Yes, I know it's not a good comparison as regards property, but the
inappropriateness of "if you don't want anyone to take it you should
protect it" still applies to either. Actually because it doesn't translate
to the real property analogy, is what has made software pirating so hard to
make an impact on the courts (same as hacking to steal source code). It's
not like the owner doesn't still have their property.
At any rate, this is an MG list, not a copyright discussion list so I won't
get into it here.
FWIW, my ex-wife, who breeds dogs, found pictures of her puppies on someone
ELSE's site. Not just were they pictures of the puppies, but the other
person's site was in the breeding business too. In other words, to
advertise THEIR puppies, they used pictures of puppies from OUR site. To
make matters worse, their site was festooned with warnings about everyone
on the site being copyrighted and not to take any work without permission.
The irony was a little too much, but the best part was when I discovered
that they did not actually COPY the pictures to their site - I guess they
knew that to copy the files to their server would be stealing, but they
chose the unusual step of simply LINKING to our photos off of our server
(why they couldn't just take pictures of their own damned dogs I don't know).
At any rate, once I figured out they were linking to our pictures and
hadn't just copied them, it immediately occurred to me that I had the power
to replace the photos with whatever I wanted - since they were coming off
of our server.
Various ideas came to mind (notice from the health department? dirty
pictures?) but I settled for something much more satisfying and subtle - I
was able to find some pictures of sick dogs (mange, etc.), public domain
stuff, and replaced our puppy pictures with the pictures of the mangy mutts
(we didn't use those puppy photos ourselves on the site anymore anyway).
Last I looked, their site was still proclaiming it illegal to use their
copyrighted material, their site was still selling puppies, and if you look
closely at the puppy pictures themselves, you'll see they are of very
undesirable animals.
Probably one of my few opportunities I'll ever have to get even with
someone taking material. :)
- Tab
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