Tim Ireland’s appeal for support

Bloggerheads vs Guido Fawkes

Blog wars are threatening to break out again, this time between Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads and Paul Staines at Guido Fawkes, I’ve been asked to express support by Tim as he faces a possible libel action from Paul. The gist of the story is that Guido is accused of leeching, and bandwidth theft over images.

Now I’m a fine one to talk, I admit to regularly “lifting” images, almost exclusively from Google’s cache of thumbnails for use in my satirical Photoshopped efforts and to illustrate straight forward posts. There seems to be an almost accepted internet culture in doing this. However, I do not “leech” or hotlink, or steal bandwidth from any image  creators or other’s websites, apart from YouTube, Google Video, and Daily Motion where the video creator has allowed distribution in this manner.

(Now there’s a good question – do Google ever go to any lengths to ask permission to use everyone’s images? Answer – NO)

Whatever images, or parts of images, or sections of graphics edited by myself are hosted on private servers in the USA which do not have any affect on bandwidth or service of other website owners. In as much as the original image is left in place, as is, without any alteration, I am not a bandwidth thief.

Additionally, if for any reason at all, owners of intellectual property rights are in any way offended or upset by any manipulation, editing, or showing without permission of their copyright images on this site then I am only too pleased to correspond via email to reach a satisfactory agreement.

Whenever, I have used images, for example by Beau Bo D’or or The Spine, I have linked back exactly as requested, credit where credit is due.

Not sure if the same can be said for Guido, at least that would be my opinion after reading Tim’s analysis of the situation and his email exchanges with Paul’s legal advisors. I have a funny feeling Tim will not be seeing his day in court, but we’ll keep watching just in case.