Splat | WiseTome.com

I thought I would not write about it again for quite some time, but I feel compelled to. It is about copyright owned by artists, writers and others over the works they have created; and about other people using it without permission. It also got a comment at Digg, stating that “copyright infringement is not stealing“. I had replied, stating my disagreement and left it at that.

Today, something else caught my eye. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, had something to say on the act of copyright infringement being stealing. And I was amazed by the number of varied comments that he got. I was amazed, not just for the sheer quantity (it can be a good example for Web 2.0 phenomena) of user generated content, but by some of the absurd rationalizing that people did to justify the act of copyright violation.

I do not call it copyright violation - I call it stealing.

Some of the rationalization, albeit absurd, given in the comments are as follows:

• Copyright violation actually give publicity to the original work and hence is justified.
• The artist/writer already has enough money - hence you can take from them.
• All artists/writers must make give their work away for free (though, this was not said, it was the undertone)
• Nothing created by the artists/writers are really original - they are derivations of one thing or another. Basically, J R R Tolkein should have given away the huge amount of work he did on Lord Of The Rings for free, and he should not make money out of it.
• The work (picture, book, music) is not worth that much, hence you can take it. I say, if it is not worth the value, move on and take something that is. If it is not worth the value, why do you even want to take it?

One thing was clear as I read through all the above comments made by the readers of Scott’s blog - they were all just thinking about themselves. These people, who were passing such absurd comments, definitely do not have anything that can be subjected to copyright violation. Some were even picking particularly at the ‘underpants’ analogy that Scott had made.

I could reply to each and every comment that was made, rationally. But it seems like Scott has made my life a bit easier by giving an apt reply:

Let me explain something about analogies. Analogies are not supposed to be identical to the thing you are making the analogy about. Imperfection is necessary. Otherwise an analogy would be, for example, “Downloading music without paying is like downloading music without paying.” It doesn’t add much to your understanding.

All I can say to those who justify rationalizing copyright violation is this: Create something from scratch and then imagine when someone ‘takes’ it.