NOT IN GOOD STANDING

Tonight I need some lovin'.

I was hoping to post today all glowing with the pride of a new addition to my family of YouTube videos, but alas, it is not to be.

A couple months ago, I started work on my book trailer for KANDINSKY'S SHIRT BUTTON...my transgender erotic romance...have I mentioned it? LOL. Right, so I've been working off and on at this video.

Takes a while.

As a writer, I'm always hyper-careful not to step on anybody's toes. I compose, arrange, perform, record my own music, I use stock images, and I write the copy myself. I wouldnt' want anybody stealing my work, so I'm sensitive about not stealing other people's.

So how do you think I felt earlier this evening when I posted my conceptually-fabulous new book trailer and half an hour later got an email stating it had been pulled for terms of service violations?

That's right: I felt like shit. Very much so.

But...wait...why? I'm SO careful. Well, I was sure I knew what it had to be. I was sure I knew what got my video booted: it was all those NUDES. You see, my character Violette in KANDINSKY'S is an artist obsessed with Venus, so the trailer consisted of classic artistic representations of the goddess. NUDE representations.

"Those YouTube bastards!" I thought. "They're lumping capital-H High Art with pornography and throwing out my baby with the bathwater." For a couple seconds, I felt the capital-H Hard-On of righteous indignation.

I logged into my YouTube account. My brain buzzed when I saw those bright red words:

ACCOUNT NOT IN GOOD STANDING.

I've been a goody-two-shoes all my life. I can't bear it when authority figures come down on me like this. I don't like getting in trouble, especially when I feel like I haven't done anything wrong.

That's when I noticed the reason for my smack on the bottom: Copyright Violation. Yikes. Who? Me? But I'm SO CAREFUL. Using two condoms, I've ended up with crabs. Metaphorical-artistic crabs, of course. I'm itching with remorse. Those bold red letters serve as a constant reminder that I've been a bad girl.

You see, I figured the images I was using were safe. Sure, I didn't get them from my regular stock sources, but the artists whose work I used are 300 years dead, so what do they care? I hadn't considered that someone had to capture the images of those paintings, and that the copyright might belong to the photographer.

Maybe? I'm grasping at straws at this point. But if that's not the dealio, I don't know what is. Plus, it's 2:33 in the morning and my brain power peaked around 11 this morning, so I'm well past my "best before" time.

All this to say I wanted to have a video to present to all you wonderful people today. It was up for half an hour, and in that time about 70 people got to see it. *sigh* Now it's back to the drawing board to see what alternative brilliant concept I might come up with.

I need a hug!

gigi