I saw this video of a touchdown run by Ike Ditzenberger in a Washington state high school football game featuring Snohomish vs. Lake Stevens. The back story is that Ike is a student with Down Syndrome, and he trained for the “Ike Special” play for the last three years.

The game was a blow out, and Ditzenberger’s touchdown was the only score his team made that day. With all the bad things you hear about, it was nice to see sportsmanship like this in a high school football game.

Thanks to Donna for letting me know about the video.

Every day, I see pingbacks to articles I write from websites I’ve never heard of that seem to be made for Adsense news aggregators. Most seem to focus on a specific topic, and because that topic was discussed in my article, the site poached all or part of my article for their benefit.

Although I have yet to file a lawsuit, I have sent plenty of takedown notices to frequent violators and their hosting companies (I bet this article will get picked up because “hosting companies” is a popular term for content thieves). Similar to my situation are newspapers and websites that post daily articles written by professional journalists. This content is often “borrowed” or used by bloggers and other websites without permission. According to an article today in Wired.com, there’s a new company that aims to make money from these copyright violations.

A Las Vegas company called Righthaven apparently has been filing lawsuits for its clients whose rights they believe were violated under US Copyright Laws by content thieves and poachers. The penalties for Copyright Act violations are pretty severe, and many bloggers and websites may prefer to settle them without going to court to save time, stress, and money. With millions of potential targets, this could conceivably be a high-yielding endeavor for the company.

Content providers and publishers need to do as much as they can to protect their content, and lawsuits are a way to show that the copyright owner is serious and isn’t going to mess around. For bloggers and journalists who quote articles and attribute the source of those quotes, it may be a bit dicey if you get caught up in one of these lawsuits.

It’s important that bloggers and writers know the copyright law and be sure to follow it. I know there are plenty of people who think they’re safe posting all or part of an article as long as they link back to the source, but this certainly seems to be a false sense of security.

After careful consideration, I’ve decided to implement a small charge for posting comments on my blog. Each comment you post will cost $.05 USD. If you post more than 25 comments per month, the cost will be lowered to $.04 USD/each, and people who post 100 or more comments a month will only be charged $.025 USD/comment. You may also pre-purchase 1,000 comments for just $0.01 USD/each.

In addition, comments that are mean spirited, that question the validity of my article, or those that insult others will be charged double. Similarly, comments that are positive, ass-kissing, or otherwise complementary will be half price. I am the sole judge on the categorization of said comments.

It takes quite a bit of my time to approve and moderate comments, and this is the most fair way to address the situation. The comment charges will be kept accurate via IP address, and payment can be submitted at the end of the month via Paypal. Charge disputes may be addressed directly with me.

Finally, if you haven’t guessed already, I am just kidding around. Hope you’re having a good summer so far. Happy Friday.