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Old 20 Aug 2006, 12:39   #16
daveake
200% is the new 110%
 
Join Date: 13.03.2005
Location: Newbury
Posts: 2,983
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sunneke
Well i think the problem is that i'm not really sure when i steal something...
I think the problem is that most people don't even think about that. There seems to be a notion these days that if something is on the web then it's free for use. The legal truth is the opposite - anything new is copyrighted automatically the moment it is created. So if (for example) Deb posts a pic she took of Meat, that photo is copyrighted (the moment she took it) and it is illegal to copy it without permission.

So in answer to your question, unless you know otherwise you are stealing.

In practice though, most people will be happy to allow copying so long as you ask first. What pisses people off is not asking. What pisses people off more (well, pisses me off more) is people hot-linking without asking. The myspace generation seem to think it's perfectly OK to hot-link to anyone's photo they like. I used to think some of the photos on my server were awfully popular till I noticed that a handful of jerks were lazily hot-linking to them. This steals my server bandwidth as well as my copyright, and (in extremis) could cost me money if my bandwidth quota is exceeded. If these people would bother to ask, and would then bother to copy the photos rather than link to them, I'd be glad to assist.

One guy hopefully got a nasty surprise when he found that the nice photo of a penguin he linked to had been replaced by something that made it very clear what I thought of him ...

The number of freeloaders is probably 100x the number of people that provide things to share. If the freeloaders piss off the producers, that ratio will get worse and the amount of shared material will drop, to everyone's disadvantage.

Dave
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