It’s the end of the summer and the Gallery staff is busy doing things other than writing posts. Because we are more of a hippie commune than a business, I fully support and respect their sabbaticals. Also, since I don’t pay them, there isn’t anything I can do about it. I don’t even pay myself. So before I get into the rest of my topic, make sure you contact me here or in the Bat Cave if you want to jump in and also do stuff for the personal fulfillment of maybe getting a comment from someone or the extra special prize of being sexually harassed by me (*drops pencil*).
But on a more serious topic, I want to know what is stealing regarding the Internet. I am not talking about posting up a column from Entertainment Weekly and saying I wrote it. Nor am I saying that I want to post the ENTIRE article from Entertainment Weekly and talk about it and link to it. But I am saying that I will take an excerpt from the article, then link the article then write some stupid joke about it. Is that stealing?
If that is stealing – then what the hell is the point of having in Internet? Is the guy who took the picture of the girl up above there that I messed with and put new words on looking to get paid cause I put it there? I mean, no way in Hell would I ever actually PAY him. But pretend for a minute that I wanted to. I got the pic from some other site. Who got it from some other site. And so on.
The reason I am even talking about this is that it is really a hell of a lot EASIER to ‘present’ content than create it when people are busy with their real lives, etc. Like, we get a million email forwards a day. If I wanted, we could have 50 posts a day from nothing but email forwards. Snopes be damned – I am gonna tell you that Tiger Woods wife posed nude. She didn’t, really, but the email I got said she did. And I didn’t post it. Cause I checked. I also didn’t post the thing about the heartwarming teacher who loves veterans so much. To see what I am talking about – Google for: “Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock”.
So – what is stealing and what isn’t? If we show you something you haven’t seen before, is it still entertaining even though all we did was show it to you? I am planning on ripping off a bunch of ‘aggregator’ sites this week. I am not even gonna link them. Rather, I am gonna present the content they took from somewhere else (making sure that I remove their watermark first). BUT! I am also going to NOT watermark it myself and pretend that I made it. I am not the fuck from ebaums world. Anyway – post your thoughts about Internet stealing etc. etc.
I just love this post. I am going to steal it, no not steal but help spread the idea around. What about that? 🙂
You have articulated what I think is in the minds of a number of people out there, myself included. On a related note, I am really pissed off each time I come accross a blog which warns you not to copy its content because it is protected. Really? Are there stupid people out there that collect garbage and spew it as same old garbage?
But I know of creative people who pick on a garbage and turn it into a piece of art. That is the kind of movement in the internet I would love to see grow.
I think you’re right on track. I would be extremely upset if someone took my art and said they created it – because that’s just rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. But…to use a picture? I don’t see that being a problem – unless the site it’s on makes a huge deal about it – like it’s their personal photography or something. I’d attribute snippets of text to the correct author – but then again, I wouldn’t break my neck hunting someone down.
I think you’ve got the idea – and I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Unless you *are* going to include the entire EntertainmentWeekly article and say you wrote it. Then you might have a slight issue. 😉
Go ahead and post what you want – attribute what you can (text-wise) – and don’t steal my art and say it’s yours. lol