An Open Letter to Photography Thieves

Ronald M said:
It is wrong, but lets face it. You make the image and put it where it can be stolen with little problem and then blame the thief.
I would not do it, but this is so easy and times are bad.
.
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It is wrong, but if I leave my car door unlocked and leave my sunnies on the dashboard is it Ok to just take them?
It was easy to take them and times are bad–do these thing make it OK?

It may be a generational thing, i buy CD's LPs and downloads if I want music. A young colleague has never bought a CD but has a 1TB drive with 'all the music I could ever want' doesn't see it as wrong because everyone does it and I probably don't like the stuff enough to buy it, so if he didn't download it he'd just listen on Youtube.

What I think is worse than downloading images is claiming them as yours, that's not just infringing/stealing but also deceit, and could fool a potential client into thinking you could have taken it.

Life is changing. people now no longer value music as an object (CD, LP) they think of pictures in the same way.

On the internet the perception is it's all free, as much as you can eat.
 
Photo_Smith said:
It is wrong, but if I leave my car door unlocked and leave my sunnies on the dashboard is it Ok to just take them?
It was easy to take them and times are bad–do these thing make it OK?

It may be a generational thing, i buy CD's LPs and downloads if I want music. A young colleague has never bought a CD but has a 1TB drive with 'all the music I could ever want' doesn't see it as wrong because everyone does it and I probably don't like the stuff enough to buy it, so if he didn't download it he'd just listen on Youtube.

What I think is worse than downloading images is claiming them as yours, that's not just infringing/stealing but also deceit, and could fool a potential client into thinking you could have taken it.

Life is changing. people now no longer value music as an object (CD, LP) they think of pictures in the same way.

On the internet the perception is it's all free, as much as you can eat.
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I read a post on Overgaard's FB page about "finding" things in his country. You leave your bag full of expensive gear on your seat at that charming cafe, remember it and run back to find it gone.

The finder says "oh what luck, I've found some great stuff, look what some careless person left behind".

He wondered if that line of thinking was wrong. 😀
 
j j said:
That's why Karl Marx always drank herbal tea.
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Mmm... interesting character, Karl Marx...

Spent much of his life, living for the most, part off misappropriated money from his friend, the businessman, Freidrich Engels, who consistently stole from the family sewing thread firm, Ermen & Engels. While Karl & Friedrich collaboratively pursued the ruin of capitalism and attacked the bourgeoisie, they lived comfortable and rich, with for instance, Marx’s children attending private schools, while he mixed with the gentry and society’s elite, using his wife’s aristocratic connections at every opportunity.

Meanwhile Engels, as one would might expect as a man of considerable means, maintained a stable of thoroughbred horses, kept a mistress, rode with the hunt and enjoyed the stylish delights of the Albert Club, in Manchester.

Also, Marx somehow persuaded Engels to write newspaper articles for him, in particular for the New York Daily Herald, which Marx published under his own name, pocketing payment.

Rather an odd pair to be flag-bearers of communism, don’t you think?
 
Photo_Smith said:
It is wrong, but if I leave my car door unlocked and leave my sunnies on the dashboard is it Ok to just take them?
It was easy to take them and times are bad–do these thing make it OK?

It may be a generational thing, i buy CD's LPs and downloads if I want music. A young colleague has never bought a CD but has a 1TB drive with 'all the music I could ever want' doesn't see it as wrong because everyone does it and I probably don't like the stuff enough to buy it, so if he didn't download it he'd just listen on Youtube.

What I think is worse than downloading images is claiming them as yours, that's not just infringing/stealing but also deceit, and could fool a potential client into thinking you could have taken it.

Life is changing. people now no longer value music as an object (CD, LP) they think of pictures in the same way.

On the internet the perception is it's all free, as much as you can eat.
Click to expand...

No it is not ok, but if you left a stack of bills on the sidewalk, would you not expect someone to pick it up.
 
Ronald M said:
No it is not ok, but if you left a stack of bills on the sidewalk, would you not expect someone to pick it up.
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There would be an obvious difference- at lest I think so. If I lose something and it hasn't a mark on it to prove ownership then I'd be out of luck.

i think there's a huge difference between downloading images/music that you know belong to someone else and finding a dollar on the sidewalk.
If that dollar is in a wallet then I'd hand it in, but where the owner is untraceable the area is much less clear.
 
sig said:
I believe that lying and making copyright infringement "more bad" than it is by calling it stealing does not help (assuming the goal is trying to change peoples behavior)
Why should people listen to a message that is a lie?

When people are told they are doing something wrong, they will be skeptical about the messenger and the message. And everything the messenger/message is doing wrong (like lying) will make the message easy to ignore.
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Lie, eh?

Well, well, well.

You may disagree with equating copyright infringement and theft, but so far, your only argument has been that definitions never change. Which is -- guess what? -- a demonstrable lie.

Cheers,

R.
 
Brian Atherton said:
Mmm... interesting character, Karl Marx...

Spent much of his life, living for the most, part off misappropriated money from his friend, the businessman, Freidrich Engels, who consistently stole from the family sewing thread firm, Ermen & Engels. While Karl & Friedrich collaboratively pursued the ruin of capitalism and attacked the bourgeoisie, they lived comfortable and rich, with for instance, Marx’s children attending private schools, while he mixed with the gentry and society’s elite, using his wife’s aristocratic connections at every opportunity.

Meanwhile Engels, as one would might expect as a man of considerable means, maintained a stable of thoroughbred horses, kept a mistress, rode with the hunt and enjoyed the stylish delights of the Albert Club, in Manchester.

Also, Marx somehow persuaded Engels to write newspaper articles for him, in particular for the New York Daily Herald, which Marx published under his own name, pocketing payment.

Rather an odd pair to be flag-bearers of communism, don’t you think?
Click to expand...
Years ago, just before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, a friend and I were working on a pure Marxist critique of Marx. Our opening chapter was called "Two Gentlemen Adventurers" (adventurism being a cardinal sin in Marxism). We also had some fun with their millennialist version of dialectical materialism and with the famous early footnote about all societies, prior to recorded history, being communistic (how could we know this if no-one wrote it down?)

But the wall fell down before we had written more than a few thousand words and somehow it hardly seemed worth pursuing. My chum had joined the Party in 1936; left in the 1950s; and then re-joined for the pleasure of being thrown out.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Lie, eh?

Well, well, well.

You may disagree with equating copyright infringement and theft, but so far, your only argument has been that definitions never change. Which is -- guess what? -- a demonstrable lie.

Cheers,

R.
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Sure. You are correct. Does not change the fact that copyright infringements is not the same as stealing.

I am naive, justice is against me and argue that definitions never change. At least I learn something new about myself.

Thanks Roger!

Cheers,

S
 
As is often said, "there's nowt so queer as folk".

I've enjoyed (for the most part) this thread and its twists and turns, especially for your contributions, Roger.

I find it's been a little like watching University Challenge: I just can't respond fast enough before someones steals my thunder. 😀
 
sig said:
...When people are told they are doing something wrong, they will be skeptical about the messenger and the message. And everything the messenger/message is doing wrong (like lying) will make the message easy to ignore.
Click to expand...

Based on what I have read, the majority of bank robbers believe that what they did to land them in prison was not wrong: The robber needed money; the bank had money, and lots of it; it is insured by the FDIC; so he took a few thousand from a bank that has a vault full of cash - so what?? The FDIC will replace it and nobody gets hurt.

The bank robber needed money; the end justifies the means. Therefore, armed robbery is not wrong in the robber's mind.
Such thinking is the work of a psychopathic mind. The copyright infringer/image thief's mind goes through the same process of the end justifies the means thinking.
Bank robbers are "big" psychopaths; the copyright infringer/image thief is a "little" psychopath. Both use the same convoluted and dysfunctional logic to justify their methods.

I understand that this type of thinking is to most people these days a laughable and quaint relic from a bygone era when issues of right and wrong, integrity and honor actually mattered to the majority of people. Even in 2014, such issues still matter to some of us.
 
noisycheese said:
I understand that this type of thinking is to most people these days a laughable and quaint relic from a bygone era when issues of right and wrong, integrity and honor actually mattered to the majority of people. Even in 2014, such issues still matter to some of us.
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Oh yeah, that bygone era when women knew to shut up when a man was talking and people of color accepted their place in society as second class citizens. Those good ol' times.
But hey, I guess people just had more honor and integrity back then...
 
I understand that this type of thinking is to most people these days a laughable and quaint relic from a bygone era when issues of right and wrong, integrity and honor actually mattered to the majority of people.
Click to expand...

I'm never entirely sure when this golden age was. As someone who's interested in crime and anti-social behaviour, it seems to me that we in western Europe and north America now live in the period least affected by this in all recorded history.

The thing is, we lose our innocence as we grow older and realise that there's a lot of poor behaviour (or that the "medja" tell us so). In truth, there was probably much more of it in our youth than there is now. We just didn't notice it then.

I come from Glasgow and in my childhood I didn't notice much criminal activity. It was only later that I learned just how lawless my home town was in the 'fifties. It's far more more peaceful now, as are most cities in the so-called "First World".

If you want a better time to live, in my opinion, you don't need a Delorean with a flux capacitor. Just look and you'll see it all around you.

:angel:
 
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