i've got a postsecret of sorts. (it's a comment party!)

whilst commenting on the last post, junebug mentioned that one of my images showed up on a postcard sent to postsecret. if you don't know about postsecret, it's a blog where you can anonymously send in homemade postcards with a secret written on it. it's described as an "art community", although i imagine there's quite a lot of emotional and psychological "unburdening" going on as well. regarding the art of the postcards themselves, there are cards that are no doubt original works, but many of them seem to be stock postcards embellished creatively.

this is the one junebug referred to:



this is my original photo:



obvs, not a stock postcard, but not the sender's original image, either (and bless you, junebug, for not thinking that i sent in the card--perhaps you knew i'd never go to a bakery for cupcakes ;)). the anonymous sender did not ask my permission to use the photo, and as many of you know, i've had problems with unauthorized use of photos before. although i wholly appreciate postsecret, they say by sending in a card to them, they in effect own the copyright on the card, and can publish it as they wish. (ironically, although i am allowed to publish one photo from their site as a link to theirs, had i embellished upon it by declaring the photo as mine, i think i might actually violate their copyright.) i also somewhat appreciate the sentiment of the sender, but i'm not sure how i feel about my image being used in conjunction with it.

i'm having a creative commons/copyright dilemma, basically. since the postcard was sent anonymously, do i contact postsecret? i don't necessarily want this person's entry deleted because i'm all pissy about the photo, but then again, i want to take a kind of hard line against photo-stealing.

tg suggested it, so here it is, a real live comments party of sorts. so, comment, please. i'm still mulling everything over.

addendum: questions: okay, if you find an image somewhere, copyrighted or not, and then put words on top of it and call it "art", does it in effect become your image as a whole? do i even have a right to object at this point, and if i don't, what is the point of having a creative commons partial license anyway? since i have a full copyright on the blog along with creative commons, am i effectively cancelling out the creative commons license by having the other?

update 18april06: if you tried commenting earlier and it didn't work, try it now. i have no idea what happened, but it should be okay now. also, i actually do have a (non-postsecret) secret to reveal....