Sunday, August 26, 2007

Worst blog footer ever

So I'm doing link jumping from a post on BoingBoing to a story about how "The Secret" is crap, and just generally glorifying in feeling mui superioso to those who write, market and spank this garbage. I got no beef with the poor people who buy these books; we all have to try lots of stupid stuff before we find something that actually has, well... any reality in it. The path to success, as The Beginner's Mind will show, is paved with stones of failure. So fail on! hopeful "The Secret" readers... the fact that you're trying is at least a step in the right direction (on a particularly obnoxious stone of failure).

Anyway... while doing so, I was checking out the writings and blogs of some of the people in what some of the lovely skeptical writers call the "New Wage Movement." Classic. One of these blogs -- the posts of which are almost all about the author's books, tapes, etc. and filled with links to his other sites -- had the following footer at the bottom of EVERY post:
 

All writings here are copyrighted by John Doe. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts.
 
If you like the free articles on this blog, let John know by buying him his all-time favorite gift - an Amazon gift certificate. His email is xxx@xxx.com Click here
Wow. I mean, just... wow. First of all, I hope I'm not in trouble for "using" his footer without his permission. I did remove his name (it's not John Doe) and email address, as I don't want to give the site any more link love. But for a guy who's selling good-feeling, happy-happy new age drivel... having a copyright notice on every single post is, well... Not so touchy-feely. And a request to send him an Amazon gift certificate if you like the "free articles on this blog" is... well, I'm speechless. 

It's super that he gives us the right, though, to "link to the posts or give out a link." 'Cause, you know... if you don't say that, it's like, a violation of IP law to link to stuff. I bet you didn't know that. You may also not have known that anything you write is automatically copyrighted, even without a statement like that. On every post.

From a marketing standpoint, what does the above say about the author? Well, first it says, "I don't know much about copyright." Also, to me, it says, "I expect you to rip off my stuff, so... watch out!" Third, it says he don't know diddly about how people who actually do stuff on the Internet use links. Fourth, it says that he doesn't get what blogs are about, if he's asking for gifts for the enjoyment of same. Since he's hyper-rich, too, it's weird that he's begging for Amazon-bucks.

All in all, I just found this creepy bad.

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