3 comments

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  Melissa

  9 months ago

  Excellent article, and excellent points. I wanted to link you to this forum thread on Photobucket's support forums that I came across the other day: http://forums.photobucket.com/showthread.php?t=... The attitude evidenced by the staff member here I think is a large part of the problem. They assume that since infringement is going to occur anyway, that there is nothing they should do to stop it. That thread right there made me decide to finally drop my Photobucket account.
  
  I worked in a public library for the better part of the last ten years and I can say that the copy and paste culture is something that is being *taught* to public school kids (at least in my area, and I suspect in many others). Teachers would regularly direct students to go online and find pictures to make their presentations more interesting. Parents would sit at their children's sides while they worked on papers and show them how to cut and paste from online encyclopedia articles or news articles.
  
  Harsher takedown/shutdown policies on sites like MySpace and Photobucket would help the problem, but I'm not sure if that's even the real root of it.
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  Jonathan Bailey

  9 months ago

  I can't say that I am very shocked by the staff member in the forum thread. I knew that particular feature was a bad idea and I knew that PB was going to explain it in at least a similar way. They fail to see the difference between stopping all, stopping some and enabling the process. The first two are philosophical issues, but the latter is something very different, including legally. Such an aloof attitude toward these issues helps no one. I've seen that attitude first hand and written about it elsewhere on this site.
  
  Regarding what you said about students being taught to copy and paste, it may be hitting a point now that we are dealing with lazy teachers. I grew up in a world where the library would not let me photocopy a page from the encyclopedia to take home (legally sound but a bit extreme I still feel) but I am stunned at how quickly we reached the point you describe and I am very worried.
  
  I worry not just about the future of my work and the work of other artists, but of the quality of the next generation's material. How are they going to produce research, artwork and poetry when all they know is copying.
  
  This is a sad day for me indeed.
  
  Thank you for your comment though, bad news that it is, I appreciate it greatly.
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  Carlos Garcia

  3 months ago

  I seriously think copyright laws need to be re-written. Who is it hurting when someone posts someone else's music video, let's say, on their own page? The person who runs the page isn't making one cent because MySpace is free to access. If anything, they are promoting the music video for whatever group...A person seeing that video may actually look into buying that song or video legally as a result. Yes these copyright laws are old school and need a serious re-write. Also, let's not forget all the non-American countries that can freely distribute copyrighted material with no repurcusions.
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