As preparations gear up for the official launch of The People’s Zero there is much to be done. Billboards have yet to be booked in Times Square, endorsements from top-level celebrities have yet to be sought, and cheese and pineapple have yet to be put on cocktail sticks. Plus I need to finish writing a couple of the actual sections so there’s some actual content on the actual site itself.
On top of which, I need images. I had planned to take my own photos for everything, including each of the 42 launch-ready Butterflies but have discovered I lack the time, talent and equipment to do so. Plus I can’t really be bothered. The obvious response would have been to trawl through Google Images nicking anything I fancied but, dammit, that’s not the Zero way. Start stealing images, you’re as bad as the bigwigs running sweatshops, denying people just reward for their work. Start breaking copyright law, you’ll end up smuggling a camcorder into the cinema to keep the mob happy, spiralling ever downwards until you find yourself in Columbia, limping through customs with a half kilo of smack up your arse.
No, I decided if I was going to use other people’s work then, dammit, I’d have to pay for it. Sadly I haven’t got any money so instead I’ve gone to Deviant Art. Here we have a community of professional and amateur photographers willing to let you use their work for free in exchange for a simple credit and a humble link. It’ll make The Zero part of a profitless, idealistic, purely artistic endeavour championing the ideals of community, art and togetherness. Until it takes off, at which point I’ll do a Huffington and flog it for zillions, leaving the photographers for dead as I dive into my guitar-shaped swimming pool.
And while I was strolling the grounds of Deviant Art I spotted a dodgy-sounding photographer. Claiming to be a teenage girl, his language came off too mature so I kept an eye on his posts. Turns out he was encouraging real teenage girls to take nude pictures of themselves so I reported him to the site owners, passed his email account to Hotmail and got his sorry ass banned. It proved me right once again; that in whatever you’re doing you can get stuck in and meddle, fight the good fight and make the world a better place. And it also proved the Daily Mail right again; that wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, you’re never more than six metres or four minutes away from the nearest threat to our children.
Photo credit: Is this one of mine?
