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I emailed you info.  Let me know if you didn’t get it! ~W

You can’t compare bicycles to words.

And how can you steal something from someone that is willing to give the information for free?

As far as respect and consideration goes, your opinion of respect is way different from mine. If someone takes the time to take my words and repost them somewhere else, I see it as the ultimate sign of respect.

It’s nice that you don’t consider stealing stealing. You have bicycle you care to leave out on the lawn for me? I need one.

As I said, one can declare anything a gray area, but that doesn’t really make it gray. What I’d like to see is more respect and consideration–from individuals, unregulated, not driven by the heavy hand of the law–and less self-justifying opportunism. That’s all.

Here is mine….

Take What You Want Unless Otherwise Indicated.

I had “Steal what you want” for a while, but I went for something a little more “professional”. (ya right!)

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So many open doors here… but I’m not going to walk through them out of respect for my elders. ~W 

The bigger picture here is internet is about as free as a place as there is when it comes to government intervention. I want it to stay that way.
I am not outraged about people stealing my words online.
I am not outraged by people stealing my photos.

If someone lifts Wende’s and uses it to make a profit (which is very easy to do with google) the law is on her side.

The problem with bot-driven scraping to provide even a meager profit center for others is partly that it’s simple theft; more seriously, though, it treats the creator of the property as a cipher, someone who’s there just to have their pocket picked. There’s nothing innocent or ethical about it.

Who decides if it’s theft? If someone steals from me I don’t think I’m a cipher and I don’t think it’s stealing. Can the original creator of the work make that call?

It seems like all of you calling for more laws on the books for this sort of thing. Which is fine, but be careful what you wish for.

One question I have though…if someone uses the words from Evidently for profit and since Wende does not have a blurb about Copyright, does she even have a case?

I also agree with looking at a blogger’s own photos vs stock photos. Just knowing the moment caught on “film” didn’t happen through the eyes of the writer takes something away from it.

I recently had something happen to me like what you described with your stats. One “person” and it was like 40 continuous hits. Now I have to wonder. Not a good feeling and all.

I totally agree… it’s THEFT. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

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It’s an unsettling feeling, eh?  And I’m with you, it’s theft.  As well, I don’t like blogs that constantly use stock photos.  But, that’s just a preference.  Once in awhile is OK but if a blog does that regularly, I tend to stop reading.  ~W

As to the topic at hand, TH, it’s hardly principled libertarianism to strike a pose of “anything goes.” Saying that theft is rampant, and is committed every time you open your mouth and repeat something you might have read in the newspaper or heard on TV, is hardly a defense for it (and the notion that that sort of conversational pass-on bears on IP rights is absurd). It’s true that overly draconian intellectual property laws, like the ones that have been put in place by Congress at the urging of the content industries, can strangle creativity and innovation. But that’s irrelevant to the process Wende is describing, where grass-roots creators–potentially the very innovators you say you’d like to protect–are targeted. One can see any area as gray if one decides to see it that way; that doesn’t make the real ethical and legal issues vanish, though. A lot of people have worked hard to put in place a community-driven way for every creator, from the humble blogger upward, to tell the world exactly which rights, if any, they claim in their work (Creative Commons, if you’re interested). For instance, I feel strongly that some areas of human activity, including my blogging, shouldn’t be about a commercial transaction. So: No ads on my blog. But if someone should chance to want to use anything original I’ve written, they can: if they attribute it to me, and if it’s for a noncommercial use. If someone wanted to negotiate with me to use the stuff commercially, they could–but they have to get permission. (And when I blog something that comes from someplace else, I’m pretty darned careful to attribute it using the well-known conventions: naming the source, using quotation marks, giving links. It’s not hard to do.)

The problem with bot-driven scraping to provide even a meager profit center for others is partly that it’s simple theft; more seriously, though, it treats the creator of the property as a cipher, someone who’s there just to have their pocket picked. There’s nothing innocent or ethical about it.

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EXACTLY!  There is a point where the relativism has to stop.  And sadly, I have feeling we are well past it! ~W

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Good girl!   And thanks for the sympathy.  Yesterday’s migraine is finally gone. ~W

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Thank you! ~W