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Comment by willlma | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, at the end of the tattoo video that was pirated, Destin Sandlin, the host, is seen wearing [a shirt](http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Going-Science-T-Shirt-Scientists...) that is a blatant rip off of an Randall Munroe's (XKCD) [shirt](http://store-xkcd-com.myshopify.com/products/try-science).

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In case anyone hasn't seen Destin's videos (smarter every day), I'd like to mention that he's an incredibly interesting and engaging person who puts out really high quality content.

If you're like me, and think of the pieces of shit that run the RIAA when you hear about piracy complaints... it's worth watching Destin and his videos to see a much more sympathetic actor.

(Also, his big beef seems to be facebook's incentives to make money off those videos w/o giving him some... he's not talking about torrents specifically)

> If you're like me, and think of the pieces of shit that run the RIAA when you hear about piracy complaints... it's worth watching Destin and his videos to see a much more sympathetic actor.

Well, the kinds of things that people hate the RIAA for and the kind of things Destin is trying to fight are entirely different. There's a difference between getting a digital product without paying for it (or getting sued despite not having pirated anything ever) and taking someone else's digital product, putting your own name on it, and using that plagiarized material for your own personal gain.

I think Destin's videos and attitude toward science are pretty top notch. I just don't share all of his views on copyright.

Did you watch his video where he explains his views himself? I find it pretty convincing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA

Interestingly, a lot of people are getting very frustrated with Facebook for other reasons as well. Famously, there's Veritasium's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

I can really appreciate what they're feeling. With piracy as we have traditionally known it, at least usually the pirate is not directly profiting from his act of piracy. With freebooting, Facebook is literally profiting from other people's work. It's directly diverting money flow from the creator (who REALLY NEED THE MONEY) to Facebook. I think it's plainly ridiculous this is happening, and obviously Facebook will turn a blind eye to it because it's making them money. This is one of the reasons why I encourage whitehat security researchers to turn a little gray when it comes to Facebook and do things to bring them down, it'll be for the greater good to bring the behemoth down.

Well, it'd be pretty demoralizing to see someone profiting* off of a bastardized copy of work I did in my free time, going out of their way to remove anything crediting me. As others have pointed out, Facebook itself stands to make actual money, too, and has incentive to turn a blind eye. I can certainly sympathize with the frustration, so why not use the law to fight back?

* Even if the profits are intangible, as in Facebook likes.

Names, titles and short phrases are not protected by copyright. http://copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf If you'd like to take that phrase and make a better T-shirt, it's perfectly legal for you to do so.

Looks like it may have been eligible for a trademark, though, right? (being eligible for and holding a trademark being different things, of course)

That always made me wonder, the people who sell shirts with logos/pop references shirts in mall booths, do they pay the artist a license fee to sell them?

The people who sell the shirts? No.

The people who manufacture the shirts? Yes, at least in theory.

They do if the copyright owner comes knocking. http://kotaku.com/the-maker-of-the-trollface-meme-is-countin...

NOPE

How is that ironic? Should every consumer be assumed to check the origins of every purchase?

It's ironic regardless of whether Destin's aware. If he is aware, it borders on hypocrisy.

Only the words are the same, and while I can't be sure, I feel like I've heard that phrase way before Munroe popularized it around 2008.

It seems very similar to the "I will do science to it" image from Dresden Codak, also from 2008

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ff/c8/73/ffc8...

http://dresdencodak.com/2008/05/02/copan/

That's more of a remix of the idea, than a blatant rip-off.

So we should blame every person that watches Facebook video for not giving him a credit and not Facebook/uploader?

It's really just not about credit at this point, it's about money. Facebook has already made money... you know what the real solution is? To give they money they made out of ads to its original creator. I don't understand why this isn't happening?

They will only do that when they can do it the Google way: double dip on ads revenue, first taking a 30% cut on adwords and then another 30% on youtube, leaving the content creators with something like 49% of ad revenues and google with 51%.

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