You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Why You Should Care About Plagiarism and Fair Use
As long as the user that pasted an image URL found at google images does not say "this is my work" it's perfectly fine.
THAT is why google offers the reverse search, you can get the original author in a blink of an eye.
If you, as an author, publish something online, EXIF it, watermark it and INDEX it at google. That makes it hard to be stolen.
"Want to use it at your shitty post?" Go ahead, just don't say it's yours... since everyone can know it's mine in 2 clicks.
"@kevinwong, @lukestokes and @renzoarg,
I am in alignment with all of you on this, and this goes for myself and my own content creation.
No matter how much someone might want to claim that "potential" value was taken, the fact of the matter is there is never any guarantee or way to know for sure I WOULD have gotten paid for something of mine (made an additional sale, etc) just because someone else has a copy of it that was shared and not credited to me.
Humans show direct appreciation to those sharing valuable content who they have direct access to, for the most part,
and so the most natural protection we have against any assholes who--while not necessarily doing anything immoral--might have intentionally tried to nab credit for something one of us did,
is the wide world of the free market of people who DO care who did it and try to credit us.
However, with the world wide web, information sharing is like its own ether, and finding and crediting everyone for everything on every level absorbs a lot of valuable time for others.
SO I think it's often unreasonable (I certainly don't expect it) for certain kinds of content creation to come with the expectation that it is verbally credited every time, so long as the person using it didn't MAKE A CLAIM they created it themselves.
I like to distinguish between immoral and asshole-ish behavior.
If someone copies your idea directly and makes money off of it, that could be considered asshole-ish behavior, but since they physically TOOK nothing from you, and "potential sales" are not actual sales you had or can know you would have had, then it would be IMMORAL for you to use the threat of deadly force to rob, cage, or otherwise retaliate on the person.
If someone invades your home and physically steals items you have, they took property you now no longer possess, that you once possessed. But the fact that your idea can land IN THEIR BRAIN and they can go USE it, doesn't mean you now can violate the body that their brain resides in, by trying to steal from them to compensate yourself for what you felt was "potential" loss.
One is asshole-ish behavior, when someone takes an idea and dishonesty tries to use it as their own, and social accountability and ostracization and shaming can keep people in check in this manner, but
it is never the same as the immorality of the physical theft of something you really possess, and so you don't get to rob them or steal from them physically as retaliation, which is the dangerous mistake statism causes people to make.
There will be lots of "apparent copying" of all kinds of ideas because of communication now and the ripple effect-- people will appear to be saying things that look a lot like what others say, and doing art that looks a lot like others, because we're all being affected and influenced by one another on a much grander scale. The person who did not go out of their way to claim someone else's work was their own should not be punished for being influenced by the ideas or art of others. :)
Thanks Amanda! I really appreciate your perspective and love the points you make regarding remixing of ideas and what goes into creating content in general. What I'm trying to find is an efficient way to navigate the very large grey area between doing nothing, ostracizing/shaming, and physical retaliation.
But is that claim implied on Steemit? For text, I think it is (otherwise, we should use a blockquote as I did above). But what about for images? What if someone did create custom digital art for every post. Would we want to know that and would that impact our appreciation of the overall creative work? (See interactions @klye has had for examples of how this has already been a problem.)
It is, but when the whales upvote stuff they assume is legit, they get into big trouble with the community if it is not. If we can't assume content not cited is original, the burden is then shifted on them to check everything first. That's why I think the author doing that work up front (citing original authors) not only helps the entire community save time, it signals "I'm a cooperator who cares about valuable contributions" which benefits everyone from a game theory perspective.
Images are a tricky aspect of it because, outside of the #photography channel, they aren't (usually) a core part of the content piece. As with most things, it's our assumptions that bite us. :)
@lukestokes Are you seeing the glitch above that I see? What the heck? LOL
It shows MY comment that you responded to IS NOW KEVIN'S comment. So now It looks like my original comment is gone, and @kevinwong's is in its place! WTF?!?
Oh, now I see it. Very odd. Seems like it happened here: https://steemd.com/tx/06df4c38bbe7e2f3e2eada56eaa55bd206ae5ac0
There are some weird edits in there, like this one: https://steemd.com/tx/bc5f02c77fd59b80cdbdcdd9c0165533625f1504
You can get your original comment back here: https://steemd.com/tx/224154610197fbe38c05295b5ba48d6c2c20ca60
Hmm... not seeing that, but I do see multiple edits here: https://steemd.com/@dragonanarchist Maybe something got edited? I don't see your original comment which was much larger.
@dragonanarchist: if you didn't make these edits yourself, you might need to check your computer for viruses. The world of crypto is a scary world. Be vigilant. Be cautious. You should have the latest anti-virus running at all times and the latest OS and browser updates.
@lukestokes, thanks, I got the original comment back. Well, I'm not convinced that I didn't accidentally make the edit, only because I sometimes have 30 bajillion (approximately) tabs open, and then I copy and paste stuff a lot when I'm responding to people's comments, etc, so it's possible that at some point I got Kevin's text in that box on one open tab and hit the button to update/edit the post with his text accidentally in there.
It tends to happen more often (things of this nature) when my computer is running slow, and then I am moving tabs and have too many Steemit tabs open. LOL
Normally I catch something that glitched when I was moving tabs or typing and copying/pasting stuff to reply to it, this time I didn't catch it and must have hit an update button I didn't mean to.
@dragonanarchist: Cool. Glad to hear it wasn't a more serious issue. Hurray for the blockchain! :)
"so long as the person using it didn't MAKE A CLAIM they created it themselves.
But is that claim implied on Steemit?"
It's implied on INTERNET: "if I don't sign it, it is not mine; I obviously took it from another source".
Which brings a possible good idea:
There's plenty of "blank" space at the sides of the post, It would not hurt to have a "box" where the sources are displayed at (at least for the images directly linked outside of steemit's URL system).
If they "stole" them (so to speak). It's neither steemit's or the author's problem, but of the page where the image is hosted at.
In the case of text, anything written/typed is implied to have the author rights of the username. Otherwise it is blatant plagiarism. Because, yes, any decent writer uses quotes whenever the text is not theirs (again, use google to find the original source if it's not stated).
We've access to the whole communal collection of human information at the tip of our fingertips. We HAVE to use it.
I agree with Dragon and no publicity is bad publicity said McDonald's.
When I use your stuff, you benefit. It did not hurt Trump.
That works well for images because we have a tool for it (thanks Google!) and for blocks of text (I've often found whole paragraphs taken from other sources). What about entire works?
One thing I'm trying to work through is figuring out what the default assumption is. If someone posts on Steemit, should we assume it's original content? My thinking is, yes, we should. If they link to a source, we'll know it's not. Should we have to reverse search every image and every bit of text before we know we're not upvoting plagiarized material? That's really time consuming. It seems the whales are getting into a lot of trouble from the community for not doing this.
Personally this is my logic - all my writings are original, but images are largely taken from image search - and I tend to want the most appropriate image to illustrate my point, regardless if if the image is marked for fair use. Sometimes I cite the source of the image. but I don't do it these days because it disrupts my formatting (unless I note it at the end, but even then, I find it disruptive to the minimalistic style that I'm trying to achieve).
So yes, just about the same justification as yours. I still don't know what to think about consent when it comes to data that's open to the public like google images.
Include the source of the image, "in the image". I understand you completely about that, for me it's the esthetics's that play a important role in a post, so to "avoid" that "ugly"(at least to me), Source below the image or in the note at the end, I put it "in the image", people can open the image in a new tab and "land" on the source.
That's an interesting idea, but it doesn't satisfy creative commons where you have to link to the license also... but maybe footnotes at the bottom of the post are the best way to go (along with linking to the original image). Good thoughts all. Thanks.
Well I try to avoid creative commons as much as I can, even if I end up with "bad images", or I'll by some cheapo stock images and edit them to look better, or use images labeled for reuse, or ask a photographer friend, or look in my 23 Gb photography archive... so there are many ways to do it the proper way. At least for me...
But if you knew the author of the image, would you feel differently?
If you do not want people to steal your photos, do not upload them to the internet. It is the survival of the Darwin fittest.