This is a great discussion and I'm pleased it's occurring as a result of the MyHeavy.com incident. As with many ethical questions that involve both legal and social criteria, one can use the `reasonable person' concept to assess the situation. For example, it's clearly wrong (and illegal) for me to sell for commercial profit someone else's CC licensed video that states no commercial reuse. But can I resell that video for fund-raising for a non-profit? The reasonable person would say no. Can I repackage it and distribute it if it's a very small part of the total video content of a commercially sold aggregation? The reasonable person would say no. The responsibility is on the aggregator, collector, or re-distributor to get permission for re-use and cannot be placed on the creator. Copyright law (and ethics) states that the creator owns his material for some period (too long, probably). For any business to assume they can profit in any way from the work of someone else, no matter how small, is illegal and unethical. It doesn't matter how easily co-opting someone else's work is, the assumption has to be that you don't do it. If I were to enter my neighbor's house without permission and take something and the cops showed up to arrest me, how well would my defense work if it was merely, "the door was open and there was no sign saying I couldn't help myself." It wouldn't. The culturally understood norm is that what's not yours is not yours and you must get permission to use it. To put the responsibility on the creator to blacklist everyone he doesn't want to grant access is too onerous, it's too costly.
-David --- In [email protected], "Bill Cammack" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], "Steve Watkins" <steve@> wrote: > > > > So ideally the starting point should be that everyone knows, and > > should assume, that they have very limited rights to your work, unless > > they see a creative commons license that gives them extra rights. > > > > Cheers > > > > Steve Elbows > > + 1,000! :D > > -- > Bill C. > http://ems.blip.tv >
