Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: CallTheShots.com
Author: Paul Snively Posted: 11/18/1999; 1:55:18 PM Topic: CallTheShots.com Msg #: 13202 (In response to 13192) Prev/Next: 13201 / 13203
Mark Kennedy wrote:People have multiple, valid reasons to want to control how their creative products are used and portrayed. Copyright law has been dealing with deciding what is fair use for a long time. I guess I'm just amazed at how flagrantly it is violated on the web just because the technology makes it easier to do.
The sad reality is that laws that are trivial to circumvent and virtually impossible to enforce don't have much meaning beyond the (potentially very valuable) symbolic meaning of establishing a standard for ethical behavior. You could even argue that the major breakthroughs of Hammurabi, Moishe (more commonly known as "Moses"), Yeshua ben Miriam (more commonly known as "Jesus"), and many others (Zoroaster, perhaps?) consisted of recognizing that symbolic standards were in fact necessary to the formation and maintenance of a society.
That doesn't help the individual who is faced with loss of livelihood or grievous moral offense over the (mis)appropriation of their efforts, which is why my posts focus on developing technical remedies rather than the extent to which one or another site/system does/does not violate some legal tenet.
So let me once again encourage interested parties to visit both <http://www.erights.org> and <http://www.eros-os.org> and especially follow the links to the literature, e-mail archives, etc. to see where the current thinking on ways to address the issues lies.
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