Taking a step back, I think this is an excellent example of how most people are woefully ignorant about copyright. The vast majority of people think nothing of infringing copyright - they use images from Flickr without bothering to check the license, they forward e-mails, they post & repost videos to Youtube, they download & share music & video & software with their friends without a care in the world.
Why? Because that's the natural way to use the Internet, and (despite the recorded music industry's best efforts) nobody has ever pointed out to them that it's illegal. They copy on the Internet like fish swim in the sea.
What Marak did is wrong, and I feel for the guy who had his code nicked. It's happened to me - Wordpress today contains my code in blatant violation of the license under which I published it. When that happened it annoyed me at first, but ultimately I decided to let it go because any complaint would be met by blank incomprehension. When your stuff is taken by "kids on the Internet", you can't just call them out on it, you have to educate them into a whole new way of thinking. And life's too short for that.
I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.
I don't know if this is the place for that discussion, but briefly, I think posting to SO gives them an implicit right to show your content on the web and store it on their servers. What I don't think it gives them an implicit right to do is re-license your content under cc-wiki, provide it in a data dump, and specify how you are to be attributed for your contribution. When I've brought this up with SO, their response was that because the footer says that all content is licensed under cc-wiki, it's OK. I disagree. If I say that your response to this comment will be in the public domain, that doesn't make it so. I would need your explicit permission to re-license your comment, even though I have certain implicit permissions, like the permission to cache it in my browser.
For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution.
I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same.
OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.
That's ok, I asked for the details. This is an interesting topic (especially to me, as I'm working on my own site which will have user created content). But this isn't the place for a discussion about it.
Thanks for your point of view though, I'll definitely keep take what you said into account.
I feel uneasy about the sense that the music industries appear on the side of right here. And this is a situation where we should hesitate to call things wrong simply because they are illegal.
We must remember that copyright is only justified on practical grounds, and with the internet these practicalities have changed greatly. If we only want to lecture 'kids on the internet' of how copyright was, we are failing to give the matter the thought it now needs. Copying, in itself, is good -- it is one of the two sides of the trade-off, and that the internet enables and encourages people to copy is a substantial good that we don't want to impede.
I think we should want attribution, but permission I feel less certain about. It is probably corporations that muddy the waters: people do plenty of open-source and share freely, and so retaining a little control seems socially reasonable. But corporations are all too often obnoxious sociopaths about copyright.
So I am not sure what I would tell 'kids on the internet'. I lean toward the share-everything-freely side, but it doesn't really matter anyway because the whole system is going to be doing a lot of evolving and adapting by itself in coming years.
The recorded music industry are not in the right here. The law is on their side, but they are trying to swim against an overwhelming tide.
I have a little more sympathy for the author of the plagiarised code. Whatever "copyright" system emerges from the Internet storm, it's not going to enable the RIAA to make money, but it might protect guys like that from having attributions removed from their work. I hope so.
Using pictures unlawfully is sadly the trend on internet forums and to a large degree on big blogs. This is particularly prevalent when it comes to videogame magazines which are scanned and uploaded and is either showed on the videogame-related site or referenced by a link. Everyone basically does it. It's ridiculous and appalling.
Add to this sites like reddit who, willy-nilly, deep-link to images on other sites with few if any moral qualms. Hotlink/Deep-link protection is something you ought to make sure you implement. The comic artist The Oatmeal chose to split up his images so they couldn't be exploited effectively.
Can you expound on that? I was under the impression (from some discussion about electronic search-and-seizure laws) that mail, once delivered to the recipient, is no longer considered your property. I guess I've never reflected on exactly what property rights are transfered to me when you mail me something. Certainly if you send me something in a physical envelope, I can forward that to anyone, copyright law has nothing to do with that. So the question is whether electronic mail shares that feature with physical mail, since mail service is something that's explicitly talked about in the law.
> I was under the impression (from some discussion about electronic search-and-seizure laws) that mail, once delivered to the recipient, is no longer considered your property.
While true, owning a piece of mail does not imply that you own the relevant copyright.
Consider a book that you own. You own that copy. You can destroy it, you can sell/give/lend/show it to someone else, you can keep it. That physical thing is yours do do with as you will.
However, you can't (legally) copy it if its copyright is still active. (Yes, fair use comes in here too.)
You are incorrect. The author of a letter retains the copyright to the contents. The recipient owns their copy, but cannot duplicate it without permission.
I think that that is a more ingrained issue. Nobody would think twice about running a snail mail letter through the copy machine and forwarding a copy to someone else either. No internet needed.
Maybe game magazines aren't the best example given their habit of whoring out good reviews in exchange for "exclusives" which mostly contain marketing material. Hardly bastions of creativity.
Not just ignorant, but willfully ignorant. The copyright violations have been brought to his attention yet the project is still available and he's acting as if he's done nothing wrong.
Comments
Taking a step back, I think this is an excellent example of how most people are woefully ignorant about copyright. The vast majority of people think nothing of infringing copyright - they use images from Flickr without bothering to check the license, they forward e-mails, they post & repost videos to Youtube, they download & share music & video & software with their friends without a care in the world.
Why? Because that's the natural way to use the Internet, and (despite the recorded music industry's best efforts) nobody has ever pointed out to them that it's illegal. They copy on the Internet like fish swim in the sea.
What Marak did is wrong, and I feel for the guy who had his code nicked. It's happened to me - Wordpress today contains my code in blatant violation of the license under which I published it. When that happened it annoyed me at first, but ultimately I decided to let it go because any complaint would be met by blank incomprehension. When your stuff is taken by "kids on the Internet", you can't just call them out on it, you have to educate them into a whole new way of thinking. And life's too short for that.
I think in the end, as sad is it is, what you said about "blank incomprehension" is the take home lesson from this. I've tried for months, if not years, to get people to understand that SO is violating copyright by not asking for permission to re-license user-submitted content under cc-wiki, but no one seems to get it. The basics of copyright law are not very complicated. I think the big problem is all the misinformation and rumors out there on copyright law. That and the fact that copyright law has historically not kept up well with new technology.
Can you expand on that SO statement? I know you said you've already been talking about it for months, but I've never heard anything about this.
I don't know if this is the place for that discussion, but briefly, I think posting to SO gives them an implicit right to show your content on the web and store it on their servers. What I don't think it gives them an implicit right to do is re-license your content under cc-wiki, provide it in a data dump, and specify how you are to be attributed for your contribution. When I've brought this up with SO, their response was that because the footer says that all content is licensed under cc-wiki, it's OK. I disagree. If I say that your response to this comment will be in the public domain, that doesn't make it so. I would need your explicit permission to re-license your comment, even though I have certain implicit permissions, like the permission to cache it in my browser.
For comparison, Wikipedia requires that all submitters "irrevocably agree to release [their] contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. [They] agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." (See the comment under the edit box on any Wikipedia edit page.) Wikipedia is big enough to actually deal with legal issues, and this is how they do it. They get explicit permission, and they explicitly require agreement with a particular method of attribution.
I am not a lawyer, but everything I've read about copyright (from reliable sources, such as the actual legal code) suggests that Wikipedia is doing it right. There are certain implicit permissions with user-submitted content. Permission to re-license is not one of them. Since Wikipedia does re-license content, they ask for permission to do so. SO should do the same.
OK, that wasn't as brief as I hoped. I apologize. I don't mean to derail the commentary here.
I'm very interested in this topic. I'm curious to know if this line in the SO terms of service document
is enough to relicense user submissions?Yes! Thank you for sharing. This legal page is something quite new on SO and finally addresses my concern.
That's ok, I asked for the details. This is an interesting topic (especially to me, as I'm working on my own site which will have user created content). But this isn't the place for a discussion about it.
Thanks for your point of view though, I'll definitely keep take what you said into account.
It's self-serving "ignorance" - some people tell themselves that whatever is most beneficial to them is how things must work.
I feel uneasy about the sense that the music industries appear on the side of right here. And this is a situation where we should hesitate to call things wrong simply because they are illegal.
We must remember that copyright is only justified on practical grounds, and with the internet these practicalities have changed greatly. If we only want to lecture 'kids on the internet' of how copyright was, we are failing to give the matter the thought it now needs. Copying, in itself, is good -- it is one of the two sides of the trade-off, and that the internet enables and encourages people to copy is a substantial good that we don't want to impede.
I think we should want attribution, but permission I feel less certain about. It is probably corporations that muddy the waters: people do plenty of open-source and share freely, and so retaining a little control seems socially reasonable. But corporations are all too often obnoxious sociopaths about copyright.
So I am not sure what I would tell 'kids on the internet'. I lean toward the share-everything-freely side, but it doesn't really matter anyway because the whole system is going to be doing a lot of evolving and adapting by itself in coming years.
The recorded music industry are not in the right here. The law is on their side, but they are trying to swim against an overwhelming tide.
I have a little more sympathy for the author of the plagiarised code. Whatever "copyright" system emerges from the Internet storm, it's not going to enable the RIAA to make money, but it might protect guys like that from having attributions removed from their work. I hope so.
Meanwhile, the author of this blog post is using South Park images without permission (or attribution for that matter)
At least he's not insulting them about it.
Using pictures unlawfully is sadly the trend on internet forums and to a large degree on big blogs. This is particularly prevalent when it comes to videogame magazines which are scanned and uploaded and is either showed on the videogame-related site or referenced by a link. Everyone basically does it. It's ridiculous and appalling.
Add to this sites like reddit who, willy-nilly, deep-link to images on other sites with few if any moral qualms. Hotlink/Deep-link protection is something you ought to make sure you implement. The comic artist The Oatmeal chose to split up his images so they couldn't be exploited effectively.
What about e-mail forwarding? That's just as illegal as copying a picture, and everybody BAR NONE does it without a second thought.
Can you expound on that? I was under the impression (from some discussion about electronic search-and-seizure laws) that mail, once delivered to the recipient, is no longer considered your property. I guess I've never reflected on exactly what property rights are transfered to me when you mail me something. Certainly if you send me something in a physical envelope, I can forward that to anyone, copyright law has nothing to do with that. So the question is whether electronic mail shares that feature with physical mail, since mail service is something that's explicitly talked about in the law.
> I was under the impression (from some discussion about electronic search-and-seizure laws) that mail, once delivered to the recipient, is no longer considered your property.
While true, owning a piece of mail does not imply that you own the relevant copyright.
Consider a book that you own. You own that copy. You can destroy it, you can sell/give/lend/show it to someone else, you can keep it. That physical thing is yours do do with as you will.
However, you can't (legally) copy it if its copyright is still active. (Yes, fair use comes in here too.)
Physical and electronic mail is exactly the same.
You are incorrect. The author of a letter retains the copyright to the contents. The recipient owns their copy, but cannot duplicate it without permission.
I think that that is a more ingrained issue. Nobody would think twice about running a snail mail letter through the copy machine and forwarding a copy to someone else either. No internet needed.
Maybe game magazines aren't the best example given their habit of whoring out good reviews in exchange for "exclusives" which mostly contain marketing material. Hardly bastions of creativity.
Not just ignorant, but willfully ignorant. The copyright violations have been brought to his attention yet the project is still available and he's acting as if he's done nothing wrong.