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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

Please stop polluting public space with proprietary images. If you don't want to share keep them in your drawer. It's immoral to use the reputation boost internet provides without accepting that people will share your work.

To downvoters: If copyright lawyers can manufacture morality and play on lowest instincts ("mine! go away!") so can everybody else ("stop limiting my freedom!").

On more serious note every resource that is copyrighted should carry plainly visible note about like warrnings on cigarette packs so mildly creative people can stay away from it.

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From the author:

Of all the varieties of infringement-related comments, the “stay off the Internet” refrains are the most toxic. In one go they both acknowledge that infringement is bad for artists while also showing no concern for the Internet, which would be poorer for their absence. “Don’t post it” is the ultimate nihilistic diss.

I think a lot of people conflate the rent-seeking behaviors of the larger media conglomerates that acquire licenses to creative works with the monetization seeking behaviors of small-time content creators.

It's not a "diss" though, but a legitimate opinion on copyright which is found both in discourse and in law. Just because the author is opinionated and throws around rhetoric emotional words like "toxic" and "nihilistic" doesn't make his opinions any more supported.

Many legitimate opinions are toxic and nihilistic.

It is not a legitimate opinion on copyright any more than "If you don't want to be harassed, then stay home" is a legitimate opinion on harassment.

What's toxic is piling up so many people to profit from setting up a barrier on such as simple thing as information sharing and reuse.

But US does the same for so many things, health care, collecting fines for municipal violations, keeping people locked up, providing education, politics.

It is only to be expected that many people would feed of on relationship between people and information there. No other country is so zealous about interfering with it for profit.

If you have a better way for someone to make a living being able to do that, and one that would actually happen, then you're welcome to try and do it with your works.

There are dozens of methods of profiting from your work without sueing people and lots of people including me already use them. Unfortunately sueing works too to some limited degree especially in the US and people use it because they want to profit and don't care how much damage they do the creative environment.

It's a licensing violation, which is treated as a breach of contract. That's how contract disputes are settled.

As for "damage to the creative environment," the person trying to making a living off their work is not the one doing damage. The people who believe they are entitled to the work of others are the ones who should bear the sole blame for that.

> As for "damage to the creative environment," the person trying to making a living off their work is not the one doing damage

Tell that to all scared teenagers posting "No copyright infringement intended" because they made something cool while Sony makes its living. Being exposed to copyright law causes permanent brain damage. Your creativity might never recover. Some people don't want to make a living out of their creations, they just wan't to create stuff without anyone telling them which components they may and may not use.

Oh bullshit. That's like saying not being able to break any other law causes brain damage.

In a sense you are right. Imagine homeless hungry teenage coming with empty pockets to a food market. Try to imagine how he feels.

That's exactly how any average creative young person that is aware of copyright feels when she comes to internet.

She can use the culture but only if she won't ever get caught.

Being exposed to unfair inhumane laws influences people brains.

So your argument is that companies should be able to profit off of my work for free?

He states that he does not go after personal blogs.

I have yet to hear a decent argument that explains why commercial profit-making organisations should be able to get my work for free.

So your argument is that you should be able to use open communication platform to promote your work in any way possible for nothing, but collect as much money as you can by coercing into submission using any means necessary of people who ran into you work on this open platform and liked it so much that they shared and/or extended it?

> people who ran into you work on this open platform and liked it so much that they appropriated it for their own gains

ftfy

He has not only a 1st amendment right to display his work in public, but as the creator, he also holds controls that privilege over his works under the copyright act.

Suggesting he should go away is ridiculous.

Invoking the 1st amendment is just as ridiculous, though, because the core conflict is between speech and copyright. ;)

Why is it ridiculous? The parent-poster suggested he keep his work private to avoid copyright infringement. In fact, the owner should not view potential infringement as any threat to his ability to exercise his freedom of speech (e.g. display his work).

Because the main thing copyright does is curtail speech. Your argument can be rephrased as "The creator should feel comfortable using his freedom of speech to display his work in public because nobody else has the freedom of speech to display his work in public." Positive freedom of speech is clearly not the issue here.

It's a totally flawed use of freedom of speech anyway. Freedom to speak does not mean freedom from consequences. (Especially when it comes to people quoting you.)

> Because the main thing copyright does is curtail speech.

You lost me, there. That's a twisted reading of copyright.

It's simple. Every original work is a form of speech. Reproduction and retransmission, that's speech too. Copyright places restrictions on this. That's pretty much the only thing it does. The words you use, the sounds you make, these have to abide by copyright.

I'm not saying that makes copyright bad. Laws against fraud also work by curtailing speech. But I think it's a reasonable description.

You are wrong on the facts, about how laws against fraud work.

At least in America, courts only hear actual and not hypothetical controversies. Judges also do not grant a priori restraints on speech very often or very lightly. Laws against fraud criminalize (and preclude 1st amendment protection for speech implementing) dishonesty in certain contexts. But they do not restrain it by punishing the speech itself.

You've lost me. I never said the restrictions were a priori censorship. You can make the speech, and then you will be punished after based on it violating the law. And what do you mean by "punishing the speech itself"? Does "speech itself" mean the existence of speech or the contents of speech? If the former, I never claimed that, if the latter, they do punish that.

I guess what I'm getting at is, the freedom of speech is a bit stronger than you have suggested, but it is only a shield, not a sword.

You've got that backwards, nearly the entire Internet is private space, with specific terms & conditions for being allowed to use said private space.

I'd argue that much of the internet consists of minds of people who browse, communicate and share. Private are most of the pipes, low level and high level (like Facebook but not torrent).

On more serious note every resource that is copyrighted should carry plainly visible note about like warrnings on cigarette packs so mildly creative people can stay away from it.

But it generally does, and there is actually a procedure for dealing with 'orphan works' whose copyright status can't easily be established. Most work has the copyright statement right on it or in the metadata, and anyone who makes living from copyrighted works lodges copies with a repository like the Library of Congress and pays a fee for the privilege (about $50), because doing so is the only way to recover statutory damages if your work is infringed.

> On more serious note every resource that is copyrighted should carry plainly visible note about like warrnings on cigarette packs so mildly creative people can stay away from it.

Warning: If you're in a nation that has signed the Berne Convention, everything that's copyrightable is copyrighted unless otherwise noted.

Warning: Copyrights are known to the State of California to cause reproductive harm.

Any copyright indication fulfills the legal requirement.

To suggest otherwise, that established copyright law shouldn't apply if one makes a work public, means anyone should be able to take work on Github and ignore license. Attribution? Who cares. Required contribution upstream? Upstream this. Inclusion of source code and license? Get bent. After all, the developer is using the reputation boost that the Internet provides since they can consult as a subject expert, right?

Funny thing is that what you described is exactly how internet works if you don't let lawyers inside.

By my count this would sill be a win. And I'm a programmer and I'd be delighted if million people stole my code. And I have no faintest idea how people using my code might reduce my income.

It's backwards. Resource is private property on internet unless there is a licence attached and allowing otherwise.

It's like saying things tend to levitate unless there's nothing preventing them from falling down.

All I'm reading in your comment is an entitlement to other people's work.

I feel no entitlement to use other people's work if they don't market it.

I'm just not fond about people pushing their work into other peoples faces and calling moral outrage if they take it (because they can because that's how internet works) and ransom them.

That's not how the internet works. At all.

Ever seen any commercials about upcomming premiere of anything?

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