10 worst excuses for content infringement
BY MARIA KOROLOV · JULY 13, 2017
On Tuesday, David Kariuki’s article about a freebie store that distributed content that was “found and collected” on other grids — without any checks that the content was legal — drew some comments from people who defended the practice.
Let’s put aside the main issue, that infringing content opens the grid up to take-down requests that could shut it down and drives away legitimate creators and merchants.
Some of the excuses offered in the comments were just nuts.
1. But officer, it was just sitting there.
If you drive down the street, and you see some nice lawn furniture sitting in someone’s front yard, and it’s not tied down, and nobody is looking, would you just stop and grab it?
No. It’s not yours.
However, there are still folks out there who will walk around the place and if they see something that’s marked full perms, they’ll grab a copy. Seriously, stop doing that.
Even if the content is legal — which you have no way of knowing — and even if the creator deliberately put it out there for other people to take and enjoy — again, you don’t know that — it doesn’t mean that they want to see the content end up in a freebie shop promoting some random grid.
If you are distributing the content in a shop, that’s not personal use anymore. You’re now a distributor.
2. But everyone else is doing it.
First, no, they’re not. Maybe a couple of people are doing it, and you don’t know that for sure — they might have permission to distribute that content.
Second, this is a really childish excuse. The old “but everyone else is doing it” didn’t work when you were a kid, and it doesn’t work now.
