Heh heh. It’s nice to see the NY Times *finally* come out advocating a moral position that intellectual property theft is alright as long as you don’t get caught. Zajawinski gets beat up pretty hard in the comments section of her post from a bunch of photographers who think she is stealing their work. Typical cry babies. Do I personally have a problem with what Zajawinski’s advocating here? No way. I think it’s great. And I guarantee you that most of the photographers crying about “image theft,” in the comments section of the post have all illegally copied music themselves. That’s the hypocrisy with too many photographers these days. I used to have a friend who was constantly pulling down tracks off of Hype Machine and saving them for their own use (and resending them to me) and then bitching all the time about people stealing images. It’s like it’s ok to rip off music, but God forbid someone dare download my precious photograph that I took of a seal last month — even though in both cases the material is being used purely for personal use. - Thomas Hawk

So it follows that it's okay to rip music out of music videos that the record labels post online, right? - Kevin Fox

I'd say it's ok yes. Or better yet, just go to Limewire, save a step and get it for free. I'm also cool with people downloading videos straight from YouTube to their computer as well. - Thomas Hawk

Except grabbing something off LimeWire doesn't match the model of 'you put it on the internet, so it's fair game.' If you sold someone a photograph and they decided to post it on Flickr, would you be okay with people downloading that photo and using it? - Kevin Fox

Yeah, if I sold someone a photo and they put it on the internet I'd still be ok with people downloading it and using it for personal use. - Thomas Hawk

the key point for Thomas is the term "personal use". as in no loss of serious income. for commercial use... you best get yours! - Marco

Heh, does it still count if I visit last.fm, listen to a few tracks, fire up a Konsole session, enter the Firefox cache directory, run "file * | grep MPEG", move the files out elsewhere and then run a tagging tool on them? ;) - Tyson Key

I agree with the sentiment of the post, though. - Tyson Key

Tyson you sound like you're a Pro at this stuff. - Thomas Hawk

@Tyson, as long as you don't attempt to share those files with anyone, you should be ok. At least according to 12 Minnesota jurors. - Wizetux

Aah, and what about Fair Dealing in the UK, out of interest? I assume that it's legal to do stuff like that for personal use though, although people will do it regardless, silently since tools are too easy to come across. - Tyson Key

Of course, I don't intend to redistribute the stuff, despite it being somewhat "freely-available" (to use the term loosely) without charge to anyone who can be bothered to navigate to last.fm or YouTube and knows where to look for the cached files. Hell, even RealNetworks produces a tool for doing that sort of stuff (in the form of RealPlayer, which comes in a paid "Plus" edition, too)... - Tyson Key

Hmm, food for thought - what about people who still record stuff from FM radio onto cassettes, CDs or onto their computer's hard disk through analogue audio cables, using crappy el-cheapo boomboxes? Or those who used to record stuff from TV broadcasts onto DVDs or VHS cassettes and pass 'em around? - Tyson Key

(Within a select group of people, of course) - Tyson Key

It's anything but cut and dried, isn't it? Is personal use anything i do with it, short of sell it for profit myself? Funny thing, when you think about writing and copyright, the massive prevalence of linking, retweeting, cut and pasting, etc. has unbolted that content from it's easily trackable piers. It's like porn, perhaps - you know IP theft when you see it. - Thom Kennon

As a musician ( though not well paid) I have no problem with people downloading music. Rarely are they downloading the higher quality copies that they would purchase. So, there's still something left to sell to the people who want it, and it furthers the music that I'm trying to get people to listen to in the first place. I want people to hear it, ad if they aren't willing to pay for it, why should I let that stop them from having it. - guruvan (Rob Nelson)

For what it's worth, I used to use Gnutella (KaZaA/FastTrack prior to that even), various forums and MP3 link dumps and BitTorrent pretty much exclusively, until moving over to last.fm and YouTube, since the quality and selection was degenerating over time pretty quickly (partly thanks to empty legal threats against various sites and users of P2P services, fewer people hosting nodes/content, and fake file injection spam). - Tyson Key

Of course, I discovered far more content that way, that I would have never heard on the radio, or found in a CD shop here, but it doesn't mean that I'm not willing to pay for content, or that I don't have any physical media for some stuff... - Tyson Key

It's all digital bitstreams anyway, barring stuff like analogue radio/TV or printed materials - they're easy to duplicate, and no matter what barriers are put in place, people will duplicate them and redistribute them. - Tyson Key

From a "making money" perspective, I think it'd be much better to, as Cory Doctorow says, "Think like a dandelion" and set up a home where users can legally purchase your work to put up in their homes. The farther your work gets spread online, the more potential buyers it will reach: http://www.locusmag.com/Feature... - Jonathan Blackhall

I agree with the spirit of your post, I do honour the license under which they are posted on flickr, youtube or last.fm. Although I don't download music and movies, I do profit from the downloading of movies or music, when I am at a friend's house and watch a downloaded movie, or listen and sing along to a downloaded piece of music. - Daniel W. Crompton