this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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Morality doesn’t matter. Internet content has been copied and posted to other sites since before reddit existed. Copyright is frequently ignored, if not mocked outright.
A user should assume that anything they post could wind up anywhere. If someone doesn’t want something to be copied elsewhere, they should make it clear and obvious is the post, or better yet, not post it at all.
Cars are frequently stolen when parked outside. Private ownership of cars is ignored if not openly mocked by car thieves. If you park your own car outside, you should assume it will be stolen. So make sure to always post a sign on your car whenever you park it outside reading "This car is mine. Please do not steal it," if you don't want it to be stolen, or better yet, don't park it outside at all.
It's a bad take. It's not how ownership works. You have copyright protection by nature of the fact that you created a piece of content. You're not required to remind people of that fact in order to be protected, even if random internet person asserts that you should in their social media post.
That's not the only reason it's bad though. The idea that "I don't like the way Reddit is treating their users, so to get back at Reddit… I'm going to violate the rights of the very same users I claim have been wronged by copying their content and posting it somewhere without their consent" is just baffling to me. You're banking on the fact that random internet user probably won't sue you… and you're probably right! By taking advantage of that situation, you're not "pwning Reddit." You're taking advantage of the person who created it in the first place. Ironically, if Reddit had further abused the situation by not just creating the honeypot where people would create free content for them but also by claiming ownership of that content, you'd have a cease and desist in a matter of days once your bot went live and we wouldn't have to see this same question posted 2-3x a week on Lemmy.
I'm no intellectual property crusader. It's messed up that corporations can consolidate intellectual property to the extent they have and extend copyrights for generations. It's wild that we grant trademarks on vague ideas and then allow trolls to build businesses that do nothing but hold them and use them as weapons against people trying to actually make things. But if anyone should have the benefit of copyright protection, it's the lowly internet user who posts content for free on social media for your entertainment.
I never thought I’d experience the “you wouldn’t download a car” argument personally.
I guess my example is that, isn't it? 😅 My point is that you generally don't have to remind people of your rights in order to enjoy them, and that's true for copyright. Pick your own favorite right and replace my car analogy with it.
Now, I just need to find a way to compare cross-posting Reddit content without permission to the Nazis and describe Lemmy as "the Uber of ," and I'll have achieved the triple crown of cliche analogies. 😆
Lol. One recommendation: when arguing about copyright, don’t substitute physical goods for material that can be easily duplicated when making an argument. Substitute a patent? Sure. Substitute a different type of copyrighted (or copyright adjacent) material? Sure. But it’s really hard to get past the fundamental difference between stealing a physical good — in which the person you’re stealing from no longer has the item — and copying a good, in which now both people have the item.
To compare stealing a car with stealing digital goods, it would go more like: how would you feel if someone snuck over and built an exact duplicate of your car and drove it away?
Yeah, I get it, but I figure if someone doesn't understand why it's a problem to blame someone for having their content stolen, they probably won't understand why it's wrong to blame them for having other intangibles stolen either. The transition to tangible object was intentional in hopes of bridging that gap. The only right that is exactly the same as copyright is copyright, but that analogy wouldn't really work for someone who doesn't understand how copyright works. 😅 It's kinda the point of an analogy: to highlight the similarities between two things that are similar in some ways but necessarily different in others for the benefit of someone who understand the subject but not the object of the analogy.
But again, the point isn't that car ownership is the same as copyright. That's a (intentional, I think) misunderstanding of how analogies work. They don't claim that every attribute of the two things being compared is the same; only that there may be enough similarity to bridge a gap in understanding. I can't see anything so wrong with this analogy that it invalidates the point I was making with it. The point was that having the law commonly ignored doesn't open the door for victim blaming if they don't jump through all the hoops armchair lawyers define for them. That's often the case when the law grants us rights: we just have them at a certain point and don't have to do anything else. I have a right to continue owning a car that I bought. I have a right not to be punched in the face. I have a right to be involved in my children's lives. I have a right to continue to own the works I create. These are different rights which apply to different sorts of things, but the principle is the same. If I had made any of these analogies (or any analogy period), a bad faith argument could certainly have found a trivial difference between the two… but it would have been just that: a bad faith argument based on a trivial (for the purposes of this analogy) difference.
Is stealing a Reddit post the same as stealing a car? No, because as everyone has pointed out, the car cannot easily be copied, but is violating someone's copyright the same as violating their ownership rights over some item they purchased? Yes. When you violate someone's right to own the car, they do not retain an identical un-violated copy of their right to own it, just the same that way when you violate their copyright, they cannot retain an identical un-violated copy of that right somehow. Both of these rights have been violated equally, and the tangibility of the object they applied to doesn't change that.
One recommendation: when you tell people how they “should” talk, you sound like a jackass
You still haven’t, mate.
Did you read what he wrote or just the first 2 sentences before you thought up that line and clicked reply?
It’s just not worth debating. If I post something online, it’s only reasonable for me to expect that someone might steal it. It doesn’t matter what my personal preferences or ethics are.