Perhaps Someone Needs A Spanking
It’s a common practice on this blog for me to link to a spanking story elsewhere on the internet with a few words of commentary (usually positive) and a short quote from the story. Credit to the author is always given when the author is known.
This practice respects copyright law (under the doctrine of fair use for the purpose of commentary) so long as the quoted portion is small in proportion to the overall work. More to the point, most authors of non-commercial spanking fiction are delighted by the attention and the traffic. In the rare case where an author is not pleased, I’m always happy to remove the quoted matter upon request, despite my legal right to use such material. Such removal upon request constitutes simple courtesy to the author.
Unfortunately, courtesy is in short supply these days. My good mood was considerably dampened by the receipt of a letter regarding a small excerpt from a long and excellent spanking story, referenced on this blog last May. The story author wrote and in the rudest terms accused me of theft, suggested that I should abandon this blog enterprise in favor of writing my own original stories, and intimated that people like me were making her stop writing stories. She also demanded that I remove the story quote.
Of course, that request was immediately complied with.
Update: Originally I had a short quote from the author’s email above. She has now written back demanding that I remove all links to her, mentions of her, and all emails from her from my site. She was also aggrieved, somewhat contradictorily, because I had edited her email by excluding the paragraph that identified her and her story and that included the first part of her complaint about my use of her materials without permission. In any case, I’ve honored her request to the extent of removing the actual text of her email. This discussion, and the original post (with links, but sans quote) will remain. Her desire not to “be associated” with this site doesn’t give her the right not to be mentioned, not after she sends me rude emails.
Let me be completely clear about my linking policy. Links are the blood and sinew of the internet, and breaking them is vandalism. I don’t remove links upon request, especially if the request is rude. If you own something and put it on the public internet, you don’t get to decide who links to you. If you don’t want links, remove your resource, or don’t put it up in the first place.
Not sure if this is helpful but here is the W3C consortium’s policy on deep linking.
Essentially the law is this:
1) If you are selling another’s work you need a license regardless if you get there by link. That policy does not apply to informational sites like this one since you are providing information I’d assume 1st amendment protections apply (see Sidewalk v Ticketmaster)
2) Framing another’s work to make it appear as part of your site is a violation of copyright without a license
3) Linking is protected under the first amendment.
Tell the author of those letters to shove it.