First, read Krolik's post from earlier today. It's excellent.
Secondly, if you've noticed a bunch of "image not available" holes here or on Heaven and Here, it's because my Flickr account has disappeared. At this point, I'm pretty sure it had something to do with my complete and total disregard for copyright laws. Or that other, absolutely irredeemable branch of it, in which it matters if I use an image of someone's ugly relative.
As you know, I've spent as much time looking for pictures as I have writing these things. So that's hours and hours of my life down the drain. Not to mention I now have a basically un-readable. This place is now a wasteland, and I don't have the time or energy to go back and fix it now. Realistically, there were about five-hundred images in that account; do you know how long it would take to just add a single, cursory one into each bombed-out post? Or even to make them totally image-less?
If any of you know how to clone my brain, bring it to maturity instantly, and get it to search for new images, please tell me. Or if someone wants to be an unpaid intern of some sort. Or knows how to travel back in time, using a machine found in a bank vault, and recall what I was thinking when I found these things.
Otherwise, you have heard the last from me until something else happens.
Update: Brilliant idea, MC Welk:
And I am getting somewhat into the idea of FD as this great, po-mo wreckage of thoughts and ideas. Like it was written less than three years ago but already has taken on the quality of far-off ruins. Actually, I used to feel that way about the archives even before the Great Loss.
Dude, take it easy. Leave the old posts picture-less. And honestly, I appreciate all the effort you put into this site, and that you are a perfectionist. But the pictures in-and-of themselves never made FreeDarko for me. It was a nice touch, a gimmick (if you will accept that term without the negative connactations) to make the site stand out. But it was not, and is not, what Free Darko is.
ReplyDeleteSo let it go, and concentrate on what makes the site! Your writing, the occasion great guest post, and the occasion wack post by Brown Recluse ;)
And if you are worried about layout issues: You can replace the pictures with some new gimmick we can't comprehend....
Freedarko is like a great railroad. The track behind us has been destroyed... but we weren't going back. We move perpetually forward, regardless of will. Your words will serve as the railwork in shambles, even if scrappers have stolen all the track.
ReplyDelete(Insert the most polite way to say get over it here)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lostamerica/sets/72157600059925124
ReplyDeleteI, too, express my condolences for your loss. But I hope you can find it in you to soldier on; don't let yahoo-induced Internet chicanery keep you from your craft.
ReplyDeleteshoals, I'd like to second SML - and as the next 40 comments will attest, freedarko's writing can stand on its' own merits. i understand the pictures have been an inextricable part of the overall presentation but they were never the reason I kept coming back.
ReplyDeleteit's like the artwork and liner notes from a record - it's always a plus when a lot of thought is put into them, but the music is what really matters*.
shit, dudes didn't stop making beats when biz markie got sued, you know? anyways, I know FD epitomizes "labor of love" so I guess if you're not feeling it, you're not feeling it. but I very much hope that ya reconsider. cheers.
*the exception - gatefold lps - Crass were the absolute masters of this and cramming awesome posters and extensive liner notes in
I came here for the pictures. Especially the nudie ones.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Jason at BallHype still has some of them from that slide show he put together
ReplyDeleteYep, I've still got ~2000 images from between 1/2005 and 6/2007. Getting them re-inserted into all of the old posts might require a small army of interns, though.
ReplyDeleteIf only you you knew a Senior Editor at Yahoo Sports who might be able to pull some strings to get your Flickr account restored ...
To expand upon JG's thought, even if you didn't know people at Yahoo, contacting Flickr directly by email and phone to discuss restoration of your account would probably be worth your time.
ReplyDeleteAnd if they give some copyright runaround, send out a call to the FD legal corps.
I've emailed them, and heard back once. But after reading through their help page some more, and seeing what they've said to other people in this situation, the outlook is not good.
ReplyDeleteI'll try to bring this up in my next IP Law class.
ReplyDeleteAlways loved the pictures, but I rarely go back and read old posts. Stream of consciousness revolts against archival memory.
The pics are like reading people's word verification poetry.
rbmpojbk-reebok-suited mountie police at toronto mall can't decide between orange juice and burger king.
that video is a moving tribute.
ReplyDeletethis kind of cheered me up:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlehem_shoals
Congrats on making it into Wikipedia, though I'm shocked and horrified to find that "Bethlehem Shoals" is rumored to be a pseudonym . . .
ReplyDeleteThe pictures did kind of help to give the brain a break back in the days of the babelfish-filtered prose, but now that the writing is more straightforward, they're not as big a deal. I think you are just tripping because the new Wire has sucked so very much.
ReplyDeleteShoals, you might also try incorporating your own copyright-related argument in any communications with these Yahoos. Although you may have fully incorporated copyrighted works into your work on FD and H&H, your use of them was arguably sufficiently transformative to bring the incorporation within fair use. By Flickr cutting off your access to the photos, they are in effect depriving you of your own protected work.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a stretch, but if they're just reacting to "copyright concerns" it might not hurt to place similar concerns on the other side of the balance.
Please G-d, someone tell me that they saw that cokehead sitting behind George Karl in the Lakers/Nuggets game on Tuesday. They showed him twice for about 15 to 20 seconds at a time. Wide eyed and mouth just freaking out all over itself. If anybody DVR'd that game check out the beginning of the 2nd quarter right before Kobe goes to the line for some FTs. It will become a youtube classic if anyone can find it.
ReplyDeleteShoals' name is easy enough to find on the World Wide Web. And I'm hopeful there is a way to get the pictures back. So this is pretty much National Treasure 3: The Shoals Scrolls.
ReplyDeleteThe writing is the turkey. The pictures are cranberry sauce.
I like Mr. Six's argument.
ReplyDeleteFrom hereon out, FD should "create" all of its own images: photo, crayon, daguerreotype, charcoal, collage, poems in the shape of their subjects, etc.
Here's something to chew on: fonts are not currently copyrightable, by federal regulation (see 37 C.F.R. 202.1(e)). Wait till we get to the day when people can start copyrighting various iterations of the alphabet.
Maybe it is time to hang it up. I have been lurking at this site since within a week of its inception, and for a long while it ranked among the very best entertainments the internet had to offer. But I wonder if this blog hasn't come to a logical stopping point.
ReplyDeleteI present three arguments in my favor. First, the blog's namesake. What was once a slogan of considerable drawing power is now an abstraction, a footnote, and in truth a distracting irrelevancy. With the benefit of hindsight, we see Darko not as the martyr but as the punchline. History repeating itself, this time as farce.
Second, the endless, interminable, slightly hysterical discussion over what is or what is not canonically "FD." Such pernicious nitpicking was not be found in the earlier, brighter days of this blog, which had a bold and forward-looking aspect. Those days of forceful pronouncement are gone, replaced by endlessly bickering over minutiae and semantic definition. In the early days, it might simply be pronounced that "Player X is FD.", with the reader left to discern the particulars that made it so. Now, we get a guaranteed minimum of 1500 words explaining the point, with a further guaranteed minimum of 6 commentators explaining why it is not so. Quibbling over doctrine has become a replacement for innovation.
Third is the general acceptance of the Free Darko message by the mainstream blogosphere, and even the media at large. The main contributors to the site have found paying gigs elsewhere (and let me be the first to say congratulations and more power to them.) The presence of new and larger soapboxes makes the original irrelevant, it would seem. The site's founders and contributors were the vanguard of revolution, but that revolution is incipient now in the public consciousness, and has been adopted at large elsewhere. As we know from history, the concept of an orthodox vanguard, the idea of a "permanent revolution", is a dangerous thing indeed.
In closing let me return to the first and most holy commandment: THIS IS A LEAGUE OF STARS. Just over three years and probably over a million words later, I think the point is well taken.
Strongly disagree with dickie. If you think it's time to hang it up, you can leave. Keep the love coming.
ReplyDeleteThis is just dreadful. I didn't just come here for the pictures, in some real sense, I only started following basketball because of them. It was an incredible collection. I always wondered how you dealt with Flickr's irritability about linking.
ReplyDeleteAs for whether you continue, eh. I'd rather read you here, with the full palette of obtuseness and freed from the restrictions of relevant, legal images, but I can't really begrudge you the business model.
7.5 PSI
Not to spit on anyone's sandwich, but I see where Dickie's coming from.
ReplyDeleteI'm also, more practically, concerned with finishing and selling the book. Right now, we're spending a ton of time arguing about stuff that would make great posts, as well as writing a fair amount. Oh, and there are drawings and diagrams galore being hatched. So in a way, it's like trying to do two FreeDarko's at once. Except that one is a lot more exciting, since it's uncharted territory, thought out for more than an hour, etc.
At the same time, I'm going to want to write about the playoffs as they happen. Here. No matter where else I'm contributing to. And, for marketing purposes, this site needs to be alive and kicking when 2008-09 rolls around.
Sorry if that was more transparency than you wanted, but I hope that both gets some of the behind-the-scenes concerns out there, and explains some of whatever happens next.
As long as it's a Turkey sandwich:
ReplyDeletewww.memo13.com/images/haberler/0801203_Hedo333.jpg
think you can at least hold off till the writers' strike is over?
ReplyDeleteany writing like krolik's latest piece should keep getting posted on freedarko regardless of if there are pictures or not.
ReplyDeleteplus, the nba playoffs without the FD msg boards would be more devastating than
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tnAMC1pDDM4
yo son....love & death foeva. sorry for yr loss and wish i could help!
ReplyDeleteI like the transparency, Shoals. It provides us with a rudimentary framework on which to hang your pieces and our own observations.
ReplyDeleteCan you use Getty Images for Free Darko, or for professional use only?
inbfbv: Italy never bought free Brevin Knight.
Okay, more transparency: in the FD league, I just traded Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler for Josh Smith and Joe Johnson. My team is in need of either revision, fun, or both, plus the numbers aren't too shaky. And I have Nash, too.
ReplyDeleteAlso, can someone please tell me if this guy hates me, loves me, or les two? THNX.
sounds like he's saying you're good at talking about things without really knowing about things. which is the best talent in the world.
ReplyDeleteKeep running
ReplyDeletedsnice i like your blog
ReplyDeletevery very nice
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