Slate.com borrows my frustration?
My brother emailed me today to let me know that Slate.com had a story on that Century 21 commercial that pissed me off. It wasn't a real surprise... I mean, after all, it is one of the most emasculating thirty seconds that ever stuck to celluloid.However, when I went to Slate.com and clicked their "watch the ad here" link... I was surprised that the quicktime of the commercial was playing THROUGH MY WEBSITE?! I can only assume the writer stumbled upon the blog entry, watched the video, and decided to write a similarly scathing opinion of the she-devil and her nefarious real estate agent. No big deal.
Except that when the writer decided to describe the wife to his readers... he chose these words:
Meanwhile, the wife (who looks like a more hostile Mary Louise Parker—though she lacks MLP's patented bone-dry delivery)
Now, here's my description of the wife:
Again, can someone tell me what the opposing point of view is to this freckled, angry, in-your-face, Mary-Louise-Parker-look-alike's verbal assault?
Hey pal... I need to you step away from my Mary Louise Parker references from now on. They're all I have. As for the article? Not bad.
(NOTE: I relinked the video of the commercial here.)
posted by Russell Arch at
4/11/2006
9 Comments:
you should change the video on the link the writer used to point to your blog entry.
Plagerism aint pretty!
hmmm, not sure if it's really plagerism since the link is a reference to this blog ... which is how I got here ... a url pretty accurately describes a source of information, so what's the problem? Bandwidth? This is blogger though ... and posting YouTube vids although sanctioned by YouTube is pretty much the same thing.
First off, I (the blog owner) never used the word "plagerism".
Second, the URL points to a page containing only the Quicktime file. As far as I know, there's no link to the blog entry at all on the Slate page. Maybe you're savvy enough to eliminate everything but the INDEX address... but most people aren't.
And lastly... YOUTUBE has an ID tag in the corner of every video as it plays. Now if I re-captued this video... and then put my website address in the corner, we'd be closer to the same action.
So how can we see the commerical russell? How could it be plagerism richard when he does not own the commercial?
I'd just like to see the commercial. Where can I do that? The link from slate is broken...
Russell, I'm glad you posted the video, and I'm sorry you if you feel slighted (and I'm not saying you are).
Although I never heard of you before Slate linked to your site, so in the end you win (and just to avoid a response I imagine coming ... no, I am not special, I just mean if you gained one reader (me) you probably gained a bunch of others too).
I now have watched and read a bunch of your stuff, and probably will come back on multiple occasions in the future.
Jesse: I don't think it's plagerism to post a link to someone's content that they've made public via a URL. And yeah, the original commercial belongs to Century 21, so it definetely isn't plagerism.
However using Russell's description of the actress is walking the line, very closely, and yeah, they shoulda given you credit like, "as one Blogger said ... " or something, with a link to Russell's blog. It's just the right thing to do.
I plan on keeping the video up as long as I can. My bandwidth is not as large as I'd like... and after all... this entire site isn't dedicated to blogging.
Anyone who would like to "mirror" this file... let me know.
It's really the tip of the iceberg. Check out Newsweek.com's article about the exploitation of the two-legged dog and thier link to your video. Just kidding. What it really makes you wonder, though, is which came first. His indignation at the commercial or his stumbling upon your site. I Googled several forms of "Century 21 ad" and not one brought your site up near the top. So did he see the commercial, have an inspiration for an article and just need a link to view the video. (Doesn't it seem he would then have searched and linked YouTube directly?) Or does he visit your site (and others) and fish for ideas. Pretty lazy, unimaginative and fucked up if it's the latter (if you ask me).
The fact that my original blog entry was posted one month ago made me think that he had to have seen my site.
After 8,000 visitors watched the video from my site... I decided to write the author (Seth Stevenson) an email asking him why I wasn't given some sort of mention for, at least, hosting the video.
My reply from Seth:
i originally had a paragraph about the gender dynamics of the ad, in
which i quoted a sentence from your entry. my editor cut that paragraph, so the link to your written entry disappeared.
He also said that he originally linked to the commercial through Century21.com, but that their lawyers wouldn't let them post 'em.
I find it funny that the Century21 lawyers would even know about his article prior to publishing. Not to mention that, before I hooked up my computer to my Tivo, I scoured the internet (and Century21.com) looking for this ad, and could not find it.
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