combination of Tricia’s Baskets, Traveling to the Mouse’s House, and Simply Organized Crafts.  So, in a nutshell, it is new.  I have explained a couple of times what happened to Traveling to the Mouse’s House and Simply Organized Crafts and what happened to me and Longaberger over a year and a couple weeks ago.  No use beating this into the ground.  It is what it is, and I have moved on.   I have deleted old posts that refer to Longaberger products, except the first post and the last post before the switch over. 

What will you find on this blog?  How to decorate and organize with anything including Longaberger products.  This will not be exclusively Longaberger products anymore, except also mentioning that if you have a similar product from ANY store, it will do very nicely.  As of Saturday, June 30, 2018, I will not be a consultant.   I am technically not due to the company shut down, but if they do come back, it is a “no” for me. (as Simon Cowell says).  Will I buy?  Of course, I still love the products and I will also report to you how I organized with a basket or pottery piece.  They just cannot be part of my income earning any more.

You will also find family and traveling posts.  So, yes, I will reference my travels often and what you find in those places.  I will be doing it from a single person’s point of view as well as when traveling with family.  No longer will the blog posts be just Disney or the Orlando, Florida area, but you may find cruising information, ports of call, and even ship information (I am overdue of what I think of my first cruise on this blog).  You will even see some reviews of things to do in the Central Ohio Area, where I live.

Finally, you will find a single person and family stuff.  I am ironing out details of that as well.  This will be a wonderful blog as well.  These will include things such as adoption, nieces and nephews, and other singlehood stuff.  For O. Gs, this may sound familiar because it was on My Ambiance Life. I simply moved it.

If you have to be a reader of any of my blogs for a while, I have removed pages that are or will not be relevant to my blogs anymore, and as I find them, I will keep on removing or revamping these pages.  I will be adding new ones that are relevant to that page.  I am still learning how to increase my blogging, vlogging, and social media views and being more consistent.  Like you, I also wonder too, sometimes, what has happened to my regularly scheduled reading (or watching) blogs and YouTube channels.  I promise you that by Fall (or Autumn if you do not live Stateside (U. S./North American Region)), you will see a change in schedule and how I process all of this.  For next series, I will continue to address how I changed this blog for the better, as well as the other blogs.  This series includes, how to know when to change your blog, how to know when to let go, deciding on your subject and what to keep and what to let go.   This is just a taste.

OK, I have overstayed my welcome, and yes this is a long post.  Probably too long.  I will address why as part of my updating your blog series.  No takeaways today, sorry, just an update.

ITS NOT YOURS!!!

(c) 2016 P.Lynne Designs

I often speak about copyrights and ownership on this blog, especially when it comes to images you decide to download and use on your blog or website to make the site prettier, stately, and for drawing traffic.  The correct way of getting to use a particular image on your blog or website is to simply write the person who took the picture in the first place, introduce yourself, and say something like, “Hi, my name is Patricia Logan, and I am a blogger of MAL blog.  I noticed that you have taken a picture of x, I would love to use it in my soon to be released blog post about blogging, which I think your image would go perfectly with it.”  next explain that you always give credit to the person who takes the picture.   If the person says, “sure, thank you for asking”.  No problem.  If the person says, “I charge a small fee for the use of my images.”  Simply ask what that fee is, and determine at that time how valuable is the picture is worth to you. If the person says no, or the price is too high, kindly thank the person, and move on.  It is that simple, right? Not so fast.

A lot of times, people do not think of the time and effort for that photographer takes to find the perfect moment, mood, and angle for that photo session.  I really had to think about it in the past few months, because, I have a few friends who are photographers, and I recently in the past year or so have been dabbling in the art of photography myself.  I do not have all the filters.  In fact, it is just me, my phone or my Ipad, and the subject.  I also have Photoshop and Lightroom on my desktop.  I had a small camera in the past that I absolutely loved, which was an HP point and shot camera.  It is broken from years of use. The last place I took photos was at Disneyland, around San Diego/Los Angeles/San Bernardino/Hollywood, CA, as well as Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, and Indiana.  That was 2007. After that, it was cameras inside of smartphones and tablets.  I really miss the feel of a real camera, and cameras these days’ upload to YouTube just like smartphones and tablets do. If I can find one that is within my budget of $100-$250 but works like it is in the $500-$850 range, I will be happy. 

Anyway, back to copyrights and ownership….

The same thing about copyright and ownership can be said about any posts written, interviews given, videos, or any music download onto Itunes or Spotify music players.  I recently had a reminder of downloaded music with Spotify.  I am a huge Michael Jackson and Prince Fan, I listen to their music all the time, and today, just like I did with Michael and Whitney Houston when they died, I wanted to drown myself into Prince’s music.  I only found a few pieces of his music on Spotify, and on Pandora. 

I remembered reading that he was heavily against sites like these, because if a person listens to the music without paying to download it (and you don’t if you have Spotify free, I have the premium app), the artist does not get paid the royalties that they deserve.  I think according to Prince, an artist gets maybe $.02 of that money, and he thought artists needed to be paid more money.  This is the reason why more musicians do not allow sites like Spotify to have their music.

Anyway, later on, I was thinking what are his lawyers going to do with any unpublished music, which is now put on the backburner permanently, because of Prince’s death today.  I really did not think the executors and overseers handled Michael Jackson’s estate very well, due to all of the unpublished music Michael had, and they did not allow his family to have a say in it at all.  if that was the case, the family would have decided when that last album would have been released, if at all. To me, it was an unfinished album, and Michael was just a pawn for the producers to get what they wanted.  I do not think any of the album money went towards his mother nor his children.

I wanted to see once again how unfinished that album felt, so I went to the Spotify app on my desktop to pull it up, and they got rid of the music.   I am not protesting, but I think Michael’s family or executors must have threatened to take them to court on the album.  

So the moral of the story is, you do not own a single copy of the music on Spotify, Pandora, or Itunes, none of it.  It is not yours, and it never was yours to begin with, you are just borrowing a copy of that song, and Spotify (or whatever site you are listening to music on) has the right to pull that piece of music whenever the artist or executors of their estate pull out the “Sue” card for illegally playing their music.  

Will I stop using Spotify, Itunes, or Pandora?  No, but I am now more aware that I do not own a copy of the remaining music I listen to.  I am merely borrowing it, and I do not have the right to share it with someone else. 

If you want any type of media, such as music or images, and are very creative, take your own photos (unless noted, most of my photos now have my P. Lynne Designs copyright on it), design it, compose it, or pay someone to do it for you.  If you do the latter, do not forget to give them credit for it.  For $5, you can hire someone from Fiverr to do it for you.   

P.S.... RIP Prince, we will miss you, and thank you for offering your talent to the world

.

Be careful what you "Pin" for, interest deleted

(Photo credit: Ruth Tsang)

I found an interest I love to do online.  I am a Pinterest phonatic (no this is not a typo, I had to find something to go with the word Pinterest).
The concept is pretty simple, you see an item you like, you pin it to the board (on their site of course), others see what you pinned, and they may want to re-pin it.  It is kind of like if Twitter and Instagram had a love child and named it Pinterest ( cue baby lullaby music): "Aw, such as cute little social media child.  It has it's mother's looks and it's father's short attention span."  OK, enough with the social media jokes.
Anyway, I was reading my email (yes I still have those things), and I got a note from them saying that they had to remove one of my pins due to copyright infringement.  "Oh it was nothing I did" they said, It was against a person who either pinned it from the beginning, or they re-pinned it from someone else who did the pinning.  Something to that effect.  In fact, I got two of those nastagrams.  (my word, do not look it up, it means a nasty email).
Here is my question:  If you (the guys who thought of this concept) have this wonderful site, which is a big hit, how can you forget there is a copyright law that as old as dirt?  They should know how people are.  After all, don't they have a Facebook account?   The folks in Washington are all over this, and would love to see courts active in slapping fines on people and shutting down sites that do not adhere to the laws of the land, especially something so trivial as a copyright law.  I got a pinterest account, because I read that I can push products on my boards, someone might see them, and will go to my website to make a purchase.  So as an Independent Longaberger Home Consultant and owner of MDN Creates (soon to be P.Lynn Designs), of course I jumped at the chance, and Longaberger did not have a problem with me placing the products on the board. So, as far as obeying the copyright law, I am good as gold, but I now need to watch what I pin from other places.  So far, only one was problem,it has been pulled, and that originally photo came from Photobucket.  "Wait a minute."  "They sent me an email back in the summer saying that they were shutting down."  "Does that mean they are back in business?"  I cancelled my account because of that announcement.  Well if they going to hold claim to pictures I take, then I do not need them.
Anyway, You no way of knowing if the picture on cats.com forbids you from pin a cute little kitten from their site, so it is always best to take your own pictures, create a blog, and pin it that way.  The best way is look for copyright information on the owner's blog or website.  If it says no copying except for personal use, just limit that copy it to your computer.  I know we all like to share, but it is the only way that you can keep the nastagrams out of your inbox.  You are going to forget, just like me, because we are human.   Just be on point and keep it real.  Re-pinning takes on a whole new meaning, and just trust your gut on this one.  Just ask yourself if it is worth sharing to your group of friends.
Over all, just be careful what you do on the internet everyday, rather it is your stuff or someone else's stuff out there, and you want to share it to the world.   Remember, know what accounts you have, because people can also send you a phishing notice about an account you do not have or once had, or they can be from the country of Niagara claiming to be the royal overseer to the king of many lying eyes, who have decided to to give you over a quarter of billion dollars of snake oil.  You need to claim it fast.    DO NOT CLICK ON THAT EMAIL!!!!. Be safe, Be Blessed, and have a wonderful evening.

P.S:  Document and give credit to the person or site you got it from always works too.