Said the Joker to the Thief.

If you have a wee look on the post 'mysanthropy' you'll notice that there is a comment from a photographer complaining that I 'stole' his work.

At first I was tempted to reply with something like 'I couldn't resist it because it was the ideal representation of a cheap cliché I was using ironically' and going on about how he should be pleased that I was getting his work out to a (slightly) wider audience. But I resisted and instead decided to reply with an apology.

But it seems that I can't reply to this blog as myself for some reason and although duality of self has been a recurring theme (or as much of one as can be established in such a short time) I think that multiple personalities would be stretching it a bit.

So I wrote this entry instead.

Just to let Chris know, his free advert for his photography site (check it out and let me know what you think) will be allowed to stay on this blog for as long as his photo was allowed to stay. I will delete his comment after that.

I also think he might have worded his request in a slightly friendlier way. I'd have been happy to put up a link to his website and create a permanent advert for his work for instance. I'd even have been happier had he not said that I'd 'stolen' his work. I didn't steal it. It's more analogous with sneaking into his garden and playing on his swing than sneaking into his garden and taking his garden gnome.

I accept that I shouldn't have used the photo without permission. I blame the ease of use of google images, and I'll be more careful in future. For one thing I WAS stealing bandwidth from his website because l used the copy of his image from there. That was wrong of me.

I should have downloaded the image and re-uploaded it to imageshack or some-such: then he would have been none-the-wiser!