Please if you do not want to read this whole post, at least read the bold policy change at the bottom. Thank you.
Whew there has been a lot of buzz about Luuux lately! I am absolutely appalled at their lack of control over copyright violations. I am going to be making a concerted effort, inspired by Vampy Varnish, to keep a look out for copyrighted materials on Luuux and reporting them when I find them.
I wanted to take the time to spell out my thoughts on Luuux and the official Gloss Menagerie policy for Luuux users.
First of all, yes I have a Luuux account. The reason I created an account on Luuux is two-fold. I wanted to tap into a new way to reach out and make people aware of this site, because a blog without readers makes me feel like a weirdo who’s just talking to herself. :) Secondly, I love love love that you can donate your Luuux $ to charity. I have not cashed out any of my Luuux $ yet, but when I do, it is 100% going to charity. I haven’t decided which one. Maybe all of them. It depends ultimately on how much I have when I decide to cash out.
Now about those copyright issues. I have only ever posted my own *or* authorized content on there. Any images that were not my own were stock photos or royalty-free images. That is the way Luuux should be used. Simply putting a link back to where you took it from is not always sufficient depending on the type of copyright rules the content owner has in place. Not all copyrights are created equal.
There are a lot of crazy misconceptions about the internet and copyright. Some people even actually believe that anything that is on the internet is not subject to copyright. Seriously. My mom is an English professor and more than once she has caught students plagiarizing internet sources and when confronted, they admit that they did not realize it was in fact plagiarism. REALLY? Really. And of course there are loads of others who know what it is and do it anyway. Well guess what? Just because it’s the internet doesn’t mean you can’t get caught. Sometimes enforcing things on the internet gets a little hairy, but if you piss someone off enough trust me they will find the energy to pursue you through whatever avenues are available to them!
There is also this weird idea people have that if it doesn’t say it’s copyrighted, then it isn’t. Actually, that’s completely untrue and has been that way for decades, even before the internet. The very nature of intellectual property is that its creation implies a copyright to the creator. In other words, every original blog post is copyrighted to its author. Period. Whether or not they have a little blurb or icon saying it is.
One issue though that I might be unpopular for pointing out is this: using someone else’s images is not necessarily copyright violation in and of itself. There is an exception out there called Fair Use. There is lots of information about this on the web, and Wikipedia has a great article that can explain it to you. It outlines specific occasions for which copyrighted material may be used, such as for educational purposes. It is also worth pointing out that Fair Use usually applies to situations where the use of such material does not result in a profit, but making a profit doesn’t automatically negate the use being Fair Use. That all being said, I do not believe the use of blogger images and other content for posting on Luuux is Fair Use. My reasoning is that profits gained on Luuux are specific to the content in question and would not have occurred in any way shape or form without its use.
It is The Gloss Menagerie’s official policy not to allow content to be used on Luuux by users other than myself without explicit written consent. Any Luuux users violating this policy will be reported.
I’m going to be linking this post in my terms of service as a sort of “addendum” as well, but I thought it was worth posting now to get it into the timeline as this issue is a hot one right now.
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