Saturday, November 4, 2006

Fair Use
Look it up.

It's amazing to me how many people are under the impression that they are lawyers. Gives me a chuckle to read them crying about how someone "stole" their artwork. The latest is some dickhead who runs Sumo Fan Magazine, pissing and moaning about another free news site Le Monde du Sumo "stealing" a picture that was copyrighted by one of their editors. Aww...poor baby. Did the grownups make you sads?

I've got sad, sad news for people who seem to think that copyright on the internet works the same way as the print world. Look up Fair Use law. Le Monde is a non-profit NEWS site. This is clearly covered under Fair Use law. It's that simple, and it's not hard to understand. I sincerely hope that this jerkoff does try to take Le Monde to court over this. He needs the rude awakening, apparently.

This reminds me of a recent news item where some teen girls posted nude pics of themselves on MySpace or some such place and then were shocked, shocked!, when they showed up on other places on the 'net. If you think that something you put on the internet is going to be private, you're living in some magical fairyland, not reality.

Don't I think that artists, etc. have a right to the ownership of their work? Of course I do. But don't be so stupid as to put it on the internet and then accuse others of "theft" when it's used somewhere else.

Too many people seem to think that a strongly-worded letter with vague legal-sounding threats and insults will get results. I think the problem is, it DOES work all too often, maybe. Here's a news flash: a respectful request, nicely worded will ALWAYS get better results. And you won't look like a halfwit in public, either.