Not sure what that earlier, incoherent post was all about. Some sort of LJ glitch. I hate and despise this new "Restore from saved draft?" feature.

Anyway, I killed my Flickr account today. Please don't e-mail asking me to reconsider; the decision is irrevocable and the pictures are irretrievable, though I still have a few on my hard drive. All the pictures of Shell Beach, the images of destruction in New Orleans, the celebration of Mardi Gras in spite of it all, the silly cat photos I so enjoyed sharing with you ... all are gone. Why? Because I was stupid enough to post a few seminude pictures (I think they showed a total of one boob), and because, once in a while, a few assholes really can ruin things for everybody.

A few weeks ago, the site Consumerist.com swiped two of my Flickr photos to use in an entry that made fun of my Amazon blog. (They also claimed that my Amazon blog linked directly to the "topless" photos, which was a lie and which they've since reworded.) When I politely asked them to remove my copyrighted material, Consumerist webmaster Ben Popken responded, and I quote, "We must respectfully deny your request for your photo and/or the post to be removed. That's not how we roll. Sorry. If you want to know why, look up hiphop, collage, remixing and duhn da dunnn.. free speech and freedom of the press."

Yup. I love the reference to "hiphop." I think someday I'll write a novel made up of random sentences from other books I admire and call it my "hiphop novel." That "duhn da dunnn" is pretty priceless too ... the mild-mannered Ben Popken is secretly Batman, I guess.

When you steal someone's copyrighted material, the question isn't, "Will I have to remove it?"; it's "Am I going to do the decent thing and just remove it, or am I going to force the copyright holder to spend money forcing me to do so?" Mr. Popken chose to do the latter. I consulted an Internet copyright lawyer, and Consumerist.com was ultimately forced to remove my images. Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of money I couldn't afford on this legal venture.

And motherfucking Flickr can't even answer simple questions about its own TOS.

This morning I discovered that another site had stolen the same images. So I just said, "Fuck it." I'm not a photographer. I enjoyed taking and sharing these pictures, but I can't afford to keep throwing money away protecting my copyrights. I'll save my cash and energy for the people who steal my prose, if such should come along -- at least my agent can handle that.

So I'm sorry. The assholes won this round, and I seriously regret that. But I don't need this crap, not when I'm trying to write something good that will pull me out of the morass I've been in since August 29th.

Harlan Ellison taught me a long time ago that there are tiny, shitty people in the world. They can't do anything on their own, and so they'll do anything within their power to tear down whatever you do. I understood him in a theoretical way then, but it has taken me 40 years of life on earth (and particularly online) to really understand what he was talking about. Fortunately, there are good, huge-hearted people too, and on my best days, I still think they outnumber the shitweasels.