On 7/21/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/21/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 7/21/06, Mark Wagner carnildo@gmail.com wrote:
There are two problems with letting just anybody upload images:
- Copyright law is very complex. Most people don't understand it.
- Most people *aren't aware* that they don't understand it.
Isn't that a problem with letting just anybody add text, too?
Not really. I think it's a product of the public school system, but people generally understand that taking somebody else's writing and passing it off as their own is wrong, even if they don't understand that it's a copyright violation. The same can't be said of images.
Wait a second, are we talking about copyright infringement, plagiarism, or legal use of non-free content? These are three separate problems. I thought the original post was talking about copyright infringement, but this new post talks about "taking somebody else's writing and passing it off as their own".
Most people don't distinguish between "plagiarism" and "copyright infringement" when it comes to writing: the school system is very effective at training people that simply copying the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica isn't an acceptable way of writing a report, which is why we don't get very many instances of copyright violations with text.
Images are a different matter. The most common use of pictures in school is the collage, where students are encouraged to use pictures from many different sources.