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By Carlos Miller
As some of you may remember, I traveled to Mexico last year to work on a story for Barry University Magazine about a group of local doctors that go down there to operate on poor children who have foot and leg deformities. Here is the article.
Because they were able to only publish a few photos, I put together a 43-photo essay on the slideshow.
If my site has seemed a little shaky lately, it’s because I’ve been swarmed with readers from Digg who are reading Do Police Have the Right to Confiscate your Camera?
Right now, it has received 2,690 Diggs and generated 394 comments on Digg. It also racked up more than 37,000 page views, which falls second to last week’s spike over another story where I received more than 44,000 page views in a single day.
These numbers are great, but they take their toll on my server, knocking my site off several times throughout the day.Right now I’m using Go Daddy with no contract. Before I was using Lunar Pages. Neither could handle the high traffic days. And neither can any other company I’ve researched, if I don’t pay at least a $100 a month., which I am unable to afford because this economy along with my appeal, is strangling me financially.
I feel like the tenant who keeps getting kicked out of his apartment because he keeps throwing wild parties inviting everybody from Digg to Reddit to Fark and all the rest
So I’m wondering if anybody knows anybody who would be willing to donate server space for this blog.
As you know, this is not a dear diary blog but a news blog which strives to produce stories you won’t find anywhere else, as well as document First Amendment violations and educate people about their rights when it comes to photography. I would hope it can lead to some type of long-term situation where I would not be forced to move in a few months.
Maybe there is somebody out there who believes in the Cause, the Fight, the First Amendment, who wouldn’t mind donating some server space to me to help me keep it going.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Fernandez, as I mentioned in a 
5 responses so far ↓
1 Ms Calabaza // Jan 23, 2009 at 7:50 PM
Great pics and I love your new slide setup …
2 Chaz McCabe // Jan 24, 2009 at 12:43 AM
How much disk space, what software, etc. do you need? I’d be willing to share my resources.
Thanks,
Chaz
3 Ms Calabaza // Jan 24, 2009 at 8:50 AM
Carlos,
off topic, but here’s an interesting case. I’d love to read your opinion on the lawsuit. How do you like Michael Yon’s photography?
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/05/sicko-michael-moore-swipes-michael-yons.html
4 Carlos Miller // Jan 25, 2009 at 4:53 PM
Ms C,
I had never heard of Michael Yon nor this lawsuit until now.
I did some more research on it and it appears that Moore had been ignoring requests from Yon’s attorney to remove the photo.
But when I clicked on Moore’s website, I did not see the photo anywhere, so it looks like he removed it.
However, a Jan. 16, 2009 NY Post article states that the lawsuit is proceeding.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/01172009/postopinion/editorials/michael_moores_comeuppance_150532.htm
The problem I see with this whole case is that both sides are trying to politicize this when it’s really just a case of copyright violation, nothing else.
Moore is being accused of posting the photo to imply that American troops are killing children.
But the other side is saying the photo actually implies that American troops are saving children.
But the photo speaks for itself and nothing else. It is an excellent photo which captures a millisecond of a war that has lasted six years so far.
People are always going to come away with their own deductions of a photo regardless of what one side says or the other side says.
But the photo was not manipulated, so it will be hard to prove that Moore deliberately tried to misinterpret the photo.
It was basically used without Yon’s permission, which is a copyright violation.
As bloggers, we do that all the time under the “fair use” section of the Copyright Law which allows the use of a photo for news and research purposes.
When I use other people’s photos, I do it to accompany a particular article and I always credit the photographer.
However, Moore apparently used this image in his header, so it doesn’t appear that he was using it in a journalistic manner but in a manner to promote his blog (or his agenda).
Now I haven’t seen how he used it, I’m just going by what I read.
The other issue is unlike most bloggers, Moore is a multimillionaire, so it’s not like he can’t afford to pay the proper licensing fee to use the photo.
But I’m wondering exactly how long Moore had the photo on his site. Was it one week? Two weeks? Five months?
And I’m wondering if he did, in fact, ignore requests to remove the photo because all I’m reading are a bunch of right-wing pundits, including Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post.
The other question that should be asked is if Moore actually made money off the photo, which I doubt.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Anyway, I checked out Yon’s site and his story is pretty impressive. He’s basically an independent blogger covering the war.
I also looked though his photos and they were decent. I didn’t see any that stood out as the one in question. Most were just snapshots.
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/
5 Ms Calabaza // Jan 26, 2009 at 9:23 AM
Carlos,
you’re right, it’s become politicized but I’m curious to see if he can still go after him for copyright infringement. It is quite a touching picture.
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