When it comes to intellectual property, I’m not really the type to get all worked up over the possibility that something of my own creation might be used by someone else, even for profit.   If someone were to copy something I wrote word-per-word and claim it as their own or try to sell it, then I’d obviously get a bit upset about that.   However, some sites get angry if you quote too large a passage, even with a citation or if you use their information without footnoting each and every occurrence.   Personally, I don’t see any point in being so anal about that.

Just don’t start copy and pasting it and saying it’s your own, because that might actually get me mad.  And if you get an award or money for it when *I* wrote it, I’ll get even angrier   Fair?

Having said that, when my information is used as a source, even if it’s not copied word per word, I really appreciate getting a link back to the original stuff or some kind of acknowledgment.  It’s not that I’d sue or anything if I don’t, but to me it comes off as bad netiquette.  It’s just not the polite or chivalrous thing to do.  It’s a bit rude even.

Let me just give an example:

A Post I made in April 2008 called “Why Does Radioactive Stuff Glow Green? (Or why do people think it does)”

An article posted in July 2008 from “The Naked Scientist” called “It Don’t Necessarily Glow, Bro”

Lets take a look at the two and see if they have much in common:

Depleted Cranium Post:

Whenever you see radioactive material represented in a cartoon or a similar fictitious depiction, it always seems to have a lime-green glow that has become nearly iconic.

Naked Scientist Post:

Simpsons” fans will know only too well the opening sequence to the cartoon in which Homer discovers, during his commute, that he’s taken some of his work home with him – in the form of a radioactive fuel rod from the nuclear power plant! Unsurprisingly, the lump of material he subsequently throws out of the car window is glowing an ethereal green colour.

Depleted Cranium Post:

One of the first things that was noticed by Marie Curie after producing a test-tube of concentrated radium was its “fairy-like glow.” It did not glow green, however. It was said to be a bright blue color. Reportedly she even kept a vial of it next to her bed as a kind of night light.

Naked Scientist Post:

Once they began to isolate the metal in reasonable amounts, one of the first things the Curies noticed was that it appeared to emit an attractive blue glow. Marie described it as “fairy-like”, and even kept a tube of radium beside her bed where it presumably functioned as an attractive radioactive night light!

Depleted Cranium Post:

Materials which emit light when excited by light or charged particles are known as “fluorescent” or “phosphorescent” – The difference being that the former only emits light when initially excited and the later will continue to emit light for a period of time after. As it turns out, the compounds of radium which Marie Curie had in her vial, radium bromide and uranium chlorides had mild fluorescent properties, so when they were irradiated by the radium they contained, it actually caused the compounds to glow

Naked Scientist Post:

Chemicals that behave like this, by emitting visible light when they are excited, are referred to as being “fluorescent”.   And as it turns out, Marie Curie’s bedside sample contained the compounds radium bromide and uranium chloride, both of which are slightly fluorescent. So when they were excited by the radioactive decay of the radium itself, the compounds glowed, producing the fairytale blue light.

Depleted Cranium Post:

n 1908 a paint was developed which used zinc sulfide doped with copper which could produce a visible light glow when bombarded with charged particles. The addition of a tiny amount of radium to the paint provided these particles and that assured a continuous glow of the paint. The glow came primarily from the beta particles emitted from radium and its daughter products and had a very recognizable green glow, not that unlike modern “glow in the dark” products which require exposure to light to produce a glow.

The color of the light could be changed to nearly any color by using different formulas and adding dyes, but green was by far the most common because it was one of the more effecient (and therefore bright) color formulas avaliable and because the human eye is more sensitive to green than any other color. Thus nearly all radiolumonescent products were green in color.

Naked Scientist Post:

So where does the idea that radioactive chemicals glow green actually come from? The most likely source was the development in 1908 of a paint containing zinc sulphide, doped with a small amount of copper. This mixture glowed bright green when it was exposed to radioactivity, and adding a small amount of radium to the paint was a cheap way to provide a long-lasting supply of radiation capable of keeping the paint illuminated. Over-night, quite literally, reliable glow in the dark products were born.

Scientists subsequently tinkered with the chemicals to produce a range of different colours, but the greens were the easiest for the eye to see, so those were the ones that stuck, together with the myth that radiation glows in the dark!

Okay, so I don’t actually know for sure that my post was the source of the information but it just seems too damn close to be a coincidence.   I’m not about to go suing over this, but come on, we’re all looking for a web traffic, so do me a favor and give a guy a link, please.

What brings this up is a similar event which occurred on Phil Plait’s popular “Bad Astronomy” blog.   Phil made a post about a video on “TV is Cool” which shows the Neil Armstrong’s first steps during the Apollo 11 moon landing as seen through the high quality 16mm DAC camera on board the lunar lander.   Of course, the post got plenty of attention because Bad Astronomy is a popular blog and part of the Discover Magazine blog family.    Nothing wrong with that, of course, Phil works hard to put up an excellent blog, which is why I cite it here frequently and have a link to it over on the sidebar.

The funny thing about it is this:   the footage in question is IDENTICAL to the footage *I* posted on this site and on youtube on February 23. Funny isn’t it?   It even cuts in and out at the exact same frame.    Of course, I can’t claim credit for the footage.   It’s not mine to begin with, but rather it was made by NASA and is a US Government production, which generally makes it public domain.

However, the reason it is up there is becasue *I* went to the trouble to post it.   I was aware that the Apollo-11 lander had a movie camera that would produce far better footage than the television images which we are more familiar with.  After looking all over the internet (especially Youtube and other such video hosting sites) I was unable to find the original footage except on this one NASA hosted site that was put up circa 1995. The video that is provided on that site leaves a lot to be desired.   It’s low resolution, heavily compressed and looks like it was ripped from a crappy VCR.

Therefore, I decided to find a better copy and post it online for all to enjoy.  I found a DVD with the footage on it which I ripped, deinterlaced and resized to a Youtube-approperate size.  I then uploaded and posted it.   Truth be told, it wasn’t all that much work.   But still, I did it.  I went to the trouble of finding the footage and posting it.   I’m more than happy to hear that anyone else is sharing this amazing footage with the world, but come on!  Can’t they at least use the original and not save it from youtube, rehost it on another site and then start exchanging it without even a tip of the hat.   We’re all in this togeather right?

I don’t think Phil had any reason to think he was not giving me credit for it, because as I said, it is on a different site.   This just irks me quite a bit.

On a related note:
I became interested in finding more footage of the Apollo-11 landing and as many may know the original slow scan tapes of the TV transmission are MIA.   However, I managed to track down someone who had an 8mm movie of the television transmission, or portions of it, that was taken at Honeysuckle Creek in Australia.   The film should be of a higher quality and contrast than the television scan-converted tapes.  I’m having it sent to me on a DVD and I am hoping that I could stabilize and crop the footage and then try to rebuild individual images of the SSTV frames.   It’s just a little project to see if I can pull some descent quality reconstructed video from it.    When I post it, you better believe I’m going to have a “www.depletedcranium” on the frame and now you know why!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Announcements, Misc, Space, Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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