Since the 1990s, I’ve written for a lot of internet magazines. Something that constantly crops up is the thorny issue of copyright. Many people make the assumption that if something’s online, they somehow have the right to take it for themselves. Perhaps this is down to the ubiquity of dodgy file-sharing, or the fact that a lot of content online is freely available. Either way, lots of rights are infringed online on a daily basis, and I’ve written many articles that state very clearly how one should always check regarding rights before reusing anything.

If an individual makes a mistake in this area, they can be forgiven (assuming they don’t do so again). Astonishingly, though, it seems the editorial director for digital at one of the UK’s national newspapers doesn’t understand basic rights assignment. This thread from PeteZab’s Flickr account details how The Independent embedded snowy scenes from the UK using the Flickr API, but, presumably, screwed up the rights filter, thereby including images marked ‘all rights reserved’.

What’s shocking here is not that such a mistake was made—oversights happen all the time—but that the editors’s response was as follows:

“We took a stream from Flickr which is, as you know, a photo-sharing website. The legal assumption, therefore, is that you were not asserting your copyright in that arena. We did not take the photo from Flickr, nor present it as anything other than as it is shown there.

I do no consider, therefore, that any copyright has been breached or any payment due. ”

Presumably, then, The Independent will be fine if I start using content from its website (as long as I don’t present it than anything other than how it’s shown on its site), regardless of any assigned rights! Great! Although if The Independent really doesn’t think it did anything wrong, why did it pull the Flickr feed?

Update: The Independent ‘apologises’, and the publication has been invoiced by the photographer.

It’s getting to the point that not a day goes by without some idiot or other trying to undermine the BBC. Usually, it’s the government or the Tories, who in no way use smacking the BBC as a way of engaging with Daily Mail-reading voters. Rupert Murdoch’s another major critic, which is in no way due to him having a massive stake in one of the BBC’s biggest commercial competitors, Sky.

Yesterday, Policy Exchange got in on the act (Policy Exchange think tank calls for BBC overhaul), with the usual slew of garbage opinions. It slags off Jonathan Ross’s ‘salary’ (ignoring the fact this cash paid for the production of his shows, including dozens of Film 200Xs, hundreds of episodes of his chat-show, and his radio show), says the BBC should cut the money it spends on sport (despite the public outcry when the public broadcaster announces it’s been outbid for a popular event by a locked, subscription-only service) and popular entertainment (despite the BBC one minute being told to justify the licence fee by getting higher ratings, and the next being told it’s being too populist, and should therefore be creating niche stuff).

The report also has a go at the BBC’s audacity in reaching out to 16-to-35-year-olds, noting that cash for such programming should be aimed at US import channels Channel 4 and E4. Never mind that BBC Three’s output includes the likes of Being Human. Never mind the fact people under 35 pay the licence fee and therefore should expect at least some programming aimed at them. Never mind the fact the BBC isn’t beholden to advertisers and can therefore take more risks. Nope—shut it down, says Policy Exchange! Shut it all down!

Sadly, this kind of report seems to be the norm these days. I suspect regardless of whatever government the UK ends up with this year, it’ll start dismantling the BBC. And because too many British people are strangely oblivious to the value of the BBC (not only in terms of what you receive on TV, the radio and the web, but also as a public service), considering it a huge rip-off, it’ll end up a shell of its former self. Sooner or later, British television will largely be a thing of the past, with everyone fed on a steady diet of third-rate US television with ad-breaks every sixteen seconds. But, hey, it’ll be free, right? (Aside from the huge subscription fees that people will happily pay because they choose to, obviously.) Of course, the UK will only realise this when it’s too late, and when Murdock is laughing maniacally while sitting atop his solid-gold throne, in the shape of a Sky logo squashing the BBC into a bloody pulp.

On Twitter and elsewhere, there’s a bit of a debate brewing right now about whether PRs should be ‘first against the wall’ when the revolution comes, or whether journos are a bunch of grumpy sods for moaning about being deluged by stuff they’ll likely be interested in writing about.

In the technology field, I find it strange journos are getting angry due to receiving press releases. Sure, many are irrelevant, and far too many are written in an absurdly needy manner, but even though I get dozens of these weekly (sometimes daily), I’d rather have more than fewer press releases. They enable me to find out about new stuff for zero effort, and if I’m not interested, a quick ‘delete’ banishes the release forever. (Note to journos claiming they’re annoyed by constant interruptions from PR emails: don’t check your email every time a new one arrives; alternatively, set up notification so you can glance at incoming email and only tend to urgent messages.)

That all said, there are three increasingly common things that irk me regarding PR guys, and so here are some helpful hints:

1. Only phone me for first contact or if something’s urgent. Do not phone me about a 0.0.1 app upgrade that you’ve decided is “revolutionary”. Phone calls are a major distraction—unless your call includes extremely exciting and interesting information, I will hate you.
2. When you’re pimping something you’re doing on the other side of the planet (say, the west coast of the USA or Australia), and I kindly inform you that I’m UK-based, don’t then try to convince me that I should show up via several more emails and phone calls. Yes, I’m sure I’d like to be at CES right now, but unless you buy me a ticket, I’m not going to visit just to see your new gizmo.
3. If you want me to check something out for review, send it to me. Don’t try to convince me to buy it myself because it’s the “Best Thing Ever”. I get very regular requests of this sort, and so even with 59p iPod games I’d be broke by the end of the month if I bought them all.

This morning’s Times reports Nokia will close its Regent Street store, because it’s somehow—and this is a massive (non) shock—failed to tempt people across the road from the Apple Store. Frankly, this is mind-boggling. How a shop stocking a bunch of fairly dated and dull phones never managed to grab people from an always busy store chocked full of exciting computers, music players, multimedia devices and software is beyond me.

I tell a lie—it really isn’t. But it is, apparently, beyond CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood, who remarks in the Times article: “There was no question that the store was trying to replicate what Apple had done and build up the brand rather than shift devices. The question is why that strategy has worked for one company and not for the other.”

And this is why I hate analysts. Ben, this is your job. Are you seriously questioning why Apple’s store is a huge success and Nokia’s isn’t? Apple got there first, Nokia is a shallow copy. Apple has loads of great kit, Nokia doesn’t. Apple has a brand associated with aspirational qualities, Nokia’s brand is primarily associated with cheap phones you chunk in the bin after a year.

It’s really quite simple—unless you’re an analyst.

Yesterday on Cult of Mac, Leander Kahney wrote The top 5 secrets to designing a killer iPhone app site, citing the importance of a decent web page for marketing your app or game. He suggested: make the site a single page; use an iPhone image with your app inside as the main image; include an instantly recognisable App Store badge; use animated screenshots showing the app in action; and display the price up-front.

I rather grumpily commented that tip six should be devs including some kind of downloadable media kit, and, surprisingly, a dev just emailed me for some advice on this, and so I figured I’d share it with the world at large.

First, some reasoning for me being grumpy about a lack of press pages. I write about iPhone and iPod touch apps a lot, but many of the articles are round-ups. Commission rates are such that you don’t get a lot of time with each app, and so you need to maximise the amount of time you spend using it and writing about it, and minimise everything else. Time I have to spend faffing about taking screen grabs, syncing my iPhone to send the grabs to iPhoto, and then extracting them to Finder, is time I could have instead spent using your app or your game.

Furthermore, although Apple intelligently provided a means to take grabs on a device (hold the home and sleep buttons), this is, at best, awkward. I often end up back on the springboard, because I pressed the home button too early, or ‘missing’ the right moment in a game, because my fingers were otherwise engaged on the multi-touch screen, and requiring two of them to take a trip to the iPhone’s tactile buttons was a quest too far.

What makes me happy is when developers deal with this themselves. You know the best bits of your own game or app, so should provide insight into such things for people writing about it. And you shouldn’t be saying “just go to the site and grab something there,” unless the site has appropriate material. Two companies that utterly get this are GymFu, whose press area is fantastic, offering PNG grabs, icons and press releases, and Madgarden, whose Saucelifter website provides succinct info, a bunch of PNG grabs you can drag to Finder or Windows Explorer, and a downloadable press pack.

If you’re thinking of revamping your website for an app or game, take note of the Cult of Mac article, but also ensure you include a press page or at least some basic assets for download:

• As a minimum, ensure your app or game grabs are full-size PNGs, which are not lossy. Compressed JPEGs are not usable in print, nor are resized images and those with watermarks.
• If there are specific points about your app you want to share, include these in a succinct text overview.
• To seriously make friends with hacks, provide everything as a downloadable ZIP.
• And always make sure you provide an email address for media enquiries—otherwise people like me sometimes give up and go and write about someone else’s creation instead.

It’s not necessary to have all this in a separate press section, although you can if you choose. Just having usable PNGs on app info pages is enough. The important thing is you do something, rather than just bung heavily compressed grabs online and avoid telling writers how to contact you.

Update: As a couple of people have already said to me, this information is largely good for anyone developing apps and games. Ensure people can contact you. Provide info about what you create. Provide uncompressed screen grabs for download.