At least one well-meaning but misinformed Random Pixels reader left a comment on yesterday's post that concerns my dust-up with the Miami Herald over the posting on my blog of a couple of low res photos from a Herald slide show."Want to write a blog? Shoot your own pics. Write your own stories. Or link back to the herald instead of copying.""Matt" apparently doesn't read that well.
If he had looked at the post in question carefully he would have seen that I posted two Herald photos - from a 42 picture slide show - along with my own commentary. That's called fair use.
I also included a link to the Herald's slide show page.
What "Matt" doesn't understand - and Herald executives and lawyers choose to ignore - is the fact that those links drive traffic to the Herald's site.
Below is a screen shot of the exit link activity for this blog. The log shows that 20 readers clicked on the link for the Herald photo galleries.
The exit link drill down page (not shown) shows that the activity was over the past three days.
Not a lot.
But those 20 pairs of eyeballs my blog directed to this page on the Herald's web site also saw several ads in addition to the slide shows.
Instead of harassing me, the Herald should thank me. A maybe send a nice check?
Kinda makes you wonder if anyone in charge at One Herald Plaza has any idea what this Internet thingy all about and how it works.
