A Tea Addict's Journal

Paranoia

November 19, 2008 · 5 Comments

I’ve always been a little paranoid about putting all this stuff online. Being an aspiring academic, I don’t like the possibility of somebody taking my work without any sort of attribution. At one point I had my photo album closed off for precisely that reason, although I’ve since decided maybe it’s better to leave it open.

So things like this really has me paranoid. Now I’ve added a little Creative Commons license icon on the bottom right of this page. Not that it has stopped people, but it does, I hope, serve to remind people to respect other people’s work, however publicized it might seem to be.

Categories: Misc · Old Xanga posts
Tagged:

5 responses so far ↓

  • mulcahyfeldman // November 19, 2008 at 11:32 pm | Reply

    Welcome to the world of publishing. It’s a jungle out there. Attach a note to your site asking for attribution whenever any of your information is used, be it photographs or copy from your text. I’m sure it’s quite bad for bloggers but for us in the industry, we’re always having to watch out for those who steal copy and ideas and stories. Now that you are having your work published, it’s even more critical to protect it, but it’s not always a successful venture. You have a wealth of information sitting out there which, if in book form, would be proprietary but still subject to plagiarism. You need to publish a book gathering lots of these past blogs, which, I assume, could also be incorporated into your doctoral thesis. The information is invaluable, would be copyrighted and less susceptible to usurpation by those who are inclined to steal others good work. So you need to do two books, one of your blogs for those of us who need the information on brewing, choice of tea, storage and equipment, and the other on history, language, and the cultural evolution which has brought us to the tea point we are at today. Maybe they could be companion volumes such as “The Time of Tea” by Bruno Suet and Dominique Pasqualini. I have no doubt you could carry this off.
    Speaking from experience, Eileen

  • MarshalN // November 19, 2008 at 11:46 pm | Reply

    @mulcahyfeldman – 

    Want to hook me up with a publishing deal if I can’t find a real job? 🙂

  • MANDARINstea // November 20, 2008 at 11:18 am | Reply

    Eileen could be your literary agent and I can package your product…. how’s that for a thought?
    Wait, and who gonna sell it?
    : ) T

  • mulcahyfeldman // November 21, 2008 at 9:55 am | Reply

    I’m only a poor newspaper publisher and you know what they’re saying about newspapers these days although I think we tend to do better in bear economies when people stay closer to home and pay more attention to what’s available locally. (Of course, there’s no real tea in Arkansas.) That said, I’m serious about your book possibilities. Since Toki has offered to step in as agent, I think you should take him up on that. He’s got the graphic capabilities, although I don’t think you’re severely lacking in that area, you’ve just been busy. You have a wealth of knowledge — of tea, language and history — which many would like to share in a more permanent sphere than a blog. Tea books are flying off the shelves at a record pace, and yours would indeed be a work of art. Toki, as agent, is geographically placed to canvas major publishing houses which have an interest in such tomes. (Clarkson Potter, Hearst, Simon and Schuster all have New York offices and there are plenty others who would probably be eager to accept an unsolicited manuscript of the kind that your collaboration could produce.) I can already see it being reviewed in “The Art of Eating,” which gave a good oomph to Kevin Gascoyne in his earlier days as tea maven. Even if you get that ‘real job’ as you say, and I’m sure that you will, with your special expertise, you should seriously consider a book. You have such a wealth of highly specialized information in your head, it could be to your advantage (financially) to share. Have you already published your doctoral thesis?

  • mulcahyfeldman // November 29, 2008 at 10:21 am | Reply

    All of that said, thievery is a big problem, in our business too. There is really no way to stop it but if you see it happen, you must immediately contact the thief or the plagiarizer and threaten them for taking your intellectual property. Demand recompense. Demand a correction with attribution. You can’t say “Oh, well,” and let it go because they’ll keep doing it. It’s a problem in any business dealing with ideas, words, the intellect. Eileen

Leave a Comment