Question for Webmasters

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2002-12-17 10:41pm

How serious a crime do you consider someone TAKING pictures, sounds, and/or video clips from your websites, without asking your permission, and then only giving an acknowledgement of where they stole the material from?

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2002-12-17 10:54pm

I'd go after them until they took all my content off, and gave a public apology.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2002-12-17 10:56pm

Okay not a webmaster, but as someone who has direct linked images in this forum my modus operandi is; if it's something that the web owner has created (his/her own artwork) then ask and credit. If it's just a screencap, take and credit.

Cal Wright · Post by **Cal Wright** » 2002-12-17 10:58pm

As long as they don't build a website around it. If it's just window dressing or an example I wouldn't care.

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2002-12-17 11:39pm

As long as it wasn't taken by a commercial site (anything with ads, popups or ecommerce features that benefit the site owner) I wouldn't have much of a problem with it. As far as I'm concerned the material I put on the web is free for the online community to use in any way that doesn't either line someone else's pockets or misrepresent me or my work.

Stripping out bylines and credits is another matter entirely.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-18 12:22am

Mind you, direct-linking allows you to play games with people, which can be amusing

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2002-12-18 12:26am

I'm fairly paranoid about that kind of stuff, which is why I put my name on those Eva consession pictures I made.

Ted · Post by **Ted** » 2002-12-18 12:35am

I think that if you post something online, then it can be taken and used elsewhere, aslong as no tags are removed.

The 'net is public, if you post something in the public domain, its now the publics.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-12-18 12:38am

I have to disagree with you guys. I think that this represents plagiarism and theft. The fact is that a screencap is the property of the person who originally took it, and no one else should be able to use it without their permission. If an author writes a report, no one else can simply take it just because they like a particular phrase. They have to ask for permission, first. While I don't think this is an unforgivable crime, I do think that it is dishonesty. When you accredit someone else with saying something, they have the right to verify it for accuracy of context and information. I don't see why screencaps are any different.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-18 12:43am

I think it's related to the difficulty of its creation. A picture that is obscure, difficult to find, modified in some way requiring work and/or expertise, or wholly/partly original is worth much more than a simple screenshot from a widely available DVD, which is just a simple matter of hitting the "snapshot" button on PowerDVD.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2002-12-18 12:44am

However, I should point out that bandwidth theft is another matter entirely; you pay for bandwidth, and when someone else steals your bandwidth by getting his site visitors to download files directly from your server without asking permission, you are fully justified in retaliatory action (such as somethingawful.co*'s penis-picture redirect).

Ted · Post by **Ted** » 2002-12-18 12:45am

Then according to you MoO, you can't write a paper in English on a book, or an essay that you read and include quotes without asking the person's permission.

If you think that screencaps belong to the person who captured them, what about the people who made the film? Wouldn't they own those caps, and not those who captured them?

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2002-12-18 12:50am

Ted wrote:Then according to you MoO, you can't write a paper in English on a book, or an essay that you read and include quotes without asking the person's permission.

There's a difference. In the case of writing a paper on a book, it is an opinion piece, or a report on the work itself. This does not represent plagiarism or theft of idea. In fact, you ARE writing your own ideas about their work. If, however, I were to be writing a report on To Kill a Mockingbird, and I really liked some other person's analysis of that book, I could not take and paraphrase their statements on that book without first asking their permission, assuming that that particular paper was still protected under copyright.

If you think that screencaps belong to the person who captured them, what about the people who made the film? Wouldn't they own those caps, and not those who captured them?

So long as the screencaps are not being sold for profit, an individual is very well protected by the law. If Lord Poe had been selling his pictures, he would quite obviously be sued immediately. There are, however, a few television shows that have chosen to eliminate fan-based sites on the internet on the basis of copyright infractions. This is very unusual, but it has been done with some degree of difficulty in the past. The fact of the matter is, though, that the person who takes a screen-cap has done work in order to generate that particular picture, and he is entitled to be informed if someone else is using it. This is particularly true in the case of bandwidth theft.

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2002-12-18 12:59am

If you made a copy of copyrighted material for your own personal use, or for use in a educational and/or editorial fashion, it's quite legal. However, someone else making use of those copies is breaking the copyright. For the person in question to use copyrighted material, they would need to make their own copies from originals that they purchased themselves.

An example is that legally, I can make a copy of a cd for use in my car, but I can't give you a copy.

Hope that helps.

OTOH, if someone is stealing your bandwidth, that's another issue entirely.

edit: organized my thoughts a little better.

salm · Post by **salm** » 2002-12-18 12:38pm

i think that everything in web should be public unless you put a disclaimer there in which you say that it´s your work and which rights other people have concerning selling it, manipulate it, save it or what ever people might want to do with your stuff.

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2002-12-18 08:09pm

Material on my site that I haven't captured, recorded, or scanned myself, I've asked permission to use from the person I wanted it from. This does NOT transfer to some dipshit who wants to use it on HIS site. I got permission to use it on mine, not scatter it to 20 other sites.

It's simply good manners to ASK before you TAKE.