Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Copywrite The Temple

I just noticed the addition of something called BlogBot, allowing windows users to upload photographs to their blogs. Now I want to make a blog for our trip to the UK so I can post photos while we're gone, but...no photographs of Stonehenge! It's not allowed. Unless I go through whatever approval process they have to post photographs from the inside of the stone circle. I don't think I can be bothered.

It irked me at first that their rules on photography seem so strict, since it's an outdoor site I think of it as fair game for photographing, and then posting said photographs to my website. Then I started thinking about the possibility of my sister taking film or pictures and using them in her work, since she's an artist, I figure it's fair enough if she chooses to use images of Stonehenge to express herself. But what if Rolls Royce wanted to shoot a commercial with a big luxury car in the centre of Stonehenge? It would look pretty cool, but it would be like featuring the Vatican in a Ferrarri commercial. Or using images of Mecca to advertize a line of designer clothing. I suppose that's why they're so strict: it isn't just some ancient rocks, it's a sacred site. Originally sacred to a group of people who's origins we can barely trace, and we certainly have only a vague idea of what form their religion took, but it's a sacred site to people NOW, myself included.

I guess this rules out posing for goofy pictures to make it look like we're part of the prehistorical workforce, wearing twigs in our hair and sacrifing a goat. We'll have to take twice as many photos of us at Avebury Tor to compensate.

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