No Fame Like Famous Monsters

Paul Bond just alerted me that he saw the animated cover of a Famous Monsters of Filmland issue featuring some Ray Harryhausen magic on the sidebar of the Destination Nightmare blog. I am honored!

That little animation is hold up the Monster Channel link, and I could not be prouder! here is the animated GIF in all its glory.  Far from perfect, but definitely one I enjoyed making.

Now this is usually where some folks (ahem Cogdog) start getting upset about attribution, but frankly I really don’t care. I take freely from around the web and I sometimes don’t give credit where credit is due, and part of the reason is because the web feels a bit less serious when it is treated as a media free-for-all—which was how it was in the early to mid 90s when I cut my teeth on it. It’s hard for me to shake the sense that discussions around permissions and attribution is driven by the logic of media ownership, but I own very little of what I share on this blog. In fact, it’s the ownership idea of the new web that got my YouTube account deleted with countless takedown notices, and it’s why I have avoided licensing my work on this blog at all. I really don’t care who uses what I’ve written or created here, cause I never felt like it was mine as much as it was a reaction I was having or thing I was engaged in.  I understand the web is more serious now, and the stakes are higher, but then why not abandon the blog and use that fact as the perfect excuse to write a newsletter, or even a book? 🙂  If someone wants to freely take a mashup I did of media I remixed and re-used without permission, than who am I to take issue? I never did the ds106 assignments for credit beyond a comment or two saying “That’s awesome!” That was always enough.  In fact, I am more thrilled to have discovered this is still be found and used in 2019 than anything else, just another thing to make me long for the good old productive years.

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5 Responses to No Fame Like Famous Monsters

  1. Alan Levine says:

    This is a nice thing that happened to a nice person.

    To be clear I am not arguing making regulations for attribution nor am I upset about *my* stuff needing to be attributed (thus my flickr photos are licensed attribution not required).

    Quite a few of my media mashups use stuff that is questionably/obviously not clear for reuse, and this I admit to often.

    I do it as a way to offer thanks, not because of ownership rules. I do it to clearly indicate most of my works are derivative of others, so we have the same attitude expressed differently.

    Nice gif.

    I remember those first gifs fondly.

    • Reverend says:

      I have to bust somebody’s chops, and given you are the only blogger left, it gives me no choice 🙂 I guess I was playing on your bit about linktribution from your recent post, namely:

      What exactly are the issues about attributing? Why is it good to not have to attribute?

      Is it a severe challenge to attribute? Does it hurt? Does it call for technical or academic skills beyond reach? Does it consume great amounts of time, resources? Why, among professional designers and technologists is it such a good thing to be free of this odious chore?

      I can translate this typical reason to use public domain content, “I prefer to be lazy.”

      There is a larger implication when you reuse content and choose not to attribute. Out in the flow of all other information, it more or less says to readers, “all images are free to pilfer. Just google and take them all. Be like me.”

      Seems to me the idea of pilfering images equates it to stealing and then I see the vision of “would you download a car?” in front of the DVD warning for the web 🙂
      And while I get your point, I also feel like what we are seeing is a way to train proper web-based behavior through license-based moralizing. Why have a license at all if you do not really care who uses it or if they give your credit for it? I just think the undercurrent of licensing our work online has helped create fences rather than build communities of gratitude and thanks, but I could be wrong.

  2. Alan Levine says:

    Nothing like a good old fashioned blog squabble! SWAT!

    Yes, my words can look like a tut-tut DVD warning. But I am by no means for enforcing licenses and I’ve had more that enough rants about the focus on licenses. Is anything at all tilting towards a community of gratitude? I can only do what I can to model it. Not because of some threat of copyright cops.

    “Why have a license at all if you do not really care who uses it or if they give your credit for it?”

    This has been my experiment to license flickr photos under the least restrictive license, the ones were people just say it means you can use and not attribute. To see if people do go above and beyond the letter of the license. To not depend on the license. The thing is I get a lot of requests, thanks, and people attributing when they do not have to according to the license.

    Attribution is all positive. I think it matters for its own sake, not because of rules.

    Last blog standing…. stands. There are not many left.

    • Alan Levine says:

      Here we go, I was looking for an old post. Found one where I used an image related to “monkey throwing poo”.

      https://cogdogblog.com/2016/03/passionate-arguments/

      I have more fun scraping around trying to find the source of media than just sticking in my post. Something nearly always crops up I did not expect. Down in my image credits…

      This presents a curious situation. A copyright purist says I have no right to use the image. But there it is. What if there was a world where the default was flipped? That a piece of media was open for reuse UNLESS a copyright was assigned to it?

      Dream on, hippy, dream on.

      That is what I might moralize about… HIPPY!

      • Reverend says:

        I don;t know why I am picking a fight with you of all people about sharing, I gotta get my fucking head examined. I love you, and you know what, you are copy-right!

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