Thursday, March 31

Ramblings on plagiarism, blogs, censorship, Internet... and sadness caused by a mere copy and paste















The post below is black reminding Brazilian dictatorship times when newspapers published black squares representing articles that were censured.

Since I discovered that not one, not two but maybe all the posts of this blog were copied and pasted at another blog, at blogspot, that uses the same template and colors of this blog I have this strange feeling that I was censured.


It is funny that it makes no difference if the posts are published at another place because their meaning, their souls are twisted. Copying and pasting is something that was always done and those who were students before the Internet, like me, copied from books, encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers some material and transformed it or used it to back some of their thoughts.


Of course plagiarism always existed but it is not the case here. What I am trying to explain is that even thou the posts are there the ambient created in a page like blogs aggregates meaning to the parts. Each post has a relation with others and the badges the awards, the blog list, everything at the page gives sense to each post. I'm sure you can hear the voice of the blogger when you are visiting a blog. 


It's a great phenomenon what is happening and I believe that in the future some changes will be done that will put this voice in a higher tone. Posts are supposed not to be long so the relationship between them are stronger. 


Still, I'm feeling robbed and I confess that for the moment I lost the energy to keep going. What I try to do here at this Hella Heaven is empowering and saying a yes to humanity. Whenever I hear someone saying things like "the more I know about human beings the more I like my dog" I feel sad. Losing faith in ourselves is the worse that can happen. 


So I do my best to show what many people created of good, beautiful, genius and how many people are fighting for a better understanding of human condition and a better world. This is at the back of my mind at every post. Even those who talk about hideous things. For the moment, I will take a break. 


I would also like to explain that all I do here depend on other people's work, especially the images. I have some materials that are mine but 90% of this blog is the pleasure of sharing what I learned and discovering what people are doing, or did. I always put the credit and only those images that after been copied many times lost the owner and it is no more possible to know who they are and some few that the owner doesn't care being the author.


I try to show people's work and I know that it is the way I see them that is here but I try to give the word to the creator, so... I copy and paste their testimonies after my two cents. In a few posts I only show the work of the artist with the links and it seems there is no merit in that. 


However I would like to remember that it took me a lot of study to know when I'm in front of something that is really good and one of the things people tell me when they talk about my blog is that they like the work or these artists. It is not easy to search and find good images thus... the coping. Those who don't know how to analyse in seconds what is good or not need blogs like this one. 


But this is not the reason why I was doing it - a creation of a database of images - and if someone is using it this way I will not continue. That is it. I hope I made myself clear and for the moment take good care! The image is from the Brazilian artist Antonio Manuel, that in 1973 exposed this newspaper for 24 hours, the period of time a newspaper lasted, in an exhibition. We were under dictatorship and Antonio Manuel did a great work. What 


I would like to ask from those who are giving us a free space like blogspot.com or wordpress.com is to take blogger's work seriously because stealing from bloggers is happening to many people. It is quite discouraging. I wonder why it is so hard to some people to attribute what they are publishing to the person who did it. I have no idea. All I is that I saw many bloggers feeling the same I am experiencing.