fuckyeahtangelos:

Tangelos, arty style!

(Via)

(via fuckyeahtangelos)

krisstraub:

What a joke. I’ve never heard of a disclaimer that says “in any other case, ignorance of the law is no excuse, but this time it is.”

To the few of you who are honestly asking “how is that not a legitimate disclaimer,” consider the idea that the artist then has to somehow become the world police force for their own work. I’ve seen my story Candle Cove get propagated all over the internet. Recently it was translated by unknown persons into Spanish, and it’s seeing a resurgence of popularity among Spanish-language horror blogs. There’s no credit, no link back to me. Sometimes I notice people adding paragraphs to the story, or changing it to make it “scarier.” How do I even begin to track all this down? Especially when “Candle Cove” now might be in another language? Do I have to search every possible translation of the title now?

And what if it was an image or video that was taken? The reason why eBaumsworld gets away with so many video thefts is that there’s no way to search for a video or picture if it doesn’t have associated text you could search for.

The onus is not on the artist; it’s on the person doing the linking. But I’m going to go one step deeper than David and say that it’s not an innocent misreading of copyright law. It’s a person justifying their laziness and their theft. How many times have you seen something on YouTube, maybe a full episode of Arrested Development chopped into ten-minute clips, and in the info field the uploader has written “Don’t sue!!! Fair use!!!”

It doesn’t become fair use if you scream “fair use” before the police officer touches you. It’s not tag. And if you use Tumblr, watermarks on images aren’t there to ugly things up. They are credits, for the work that someone did. Work that you did not do.

So I see you editing the credit off of there, and posting it to be shared as if you just happened to stumble upon it. You want to be its curator, its finder. You don’t want any of that accolade to leak back to the rightful creator — you want it for yourself. 

davidmalki:

This paragraph shows up on a ton of Tumblr blogs and other photo-sharing sites:

Disclaimer: All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain. In the event that there is still a problem or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial. The material in question will be removed immediately upon request and presented proof.

Some human being was the first person to write this — to think about the issue, mull over the various options, and come to the conclusion that “yes, this seems like a reasonable thing to assert.”

It’s not.

Now, perhaps the person who wrote this had an inaccurate understanding of the nature of copyright?

Perhaps they understood copyright correctly — and understood that it is totally unreasonable to blithely assume that anything created in the past 88 years is in the public domain — and so wanted to erect a shield, an advance declaration of innocence, to avoid being charged with deliberate infringement?

Perhaps they wanted to justify posting any ol’ thing they wanted without having to rationalize it each time.

I get it. The internet is a thing that allows anything to be copied, everywhere, forever, et cetera. It’s impossible to control how stuff spreads, and there are now people and systems and industries built entirely around the idea of reposting cool stuff from elsewhere on the internet. I don’t think it’s always a bad thing. It’s handled in a tacky way sometimes, and every now and then it’s legitimately damaging, but emailing your mom a lolcat never hurt anyone. It’s become a big part of our culture.

But for crying out loud…don’t be so self-righteous as to JUSTIFY it. People hate hypocrisy worse than theft. Theft is an action; hypocrisy is a mindset.  

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: I found a discussion on a Flickr forum about this exact issue. Flickr members are usually very careful about copyright, and concerned with cases of infringement, so I was pleased to see the issue being taken seriously.

The discussion also featured…

DRUMROLL PLEASE

…a completely uncredited Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic, rehosted on Imageshack.

“THE INTERNET: WELL, WHADDAYA GONNA DO”

softerworld:

A Softer World: 728

(I only got one law. A kid who tells on another kid is a dead kid.)