No, Thank YOU Matton Images

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but good manners are becoming more important to me in my business relationships.

Recently, we finished a website for scan | design foundation and during development had purchased four stock images. Two from PhotoDisc now Getty Images and two from a smaller stock house, Matton Images. I buy a fair amount of stock photography for clients as part of our website redesign service and have tried a number of stock houses including the very inexpensive iStock. But, never in the ten years that I have been purchasing stock photography have I ever received a thank you note.

I was shocked when I received Matton Images' beautiful thank you cards. One contained a well-written printed note about putting the petal to the metal and the other, smaller card, contained my passwords for logging into their site. How thoughtful! How many of us need to maintain a secret list of usernames and passwords to enter all of our service sites? Good job Matton Images, we'll definitely keep you in mind for future client work.

The web is not some public domain free-for-all!

Learn the copyright laws in regard to website content (text, images and programming). A little common courtesy is all that’s needed to avoid aggravating someone or getting sued. Plus, if you "borrow" something from another website you not only take yourself down, but if you're a professional web designer, you take your client down too.

Recently, a custom map illustration that I commissioned for one of my clients was screen-captured then used on another site. How do I know it was screen-captured? Because I used that illustration in the custom interactive Flash map that I designed and developed. (Flash animations are embedded into HTML so they can’t be dragged onto a desktop.) Now, what really fries me is that my clients paid good money to have me create custom artwork and interactivity for them to add value to their site, then some “affordable” web design firm thinks they can leverage that work for their own clients – for free! Without so much as an email to see if it’s OK with my client that they use the artwork. My clients are generous but they didn’t pay for custom work to share it with the world. One of the services we provide as a web design firm is to create custom websites that standout from the crowd and we do that with original artwork and programming.

What kills me is this situation would be totally different if the other web design firm had just emailed me first and asked if they could use a copy of the artwork we had developed for our client. I would have been flattered and called the client on their behalf to see if it was OK. Instead support they’ve managed to show me how little they want to be a good business neighbor.

Unless artwork, text, or programming specifically says Freeware, Shareware or Public Domain, it’s nice to ask before you take – it’s just good manners and may keep you and your client out of hot water. An email only takes a few seconds to write. Most sites have a contact page or a contact email in the footer and most web designers put a link back to their site under the footer – any of those email addresses are a good place to start. Even freeware and shareware usually request a link back to the owner or some form of recognition in exchange for use.

If you don’t see a copyright notice don’t assume that the content on a website is public domain. See the excerpt from the U.S. government’s copyright laws below.

US Copyright Laws
“Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.

NOTE: The use of a copyright notice is no longer required under U. S. law, although it is often beneficial.”

Reproduced from: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wci

FlashForward - Seattle!

After traveling to San Francisco last year for a three-day conference, FlashForward 2006 came to our very own Trade and Convention Center this year. It's now produced entirely by Lynda.com - a huge feat. Lynda.com is the go-to business for learning just about any software application via online videos. And, I think all of our collective whining about the lack of real substance at the San Francisco conference was heard as this year an additional day was added to the conference of day-long workshops - ahhh! I went to a day-long workshop on Actionscript. A lot has changed since the days of tell target scripting in Flash 4.0! And, the "giveaways" were better too including a waterbottle - how NW! (Photo includes: waterbottle, CDs, keyboard brush, Lynda.com mouse keychain that lights up, FlashForward pin (feel the pride!), Lynda.com pencil (?), box of breath mints (a conference essential!), FlashForward Livestrong-like orange bracelet (feel the pride!).) Not pictured is a gray Lynda.com gray balloon. All in all very worth the $199 fee for a day-long workshop.