Of course, you explicitly reserve the right to sue people for using the images (which you have made very public) as their personal wallpaper, but it’s something you choose not to exercise at the moment.
How generous of you! I’m allowed to use your shitty low resolution artwork that you have displayed to the entire world on you website, as my personal wallpaper, and you won’t sue me into total poverty? How fucking generous of you, yosemitebabe. Let’s award you a frickin medal for your generousity.
What a stuck up, anal retentive attitude. Why should I enjoy the artwork of a control freak?
Actually, i don’t think that’s what she was saying. In fact, she explicitly stated that it was OK to use the artwork as wallpaper etc., but not OK to put it on another website. Presumably she has these copyright and acceptable-use restrictions posted on her website.
Also, there are probably fair-use regulations that cover pictures posted on internet sites, and if yosemitebabe chooses to put her images on the site, then she cannot stop people from making fair use of them. Nor would she want to, i dont think. It’s more a matter of whether they take her work and then redisplay it on their own website that worries her.
mhendo has interpreted my intentions correctly (thanks, mhendo), and I have to say, what an amazing clueless and bizarre attitude you have, Blaron.
By default, all original content posted on the web is copyrighted and any use of it (excluding fair use) is illegal. So, anyone who has a brain in their head will not use this content, because they don’t have persmission. It’s illegal.
So, I have statements on my site specifying what I will give permission for people to do with my images. If I didn’t make any statements, people would (if they had a clue) not use anything at all. They would be breaking the law if they did.
Basically, I don’t care if people use my images for personal use (t-shirt iron-on transfer–I’ve had people do that with my photos, etc.), I just don’t want them to use them on another website without my permission. Often I’ll give them permission if they simply link back to my site and give me credit. Recently, a web designer bought very limited rights to a drawing I did, to be used on a client’s website. I charged him a pittance. (Just aksed enough to pay for a Stargate SG-1 DVD I foolishly bought. ;))
What a strange, bizarre, completely clueless attitude.
Newsflash: you are not legally entitled to use any images you swipe off the web. Now, I know that 99% of the people out there won’t give one particle of a damn if someone uses their graphics as wallpaper, but, yes, some professional photographers do seriously mind. It’s their profession to take photos and they take that very seriously. As they are entitled to do. I just wanted to distance myself from them. I’m just a hobbyist photographer and while I don’t want to see my photos published on the web hither and yon, I don’t see any harm in limited personal use. And for this I am an anal-retentive? (Well, I am anal-retentive, but not because I am aware of photographers’ and artists’ rights. ;))
Honey, no one’s twisting your arm. Feel free to not leech any of my work, or from any other person’s work. Since they have the audacity to be aware of their rights, and all…
Consider this… consider the services and the technology which are actually needed to achieve this “nirvana like” state of file sharing that you’re advocating? Your local ISP web access? That has to be paid for, doesn’t it? And the electricity bill for your computer? (Let alone the PC itself and all the software which goes with it). That has to be paid for too. And your DSL account, or your diallup telephone account? Yep, that has to be paid for as well.
So one thing’s for sure, you ain’t getting jackshit for free at all (in reality). You’re actually paying through the nose for filesharing. All those megabytes. Somebody’s paying for it, and that somebody is you - and the millions of other people who do it. The problem is that that the one group of people who SHOULD be getting money for all this voracious entertainment gluttony are the people who remain unremunerated. But your ISP and your phone company and your Power Company are billing you every month and they’re making a killing. THe problem here is that the ARTISTS don’t have an accounting and invoicing system in their corner which can threaten to take you to court like your Utility Company’s can. If they did, you would be singing a totally different tune about how you reckon “filesharing is incomparable” as a music medium. The only reason it is, is because you’re able to get away with it without having to pay the original authors for it.
Accordingly, I rather think it’s a somewhat silly arguement that filesharing is free. It isn’t. It’s fucking expensive. It’s just that the cashflow is going somewhere else, instead of to the artists - and for some strange reason 60 million people in the US alone don’t see a problem with that. It’s like this form of selective dillusion which is being employed.
Consider all those ISP’s, and Phone Company’s and Power Company’s around the world - they just fucking LOVE filesharing, coz folks like you give 'em a shitload of money for it each month - and further, those Utility Company’s are largely off limits from court actions. Consider what all those downloaded megabytes have meant to them in terms of cash flow.
Meanwhile, through it all, the ARTIST remains ripped off.
So… in closing… I don’t give a bugswat about the RIAA or the major labels. My gripe is that a truckload of Utility Company’s are ALREADY making money out of filesharing and the artist isn’t seeing any of it. Regardless of how bad the existing business model might have been, at least the artist saw “some degree” of financial reward. As it stands, filesharing has enabled a giant movement of cash flow into the hands of Utility Company’s. That can’t be denied in any way. The internet costs, and it costs big time. And those Utility Company’s are getting to enjoy the financial benefits of millions of cyber flight bits of content usage WITHOUT having to face responsibility for what’s IN that content.
I understand the point you’re trying to make, but i don’t completely agree with your argument.
First of all, you seem to assume that all those people with internet connections ONLY use them for filesharing, and even that many people would not have internet connections at all if it weren’t for filesharing. This isn’t true. Internet use would be expanding without illegal filesharing, although maybe not as quickly, because it is also used for an increasing number of legal activities, from email to buying airline tickets to reading the news. I was pretty late on the learning curve about this sort of stuff, and i had my DSL hookup for months before i even knew about P2P technology and its possible filesharing applications. And, as a grad student, i find my high speed connection most useful for downloading articles from databates like JSTOR, Lexis/Nexis, etc.
While it is certainly true that the equipment and connections required to take advatage of filesharing are relatively expensive, the marginal cost of the filesharing itself is very low to the end users, many of whom would have the equipment and the connection anyway. Much of the P2P software (WinMX etc.) is free, and the media for making your downloaded files more accessible (blank CDs etc.) is pretty cheap. Even mp3 players and CD burners are not very expensive any more. This doesn’t make filesharing right, but i’m trying to make an economic point here, not a moral one.
Also, there might be a difference between Australian and US internet connections that you are not aware of. Not too long ago, i was looking up Australian DSL packages for a friend of mine who was about to move from the US to Sydney, and high-speed internet connections seemed pretty expensive over there. More importantly for the issue of file-sharing, however, is that many Australian DSL packages offer very limited downloading quotas. For example, a friend of mine in Melbourne pays about $A50 a month for a DSL hookup that allows her only 300Mb a month. And if you want unlimited downloads, it gets very expensive. Here in America, i pay $US35 a month for unlimited downloading, which is considerably cheaper than any of the Aussie packages i saw (i concede that things might be changing; i last checked it out about five months ago).
I don’t disagree that the telecom companies and ISPs are making big money out of the growth in filesharing. In fact, i’m sure this is the reason that some of them are fighting so tenaciously to keep their customers’ information away from the RIAA. But i don’t think it’s correct to suggest that filesharing involves a simple transfer of wealth from artists to utility companies.
There used to be a cable channel called The Box (or Music Box?) that let you select the next video by calling a 900 number.
Oh, I understand why they would want to have that level of control - just not why anyone would want to give it to them.
[Clouseau]
Ah yes, ze old “you can’t compare software with real art” ploy.
[/Clouseau]
If you want to argue about whether software is art on the same level as a novel or a painting, start a new thread. Here, I believe it’ll suffice to say that many programmers consider it to be art, and that matters more than whether non-programmers consider it so. After all, if art were defined by non-artists, then where would that leave abstract art (seemingly random arrangements of shapes) and Piss Christ?
My code absolutely reflects my personal feelings about what a program like this should do, how it should do it, and who it should be designed for. Most of the code I’ve written has been written because I was struck by an idea and thought “Holy shit, that would be cool,” then thought about it all day, all night, and all the next day.
But more importantly, “art”–at least in the sense we’re using it here–is not defined by the feelings involved in creating it. A heart-rending autobiography about your experiences in a concentration camp doesn’t get any more or less copyright protection than an emotionless pamphlet about how to assemble a bike, and I doubt you would feel you have any more right to “leech” the bike manual than the Holocaust autobiography.
I understand why they feel that way, but not why their feelings about the amount of control they should have once their art leaves their hands should matter to the rest of us.
Would it really? I’m not convinced that the creative work lost from those people would outweigh the creative work gained from other people who are now free to include others’ work in their own. Recall that most fan fiction, for example, is illegal under our current laws.
Au contraire, people (in general) support artists they enjoy. Witness the success of The Eminem Show and Kid A, the rising sales of indie records, etc.
There are also other ways to make money from art besides hoarding the copyright. TV stations, for example, give away their artistic content and charge third parties to deliver their content alongside it.
In addition to what mhendo said, consider that the utility companies would be making just as much money from legal downloads. It’s in their best interests to help legal downloads become as popular as illegal downloads are now, since they’ll sell just as much bandwidth, but won’t have to worry about being sued or subpoenaed.
No not at all Hendo. All I’m trying to say is that the Utility Service providers make “some” degree of cash flow out of content dissipation. But they wash their hands of what that content actually. Unlike if I choose to sign up for a porn site or something like that where I’m expected to pay a monthly fee for said service, music files have effectively become the “untraceable free porn” of cyberspace, and regardless, Utility Company’s make money out of it either way.
There’s something inherently unfair that people can download say, Tim Buckley’s classic “Starsailor” album, and that Utility Company’s are gonna make “some amount” of cash flow out of it while the family gets nothing.
Well, the implication of your first paragraph, and especially of your third sentence about “washing their hands” of the content, is that ISPs should, in fact, be monitoring what their customers are reading and sharing. Not only does that fly completely in the face of the privacy that people expect when they sign up for internet service, but it also puts an unfair burden of responsibility on the shoulders of the ISPs for the acts of their subscribers. It’s like blaming Xerox for people photocopying books.
And your second paragraph draws a connection that is, in my opinion, rather tenuous. Sure, it might be unfair that Buckley’s family doesn’t make money from distribution of his album, but you can hardly place the burden of that on the ISPs when the filesharing by which the album is distributed is largely incidental to the service they provide, and is not controlled by them in any direct way.
I now find myself feeling dirty and needing a shower after defending large utility and telecom companies like Verizon. It’s not a position i’m used to taking.
With all due respect, I don’t really think you have a clue what I’m talking about. You just think you do.
Like I said–I don’t think you have a clue what I’m trying to get at. Not at all.
I don’t think you understand the level of intensity that some artists feel towards their work. The life that is in their work. The intangible “self” that shows in their work. Now, maybe I misunderstand you, but I’ve never seen any evidence in any of your comments that you understand this, or rather, that you feel this way about programming (at least your programming). You’ve completely failed to convince me of this. Ever.
I’m not trying to be mean, and I am not trying to say that no programmer ever felt this “life” in their work. I’m just saying that while I have no doubt that you are an extremely excellent programmer, I don’t think you personally know what I’m talking about.
Hey—I admit I could be completely wrong. But I’ve brought this subject up before with you, and so far, based on your responses, I’ve not been convinced that you understand.
Ah, but see, if we were to try to seperate the “art” from the “emotionless,” we couldn’t do it. We’d invariably throw the baby out with the bathwater. So the law (and a lot of us) just throw all these things in together. They are protected because they are created by an individual–created out of thin air, out of the person’s mind and imagination and put down on paper or canvas. Not because they are identical in spirit, but because there’s a fuzzy line between “art” and “non-art” and no one’s ever going to agree where that line is. So better to protect all than none.
Of course it probably doesn’t matter to the rest of us. And it certainly doesn’t matter to the leeches of the world. But fortunately, laws sometimes protect individuals against the apathy or selfishness of the “rest of us.”
We’ll never know, I guess.
It’s a trade off. I personally think the financial disincentive (can’t make money off of work you don’t “own”) would be a big deal. I also think that a LOT of artists and creative people would be very turned off by the idea of “bastardization” of their work. They’d see a few gross examples of “bastardization” being done to others, and that would be enough to deter the more sensitive of the creative folk.
Sure, the leeches could distribute work and consume work for free (yay for them), and true, some legitimate artists would “adapt” someone else’s work in a pleasing or significant way. But then again, a lot would do horrible, horrible things with the work of others, and this would be enough to turn many people off from distributing their work in the first place.
It may work in certain instances, but certainly not in all, or even many.
One of the stereotypical lines an artist hears (and I am sure programmers hear it too) is, “We want you to work on this project but we can’t pay you.” People are constantly looking for freebies and I think a lot of them don’t value the time and effort artists put into their work. They think that “you enjoy doing it anyway, so why charge for it?” Oh my word, this is so incredibly common. I’ve gotten it all my life, and I’m sure most other creative folks do too. There is this myth that if you “enjoy” doing it, you have a lot of nerve charging for it.
So no. I’m not convinced that people will automatically “step up to the plate” and support the artists they admire. They don’t do it now. They want freebies, and act offended by the idea that they should be expected to pay.
Heh Heh. Look, this is where I reckon we’re starting to get into the crux of the matter. It’s a bit like the endemic institutionalised piracy of software and content which takes place in China. Sure, the Chinese goverment itself isn’t responsible for doing such a thing, but ultimately, if pressure isn’t brought to bear on the Chinese government to clamp down on software piracy, who is ever going to be held responsible? That’s the analogy I’m drawing here.
The internet is a recent phenomon, and music downloads are an unexpected development - but not a wholly unexpected one because music is such a popular medium after all.
At the moment though, the popular consensus is that really, it’s only the gambling and porn industry’s who have made a real mozza out of the internet thus far. But music is another astonishingly highly traded commodity which has miraculously escaped a financial audit trail. Nonetheless, a not insignificant portion of inbound revenue to the major Utility players involved in the internet have made money out of it - but the artists haven’t - ergo I believe the Utility Company’s can’t entirely absolve themselves of responsibilty for this. Without them, file sharing couldn’t exist at all.
You said it yourself: “the level of intensity that some artists feel towards their work”. Some artists feel that level of passion, some don’t. Some programmers feel that level of passion, some don’t. The photographer taking pictures for a marketing brochure probably doesn’t, and neither does the author writing story problems for a textbook.
Anyway, getting back to the point: Some people give software away for free, for various reasons. Other people do the same with music and other forms of art. Changes in copyright law won’t cause a shortage of software, music, or other art, because people have always created art and they’ll keep creating it - perhaps just not the same people.
What about the selfishness of artists who demand to judge, in perpetuity, who can enjoy their work? Where’s the protection against that? Why should it take precedence over the selfishness of individuals who want to enjoy works for free that have already been made?
Sure, people sometimes ask me to do things for free, and I sometimes tell them to fuck off.
I don’t think you’re acknowledging the difference between telling an artist, “I want you to make me something for free,” and “You’ve already made something; I want to make a copy of it at no cost or inconvenience to you.”
They don’t do it now? Except for the cases that have been brought up over and over in this thread and others, you mean? You forget that there’s no objective evidence that file sharing has caused a loss. The most anyone can honestly say is that the impact is unknown.
Well, obviously. I don’t expect that the “emotionless brochure author” is going to feel the same level of emotion towards their work as the person who wrote the autobiography.
But I have never gotten the impression that you do, so you are working from the perspective of just not knowing how that feels.
You don’t know, and I don’t know how these people feel, because they are all individuals. And if some of them don’t feel that level of passion towards their work, (or if they simply have a different philosophy about their work) they are free to give permission for others to use their work, in the same way I give permission for people to use my photos as wallpaper.
You mean to tell me that if copyright law changes, that a new set of people will all of a sudden start creating work, to help compensate for the people who have been turned off by the whole thing (because of lack of payment, not being able to afford the time, not wanting to see their work “bastardized”)? You mean people that don’t mind giving up their work for free, and people who don’t mind seeing their work “bastardized” will suddenly make up for the ones who do? A whole new set of people?
And you mean to say that the people who already feel like they’ll do their work and distribute it freely are not now currently doing work?
I am not following your logic.
What is so “selfish” about not wanting to see your hard work shit on by a leech? (i.e. “bastardization.”) What is so “selfish” about wanting to actually make a living doing work that others seem so eager to consume?
Because the people who want to enjoy (for free) works that have already been made have done jack shit to contribute to that work. They didn’t make it, they didn’t help fund it, they did jack shit. I think the ones who actually put in effort (and heart and soul) have more at stake than the ones who just want to sit back and consume stuff for free.
Screw that. That’s kind of the same mentality as saying, “You were driving that way anyway, so why should I have to help you pay for gas?” Freeloading leeches. (And yes, I know that the extra weight in the car does cost a little extra gas consumption, etc. etc.–I’m talking about a general mind set here.)
I do work on my own terms, and one of those terms is that I get to choose how it is distributed. If I thought that my hard work and effort would be “bastardized” or used by someone else without helping compensate me for my time and effort, I’d just keep my work to myself. Working hard on something, just to see someone else “bastardize” it is not what I had in mind when I created it.
They sometimes do it now. But I’ve seen no evidence that they will consistently do it.
I’ve met too many people who think that it’s nothing for me to give away my work for free, since I enjoy doing it anyway. These kind of people have been around forever, they are everywhere, and I don’t think that they’ll suddenly have a change of heart if copyright laws are changed. I think that the law being changed would merely embolden them in their conviction that artists don’t really deserve to be paid, since art is “fun” and not “work.”
But hey–since I doubt that the copyright law will be changed in a way that you prefer, it’s all just hypothetical.
What!?!? Where the hell did you guys get into calling software art?
Sorry if my reply is out of context, but keeping up with this thread is a full time job.
No I do not consider my software to be art. I mean sure, I try to make it look nice, but my software is purely utilitarian. I’m not trying to draw that comparison. The meaning of my post is, because I own copyrights I can see things from the artists’ point of view. And if evil corporations were doing with my creations what the music industry is doing with the creations of songwriters, then I would be angry.
Basically, the artists are being screwed whether people share music illegally or not.
I’m not sure that the whole “Is software art?” debate is even relevant to this thread. It is intellectual property, and so comes under the rubric of copyright laws. Whether you consider it art, science, or even masturbation is irrelevant.
I’m not talking about using it for anything commercial, I’m talking about computer wallpaper and even printing something out. If you put it on the web, I don’t think you should expect that people won’t do that.
I’m sorry, but if the law does say this than it’s a bullshit law. Why the fuck should government stormtroopers be able to raid my house because I printed a picture off the web and tacked it on to my wall?
I think art is like sex. When you do it for free for the enjoyment of others, it’s fine and dandy. But when you charge for it, you’re whoring yourself, commercializing something which should be freely shared and enjoyed.
Some photographers are very serious that you do not even download their photography.
Seth Resnick has this page where he expects you to “register” in order to view the rest of his site. To quote him:
I have no reason to believe he is not within his legal rights to expect this. (Not that I’m saying everyone will honor his wishes–the leeches probably won’t.)
If his expectations are not legally binding, then the fact remains that many people (including me–since I have no reason to believe otherwise) think that they are. Hence, I made it clear on my site that people could download my photos and use them as desktop wallpaper. I fully support Seth Resnick and his personal feelings on this matter, though. It’s his work and he has every right to feel the way he does about its distribution. And I don’t think he’s the only pro photographer who feels this way.
My gosh, that is the biggest pile of horseshit I’ve ever read.
Do whores have to go to “whore school” and pay of their “whore school” student loans? Is sex such a specialized art that only certain people can do it with any proficiency? Give me a frickin’ break.
A lot of artists and creative folk invest a LOT of time and effort to get good at what they do. They have just as much right to expect to be compensated for their efforts as anyone else who has spent time cultivating a skill or talent. Just as much as doctors and lawyers do.
My gosh. The mind boggles at your cluelessness sometimes.
Yosemitebabe you are letting Blalron off far too lightly. This is the biggest steaming pile of self serving wankstain I have heard in a good long while.
If this is your opinion about how you would feel about any art you might produce, then bully for you, Blalron. But that is not the issue, the issue is what entitlement you have to take another person’s art.
Or in other words, to continue your analogy, the issue is not whether selling sex makes one a whore. The issue is whether, if one sells sex for a living, anybody who likes can rape you?
One can only assume that Blalron would believe the answer to that question to be: yes.
Perhaps new people will start creating, or perhaps the same people will start creating more, when it becomes possible to incorporate others’ works. Think of how popular fan fiction has become, for example, even though it’s illegal - it would only become more popular if it were legal.
Sampling and mixing are good musical examples. A lot of people can throw a decent song together with Fruity Loops and a bunch of samples, or make a nice mix with two turntables, but not everyone has the knowledge, connections, and money to get the permission required to actually do it. Many hobbyists would be able to release their work if not for copyright restrictions.
The selfish part is that they expect the right to censor the information that other people can say, post, or share.
I’m not at all opposed to a hypothetical “copyright” law that only gives the author a monopoly on profiting from his work, but I simply can’t agree with giving anyone a monopoly on writing a certain sequence of words, painting a certain sequence of colors, playing a certain sequence of notes, etc. That’s censorship.
That little addendum says it all. If someone wants to hitch a ride in my car, that has a cost to me. If someone wants to make a copy of some software I’ve already written, it doesn’t.
On the other hand, if someone could hitch a ride in my car at no cost or inconvenience to me, I’d have no complaints. If a million people could hitch a ride in my car all at once, and I didn’t have to go out of my way or spend a dime to help it happen, and in fact I couldn’t even tell how many people were sharing my car at any given time… then why would I care about those “freeloaders” at all?
