The Internet is the biggest copy machine.
Many of you have read these words. Everything about the online world make reproduction very easy. We see this when we email someone, suddenly there are two copies of the same version (actually at least 4 since both email servers are backed up at least once). This situation only multiples with the advent of social media. Pictures, videos, and songs are all passed around to each other without a second thought. Copy after copy is created without regard to ownership or copyright.
Of course, the average person is not the only one guilty of this. Google fought copyright complaints for years citing "fair use" regardless of what was posted. The expansion of YouTube required content people wanted (and couldnt get anywhere else). So, to foster this, Google used its size to basically tell content creators to screw off. Of course, this situation is multiplied because people often take YouTube videos and embed then on different sites.
All standard practice for the Internet.
Copy/Paste has become a tool that creates a great deal of controversy. People are taking stuff from all over the Internet and posting it in other places, copying it if you will, where is the line in the sand?
Of course, this only gets magnified on Steemit.com since there is financial rewards at stake. When people are upvoted, they are essentially being paid for the content. But what if the content is not theirs? Where do we stand on that?
I must say that it is very easy to define what stealing is when it comes to content. If I copy/paste something of yours without mention of you while trying to pass it off as my own, that is stealing. It is rather easy to discern my intention. I am out to pass the work off as my own while profiting from it. Simply put, I am stealing your content.
Outside of that, the line gets very hazy. What about the videos we embed, the memes we pass around at will, or the news stories we toss up? Some of this stuff is referenced while other information is not.
People say that copy/paste is wrong and should not be done. However, for decades, when smaller newspapers existed, it was common practice for entire stories to be printed that came from Reuters. I grew up with a local paper and I can tell you that I knew the name Reuters as a teen yet had no idea what it was. In short, I guess it was standard practice in the news industry (still is since I see the name Reuters and AP all over the place).
Another factor in this discussion is benefit. Obviously, you would state that the one who gets the content taken is adversely affected. But is that the case? Steemit.com is now a top 700 site in the US and top 2,000 globally. Backlinks are an important factor for determining a sites value in the search engines. Having a link from a site like this can help. Also, depending upon who the poster is, that person could get that content creator a large number of fans. As Steemit.com raises higher in the rankings, its links only become more valuable and the number of eyes on this site will grow.
On the subject of links, what about just posting links? I see many people write a sentence or two with a link to either a story or just a YouTube video in it. Some of these people rake in $40, $50, $60..a fair bit of money for riding the coat tails of someone else. Is that even considered quality content? I guess we can make a case the person deserves it since he or she took the time to cultivate those who are upvoting and establishing a network of people on here.
Or is this discussion even necessary?
While it is not well known, every content creator has the option of monetizing his or her work. Everyone posting on YouTube has the choice also to put the video up on D.Tube. All blogs and site can post their articles on the steem blockchain to get compensated. This is not a closed system, it is open to existing content creators this very moment.
Of course, at this stage, it sounds absurd to say that it is their own fault if they aren't monetizing their content. Few know about this blockchain and what is going on. However, in a couple years, that might not be the viewpoint. By the time, only a horse's caboose will not be monetizing content via a source like this. Consensus them might be if it isn't monetized it is free.
Obviously, the stealing of content is completely wrong. When one tries to pass off someone's work as his or her own, that is deceptive and fraudulent. However, if someone posts something on there that is cited, I have no problem with it. Personally, I would rather remain on Steemit and get all my information. As long as I know where it came from (which adds value to the content because it can often tell a lot...something from Huff Post will be different than WSJ) I prefer to read it here.
The other factor is time. In this era, anything that is over an hour old is history. For example, if I put up a video from two weeks ago, that could have already been viewed 1 million times. Half the people seeing it on here would be upset at me posting something so old. Grabbing the video three minutes after it went up can be viewed as a different issue. Or maybe it isn't.
So what does the community think? The rule of thumb that everyone tried to agree upon was "fair use". Of course, that is a subjective term anyway. Google determined fair use was an entire Hollywood film (at least until they started charging for the YouTube service) and it had the money to withstand any attacks.
Perhaps we are simply entering an era where it is unreasonable for one to expect copyright protection. The Internet is a huge copy machine and, now with decentralization, there are no administrators to take down content. Once it is up there, that is where it stays.
Hell, even on Steemit, if a post isn't voted upon in the first 30 minutes, it is ancient and not going to get much.
Where is the line?
Please share your comments below.
If you found this article informative, please give it an upvote and resteem.
Pictured by Google Images
Growing up as a DJ I had a strong viewpoint on this: If I am adding value to the original content, and spreading it to an audience that otherwise might not have heard it/be familiar with it.. arent I doing a service to the original creator? Mainly this is in the context of remixes/samples - for example when Tribe called Quest sampled so many classic jazz albums, they exposed a new generation to that music, many of whom then went out and became jazzheads/collectors because of that influence... They added value, while exposing it to a new audience.
However, my best friend is a photographer, and they have a MUCH different viewpoint. The work that was on display on their own private blogsite, work that is not some smartphone snaps, but truly exquisite photography - I mean most every shot of theirs I have shown to someone - the response is usually, 'How in the world did they get that shot?' - anyway the work that was on display, work that showcased their talent and unique artistic style - has been STOLEN so many times it's really not even funny. And not stolen just by someone on instagram - stolen by almost every major website and news organization you could think of - and not once - not ONCE - were they given the slightest credit for it, nor a link to their page, nothing, zip zero.
Hearing their perspective really changed my viewpoint on copyright...
And basically these days that is my personal guidelines - are you adding value to the concept? Imagine if campbell's soup sued Andy Warhol... It's hard to imagine because he changed the nature of the design scheme and thus exposed it to a new audience.
However most copy/paste falls into the latter category, grabbing something to make your blah thing more valuable, which is what I would say the majority of websites were doing - not adding any of their own value, but stealing a photo to add value to their mediocre blog post.
So what are you doing as a blogger is the question I would like all steemians to consider... Are you jacking something to partake in its value, and to bolster your brand/blog?
Or are you adding value to what has come before, and giving credit where credit is due?
That's a very interesting point and one that I've been thinking about myself. In Anthropology as in any other scholarly field, citing is very important and plagiarism extremely frowned upon and even sanctioned. When citing, not only you acknowledge the other person's work, but you create a conversation between different agents.
On the other hand, with the growth of internet and the copyright issues, sometimes this pops up in my head: what if we accepted that we are all one, and that copyrights should simply not be a thing? What if? Copyright is an egotistical idea, a philosophy, where you decide to own an idea or an artwork. Imagine a place where everyone would accept that once something is created from your mind, it belongs to the world, not you. If you think of yourself as one individual that is a part of the world and you have the conceptual mind of unity with everyone else, then it won't matter to you, nor anyone, that your content is shared. Heck, it might even make you happy and glad.
This isn't the case now because money comes into place and people wish to get all the rewards possible for what they've created. But with internet, I can see a new horizon...
Very well put.
In some way I have found copying other people's work a bit interesting. Remember in school when you tried to paint or do what your friend was doing only to claim you did it yourself?
One of the unique traits about humans are we are copying everything around us. Without it we would never have gotten to where we are today and it's actually one of the traits that makes us largely different from some monkey species.
Not saying taking others work and claim it to be your own is right, but it's in our nature. It's only a problem because set ourself certain norms that we shouldn't do it. but it is a fundamental human trait that has made the world grow and it's never really gonna stop.
Just a different perspective:)
Fact is we actually have original content creator on the steem blockchain but due to low visibility they probably have no view and no reward for their work and hours put into it, I wont say go to waste.
Consistency I still believe is the key on steemit
Saw a post recently that caught my attention about the use of auto-vote, to me it is not bad or good as the fact still stands, the owner of SP has every right to do with it what he or she feels is the best.
The idea of after 30mins and no vote makes your work less valued, I will disagree with this, from my observation have seen users with high steempower resteeming a post and waiting for the 30mins time to come before upvoting.
So like I said if an original content creator do come and no vote or reward is given to him/her, they probably shouldn't give up but rather continue been consistent, that post you expected high return will just one day lead you to your pot of Gold.
And the subject matter
Unable to ref a work means you stole it, be it that you read it and probably changed the whole writeup, its still stealing one should always try to source every info he/she gets online, be it video, writeup or images.
I think attribution is key. There is a guy here who posts nothing but youtube videos, so fas as I've seen, and only occasionally adds any comment, and never attribution. Of course, with a youtube video you can go to the original author's channel, so it's not overtly necessary.
The problem I have with this guy is that he doesn't comment on the videos and when he does it's not much or really helpful. He's also not making any money doing it that I can see.
In a way though, he is providing a service, a syndication of sorts. You mentioned backlinks which I would have brought up if you hadn't. This cannot be ignored. Organic backlinks on an authority site are valuable to the original content creator.
Additionally, if the content itself is evergreen, it always has value. As to "fresh" news, no one can consume all the content that is put out, so information on a topic that is a year old could be fresh to some readers because they never saw it when it was fresh.
Bottom line for me, if it is properly attributed and has additional information, like a summary of content or thoughts on the content, I see more of a win-win. It's actually called content curation, which is why I was originally confused about what curation meant here on Steemit.
What I think:
Copying is not stealing . For something to be stolen, I think it requires the original owner to not have the object anymore. If you copy something and then claim it's yours, that's lying. Don't do that.
I really like your idea that original content creators should post their stuff on Steemit or else do not complain it appears here.
These copyright and patent trolls would love to monetise the 26 letters of the alphabet if they could.
I agree on both these matters....
As long as the source is cited, it is not lying nor stealing.
Plus, online it actually refers people back to the source also benefiting them.
I personally have never liked copyrights, except for trademarks, which are used to identify. I believe that the market must be free, and therefore those who best know how to do it should produce or do things. However, when it comes to intellectual rights, that is, to recognize these rights, I do agree with you. People must quote the original authors.
If you share something that is not yours ( picture, video whatever), cite the source and add your own opinion or contribution to the subject matter than you are definitely adding value to this platform. Even if you are just saying that the market is crashing and that is obvious from just looking at coinmarketcap it is still a piece of information you are delivering to your followers, and may be be valuable if it's ''fresh''.'
Couldnt posting the article, video, or picture in an area it commonly isnt placed, hence gaining new viewers adding value?
To the platform maybe, and may even be useful to your followers but I think you should still cite the source.
Its very complicated matter on steemit and on the internet too .. but in my opinion copying someone content is not stealing , claiming someone content is your content is stealing. Creativity is an art and everyone is not artist so 100% original content is not possible we need someone text , music , video to make a good blog. We should mention about the creator of the content if we use someone content. Very nice topic ...Thankyou
I agree 100% with this.
Great thoughtful post, thanks for sharing. I too have similar worries about Steemian's 'get-rich quick' mentality. They will not reap the reward this platform will offer in the future.
At Steemit's core, I think it's about educating each other, through each other's differing experiences and skillsets.
It's like scaling the sharing economy in the form of curated information.
They are already aware of the copyright problem, and have original 'works' bots crawling the pages. But this is far from perfect. I believe that the people who put in the real time, effort, and energy into creating a valuable piece of work will be rewarded in the end. It's too soon to tell, but things are definitely changing. As a society, we need to reevaluate what we deem purposeful.
There was a time when people will make tons on adsense just by visiting free wifi zones and click on adsense link. So such things will always exist as long as financial rewards exist.
How dare you post that picture of me without permission!
Jokes aside, I think this is a tough one to judge. If someone posts your content, say a video, on steemit and makes a few bucks off of it while gaining you some fans in the process it's a win-win. You'd probably have gladly sacrificed the content for a larger following, and they did the work to get it into people's hands. Basically they worked for you. But that doesn't mean you wanted them to, and it doesn't mean they won't keep stealing content for their own uses and trying to take credit.
I think as long as the content is shown to clearly be someone else's, and you've either gotten permission to use it or had no personal gain from it its ok. Sourcing would be the best thing, but sometimes, like for images, we don't have good sourcing available.
It's also easy to steal content by simply rearranging it or re-writing it in different words. Then the content is stolen, but how can you really tell? All they did was steal the concept. I could easily write a post about this same topic, and if I had a bigger following, more SP, higher rep, my article would outshine yours on this platform even though I couldn't put it as eloquently.
It's hard to judge, I know I wouldn't want content stolen so I would probably just keep an eye out and hope other people could alert me when they see it happen.
This is a useful content ..I appreciate to your blog..Carry on your creativity..Best of luck..resteemit
really its a big problem on steemit.but i read your post i underestand this topic. very important topic you shared.
Being an anarchist, I really don't believe in copyrights or patents. They are stifling to innovation. If they had exited since the dawn of invention I don't think we would be out of the caves yet.
Thant being said, I still think creators deserve the right to be paid. I just don't want courts involved. Let the free market do it. Cheetah is great example of a market solution to this problem.
It is my understanding that much of Shakespeare's work was stolen or at least highly derivative from other authors. Was this a good thing to do? No. All in all though, I'm glad he did it now. What would English literature be without Shakespeare?
If we want to start nitpicking over links and embeds then we will never get anything done. But only an ass would try to claim someones work as there own. That's what flags are for.
Thanks for the post.
Keep Steeming!
You bring up valid points @wdougwatson.
And there are a lot of asses out there.
Le sigh. Unfortunately you speak truth. Hopefully this revolution will help in that too. I mean if everyone isn't running around trying to make ends meet then hopefully we won't have as many people rationalizing bad behavior.
post is very useful .. and thanks for my upvote .. i've upvote some of your posts
Great post @taskmaster4450 you should check out my article on similar What Is Stealing Of Content Versus Referencing Content? How Big A Problem Is This On Steemit?
I would love your feedback.
Kind regards
Peter
Man not even a ha ha very funny knobhead well I had a chuckle
Kejujuran adalah mutlak, semua tempat di dunia ini tidak yang menerima pembohongan, saya sepakat dengan informasi ini @taskmaster4450, bahkan saya menjadi lebih paham mengapa teknologi open source sangat diperlukan saat ini, dulu orang-orang menjadikan Internet sebagai informasi belaka, mungkin tidak ada unsur pencurian disana, tapi sekarang orang-orang menjadikan Internet sebagai lahan mencari uang, mereka pasti disebut pencuri ketika mengambil yang bukan haknya.
It goes down to originality
Produce contents with your own style and uniqueness, be consistent with how you do it and your audience will show up.
If you want to blog about something you're not too good at, read about it, have your own understanding and be ready for constructive criticisms.
Stealing should never be a part of your plan, just stay original....
Amazing
Yes copy past is very famous on steemit, I just wrote a post about crazy spammers that are doing that, you can take a look at my last post, I am really tired from spammers and how much are there in steemit, they are rude and they don't understand if you tell them, the problem that they think that they are right and it's ok for them to copy and past articles from the web to steemit. I really want to find a way to gid rid of them instead of just muting them.
Thank you bro good post
I just came here and upvoted because of this:
Beyond what you have written the entire notion of "intellectual property" and its associated protection mechanisms is a quagmire of contradictions. That's why we have lawyers making careers sorting it out.
It seems said notion is WHOLLY about money. Remove the possibility of profit and the problem evaporates. No one actually cares about the intellectual property; they care about the money it might generate. (OK, there might be 3-4 that care about attribution too owing to their vanity)
So, if we accept the above statement as correct we can formulate a behavioural guide for ourselves, a usage litmus test if you will. Simply ask the question
If our usage INCREASES their profit potential then they should be happy. If our usage DECREASES their profit potential then we should NOT use their content.
(One obvious exception is when content is labelled as COPYRIGHTED. In that case they creator has stated they want NO help from others.)
On a medium like the Internet, eyes on content equals money so in most cases simply attribution with links to the source should be seen as increasing potential profit, and minimally as free advertising.
While not a perfect solution it at least causes us to pause and should afford a workable solution in most cases. But plagiarism has never been a problem among us who actually care. The problem comes from those who have no regard for anyone but themselves.
A problem with this unfortunately is that you don't know if the original creator is also on Steemit. I had a video which no-one should have made money out of (it was a music vidoe where I made the visuals and a band made the music and it was made for tertiary study and I signed an agreement saying I could ptu the video up on YT etc but couldn't make money from it). I shared it on reddit then came here to make a post with rewards turned off while I was at it and some turd shared my content off of reddit in the time it took me to make a post and started getting upvotes on it. His post got all the attention and mine got hardly noticed, even thoguh I was the original cc. I managed to get the rewards turned off on his post, but this brings up an issue of "what if I could have made money from it and didn't have that agreement?". In that case using the logic you stated in your comment, if you assumed I wouldn't have been on Steemit, you would say the free advertising would have lead to more profit and shared it but because I was on Steemit, I did make a post but your post got upvotes and mine didn't, which would mean I lost profit from it rather than gained (in the case of the real situation, the freeloader's post did gte more attention than mine did, but luckily I made it so neither of us made money from it since that isn't allowed). I have no issue with people sharing with rewards turned off but they shouldn't be making money from content they didn't create. And unfortunately we don't know for certain if someone is on Steemit or not either.
It's a very unequivocal question. On the one hand, the theft of other people's content is bad. On the other hand, who said you stole it? Let's talk about the example of YouTube. You took a link, or even better copied the video code, inserted in your post on Steemit. For you, this content, and for the creator of the video is at least advertising, or, in the case of the code, also additional views. But, you can act differently, since I'm doing with the channel "Simple Thoughts". I received a written permission from this channel to use their video. More details in my article..
Plus, I'm not doing this to get additional monetization, but to share the great knowledge that is on this channel. Kind of, this is a small fee for mentoring the author of the channel. Good luck to you.