You have four examples of using replicable stuff that has been shared publicly, and you call two of them stealing.
All I can take away from this is the absurdity of intellectual property laws in general. I agree with the GP, if people are sharing stuff, it's fair game. If you don't want people using stuff you made, keep it to yourself. Pretending we can apply controls to how freely available info is used is silly anyway
Theft and copyright violation are not comparable. Both may be illegal, but they aren't the same. Would it be illegal to build a replica of the Porsche for myself?
The GP's example was bad because he mentioned taking a product or service, rather than making a copy of something and keeping it. I'm assuming he didn't mean it the way it reads.
I fundamentally object to the notion that the government gives you a right to a monopoly on an idea, for what looks like perpetuity -- nothing has gone out of copyright since 1923.
Second, you seem to confuse stealing with copying. Stealing means you've lost something i.e. no longer have it. This is clearly not the case with copying.
Third, the comparison to slavery was only to disprove your assertion "Doing something wrong to someone else who did something wrong is still wrong." It was in no attempting to compare the two, the injustice found in slavery is far more egregious than that of any IP case.
Do you think it's ok for a teacher to photocopy portions of a book or article to pass out to their students? This is allowed under the current system. Shouldn't each student be forced to buy the book or article? Are they stealing from the author? What about showing a clip from a movie? How does fair use apply to software? Why does fair use apply to other forms of creation but not software? Why don't mathematicians or physicist get to copyright their discoveries - i can't reuse the plot of a movie (hell, I can't even summarize it: http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/996/996.F2d.1366.92...), but I can reuse someone else's discoveries? This is not an easy issue. Do you think wikileaks should be shutdown since it posts material it shouldn't have? Why is it ok in some cases and not ok in others? How are the lines drawn?
Do I think that people should be compensated for their work? Of course I do; however, I do not think that copyright is the correct mechanism. Injustice is injustice and should not be left in place just because it's convenient. I think a better way would be to have those purchasing your software sign an agreement that if they distribute it without your permission they must pay X amount of dollars, for they are the only ones you have any legal claim on. I'm not trying to encourage piracy, but I am taking the position that copyright is not legitimate.
I think your stuck in a mindset in which people can be compensated only by through copyright, and I don't think that's the case. I can't predict what the business model that would eventually arise is going to look like. But I am certain one would emerge. Additionally, I think that majority of software developers are actually employed on applications that are not sold to the public commercially so perhaps large portions of the software industry would not even be effected (banking, aerospace, hr, etc).
As for the personal references, yes i create things and understand the effort and all that jazz. But once again, I think that the current system in unethical and will eventually be replaced, perhaps by thinking through it now we can hope to improve the situation and not re-architect the internet and destroy many civil liberties to try and keep an outdated business model going.
Some forms of copying/uses for a work are permitted by law (eu) or permitted by fair use (us) and thus exempt from permission. Eg. it is generally accepted that you are allowed to download works if you're viewing them in a browser, storing them in a search engine database, or are taking statistical data for a research project.
AI companies argue (long story short) that their usage is closest to taking statistical data, and thus doesn't trigger the need for a license.
I do realize that some people find this to be a somewhat unfair outcome as is, but
A) It is the current law as is. (caveat: we still have to see if the courts actually confirm this particular interpretation)
B) I'm not actually sure we should let those people have their way in the first place.
Of course, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
I feel like some creative folks never actually bothered to learn the laws they were working under, or (more charitably) this turned out to be a corner case, and they were caught by surprise.
It is funny that some of the same people that claim that using and sharing other people work is ok and that copyrights and IP are evil also think that what Zynga did in this case is "stealing", "rip off" or immoral, at best.
Why would it be ok to just copy other people work and enjoy it, while creating something similar to something else is not ok?
No one said it's wrong or illegal. If you've ever had something you made be deemed worthy enough to copy by a large company, then surely you've experienced the feeling that comes along with that.
You created something that's being used by lots of people, but you'll never get any credit or attribution for it.
In fact, the credit goes to someone else. It's a shitty feeling. It feels violating, like someone stole from you.
It seems like the author is just venting. Just some simple acknowledgement is enough to make most people in cases like this happy. But then that mars the accomplishments of everyone who was involved with the "inspired" work.
Also all of this is assuming that any duplicated content is inherently stolen, when it could in fact be public domain, fair use, legitimately licensed, distributed under Creative Commons, etc.
In the US, anything you create is automatically copyrighted and you have full rights to decide who does what with it, unless you explicitly waive those rights, even if you post it publicly on the Internet.
Too many people seem to think that just because something’s public it means they’re allowed to do whatever they want with it. That’s incorrect. The only barrier is whether someone you copy from is willing to bring legal action.
Making an illegal copy isn't stealing the copyright, though.
If I copy paulgraham.com and post all his essays, claim they are my own, and then try to sue him for infringement, I'm trying to steal his intellectual property.
If I copy some of his essays without his permission, I've infringed.on some of the exclusive rights granted by law. I'm not stealing.
When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued.
When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded.
I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor, another set of rules for the masses.
I think the OP is about copyright infringement and plagiarism, which is a form of fraud. I do not justify it but it is not theft.
I don't think the world has much to benefit from plagiarism, but I think the benefits of copying others' work and building upon them freely far outweigh the downsides.
Sharing an mp3 is dramatically different from designing a similar website.
When I give a song to my friend, its like I put a website in an iframe. The whole site is still there, attributed to the website's owner, the owner just doesn't get money for it.
When I make a design that looks eerily similar to someone else's, I am trying to pass it off as my own. That's plagiarism, and that is the line that is more morally reprehensible because of the implicit deceit.
That's not to say that infringing on someone else's property is not wrong, but infringing with deceit is IMO much worse than infringing without deceit.
It's the user's responsibility to ensure they aren't infringing on copyright. If you are producing creatives for pay, you absolutely shouldn't be right-click saving images and using directly off the web whether you got it from DALL-E or a Google search.
Who cares about plagarism? Plagarism is a made up boogeyman created by high school English teachers.
If the work is sufficiently composed of your own thoughts, the fact you used someone else's structure for part of it is not a problem as long as it isn't your entire work or entirely derivative of one work.
If I use a Coca-Cola bottle cap as structure in a sculpture, that doesn't mean I am infringing on Coca-Cola's copyright. I still had to mold my original work to work with it.
Mostly that they aren't copyrightable at all, so it's not a helpful analogy since the law equally clearly holds that software is.
I've heard anecdotally that that's why there's so many cooking blogs that bloviate endlessly about how the recipe will look when it's done and what it made them feel when they ate it first and maybe just a bit of history about the region where it's from before finally almost-begrudgingly consenting to share the recipe, because that's all copyrightable content that can't be legally stolen, whereas if they just posted a bare recipe, anybody could walk off with it.
All I can take away from this is the absurdity of intellectual property laws in general. I agree with the GP, if people are sharing stuff, it's fair game. If you don't want people using stuff you made, keep it to yourself. Pretending we can apply controls to how freely available info is used is silly anyway
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