Netiquette 2
Are you a YouTube.Com user? Did you use to watch episodes of Disney series on YouTube? Have you ever wondered why they suddenly disappeared?
Text, photos and other graphics are not the only copyrighted materials on the web. But for our purposes, we will focus on those two types of web content. We have already taken up how to create blockquotes and combining them with link to create proper attribution to quoted blocks of text from other people’s sites. You can read about that by clicking here. Now, we deal with the use of digital or digitized photos and other web graphics.
Let’s say you’re surfing the web and you come across a funny photo. It’s not just funny, in fact, it’s really hilarious and you want to share it with your friends and all those who visit your blog. Should you right-click on the photo and save it to your computer? Should you then use it as an e-mail attachment and send it to everyone in your address book? Should you upload it to your blog and post it in an entry?
Before you even right-click on the photo, check the web site for “terms of use” and copyright policy. If they say it’s alright to take and use the photo, check the ways by which you may use the photo. Some allow their photos to be reproduced on other sites so long as there is a clear attribution link. Others strictly prohibit use without written permission from the author. Others prohibit use of their photos — period.
Just like words, photos, videos and other web graphics are owned by their creators. When you take them and use them as though they were your own, you are in effect stealing them. We can’t make excuses by saying we’re merely borrowing. Borrowing means you have the owner’s permission and when usage is strictly prohibited, it is ridiculous to say that permission had been granted.
So, going back to YouTube and Disney, the reason why the videos of High School Musicale and The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, for instance, suddenly disappeared from YouTube is because Disney complained about copyright infringement. The videos are illegal –pirated — copies of materials owned by Disney and the people who took them and uploaded them to YouTube stole from Disney.
Of course, the Disney-YouTube issue is about Disney losing millions of dollars. And you may say that when you take photos from a friend’s blog and post them on your own, there are no millions of dollars involved. But copyright really isn’t just about money. It is about ownership. It is about us respecting other people’s ownership over their published work.
It’s easy to right-click on a photo and save it on our hard drive. But we may be stepping on other people’s rights when we do. So, let’s be careful, shall we?