…And what’s everyone’s is free for the taking (sharing/swapping), no matter who it hurts.
The icing on the cake is when a thief has no remorse for what he or she has done. When they present an argument that’s akin to callousness (“We don’t have these patterns available in our language, so we translated them without asking. You didn’t lose any money. So what?”), I just want to throw up my hands in disgust ().
Don’t tell me that there’s some sort of cultural divide that prohibits others from understanding the difference between the terms “share” and “steal.” That’s a poor excuse, not a valid reason. If I walked into your home and took your pattern books, I’d be stealing them. What’s the difference between that and taking my online content and passing it off as your own or giving it to someone else? The other poor excuse I heard yesterday was that because patterns are virtual goods, they therefore cannot be stolen because they aren’t tangible goods. “Goods” are the fruits of ones labor and when taken are considered stolen. Plain and simple.
And when someone takes content that I’ve created and posts it elsewhere, I’ve lost valuable exposure in the form of website traffic, which translates into money. Posting a free pattern draws people there and in turn, creates business and exposure for the sellable patterns I produce. The same holds true for the I create. Taking the content and not being given proper credit doesn’t help me gain exposure, as some might think. It just ticks me off.
Going back to the crafty website that took my content, I would have been fine with the inclusion of my image had they actually asked. Additionally, I would have been more comfortable with slapping my logo on the image so it was clear where it was derived from. But like I said, I wasn’t given notice of intent to display the image on their site.
Copy Lefts vs Copy RIGHTS
The pervasive attitude amongst the “Copy Lefts” (as opposed to those of us who believe in copy RIGHTS) is that it’s getting harder to create original works of art, and therefore, “borrowing” the work of others to help make new works is one way to bridge the creativity gap. The other tenant is that they feel if they were indeed to ask permission, obtaining a license to redistribute the original work in a new form would be too costly. This about sums up the “” philosophy (And not for nothing, but holding up Nigeria as a fertile land of creativity because they make twice as many movies has got to be a mindless joke on the part of the writer(s) of this “documentary.”) Some people feel we’re a “” and that’s what’s prohibiting us as a society from moving forward creatively. I say we’re a Culture of Thieves.
Young people (and many who are engrossed in the online world) today have this attitude as though everything should be for free and in their immediate grasp (I teach Monday through Friday and see about 900 kids in a school year, so I consider myself an expert on child psychology in the practical sense of the word). This directly relates back to my biz in that I can’t tell you how many times I get emails from people asking for more free content than I already give out. (I’ll save that rant for another day. I could write a book about it). It crosses the line when these people take content that was not deemed to be “free” and make it free without asking. It’s an aggressive approach to forcing their “copy left” ideals, to say the least.
I have no hard and fast answers for the problem (yes, it is a problem). There is no easy solution that is beneficial for both sides of the coin. Don’t expect it to happen. Just note that this country was based on the concept of ownership in many, MANY respects and I’d be hard-pressed to learn of us going against our founding principles.
Allow me to end with a quote. I loved from on : “Information doesn’t want to be free. You want information to be free.” That makes me chuckle every time.
