Starship Asterisk*

Asterisks,

To my surprise, there seems to be a rather large online community that is enjoying APOD content ... without realizing it originates from APOD.

So I just joined Google Plus actively for the first time this week because I had heard that there was an active astronomy writers community there. What there appears to be is an "Astronomy" "circle" where indeed several prominent astronomy writers appear to be members. Anyway I was checking my Google Plus "Stream" of posts going by, mostly from this circle, and to my surprise, APOD content came by. Well it had a thumbnail APOD image and the APOD text verbatim. It was posted by an account named "Earth". Looking at it more closely, though, this Google Plus post never mentioned APOD explicitly nor linked back to the APOD from which the text was taken. What it does do is list the astrophotographer and cite the source as "http://www.nasa.gov/".

I found that disappointing. I posted in the comments that APOD should be cited explicitly ... and never got a response. So I sent a personal message to "Earth" saying essentially that the APOD text is technically copyrighted (although NASA and the APOD mirror sites can us it for free) and so in exchange for a link to the right APOD, they can continue on as they were. I think this is OK since they are using only a thumbnail of the image. Still no response, as yet. Here's the kicker -- this "Earth" user is followed by over 47,000 Google Plus users. Wow -- that's getting up near APOD's daily page views to its main page.

Now I like and encourage APOD mirrors, on Google Plus or wherever. What I don't like is that APOD gets no credit there. If people have any thoughts on how I can change this, please volunteer them. Perhaps if several people sent in similar complaints, "Earth" might hear the group -- a situation perhaps similar to "Horton Hears a Who".

After this experience, I went back on Facebook, a site I am a little more familiar with. I searched anew to see if the same thing was going on there. Turns out it is, to a lesser degree. First and foremost is the excellent Facebook APOD presence run by bystander which is closing in on 10K followers. (Yea bystander!) But there is another presence called "astronomy picture of the day" (lower case) that is run by "Artist" that, although clearly mentioning APOD, does not link back to the relevant page(s). Oddly, this Facebook page(s) have (just) OVER 10K followers. Now this Facebook user sometimes runs non-APOD images and text, so the situation is a bit more confused.

Does anyone know of any other uncatalogued APOD mirrors that have a large following? I guess one definition for "large" is 10K or more.

One advantage of asking these "new technology mirror" sites like Google Plus to link back to APOD is that APOD can then receive credit and so be on firmer ground with NASA, for example.

- RJN

You can probably contact Google and Facebook directly and require/request that any such posts/pages be properly linked. They're very sensitive about not becoming sites perceived as legal free-for-alls and will likely enforce your request.

Rob

I posted links to APOD on some of the posts at the rogue FB site. Don't know whether the admin will take the hint; I'm thinking not.

I think contacting FB and Google is a great idea.

He definitely didn't take the hint; he deleted my posts linking to the original APOD site and has blocked me from posting there.

I tried reporting the page. Only RJN can do it. I guess I could try reporting the posts.

owlice wrote:He definitely didn't take the hint; he deleted my posts linking to the original APOD site and has blocked me from posting there.

I also did this. My posts have also been deleted, but I haven't been blocked. Of course, all I did was post the link. I don't know what owlice did.

I linked to the original APOD, citing it as the source for the posts and made it really clear that the information originated elsewhere.

Since then, I've had a PM exchange with "Artist" on FB. I've requested that he link the content that he lifts from APOD to its source. He says he doesn't need to, that what he does is "fair use" because his is not a commercial site! Ah, no; that's not how copy right works. (He also lifts all or most of the copyrighted text, which also isn't allowed under fair use.) All he has to do is provide a link to correctly attribute the source and RJN sounds like he'd be cool with it; "Artist" is not willing to do so, however, and has said as much. I don't understand people like that at all, at all.

The other thing about his FB page is that he has large images, not just thumbnails, on them, including copyrighted images, not just ones that are in the public domain. I know APOD mirrors can run the larger (copyrighted) images, but his site is not a mirror.

I'll send the PM exchange to RJN.