3 ms·
The Oatmeal's content is owned by the creator and is made freely available. FunnyJunk did not even credit Inman, they were effectively stealing his copyright,
by Goladus 14y ago
The Oatmeal's content is owned by the creator and is made freely available. FunnyJunk did not even credit Inman, they were effectively stealing his copyright, not merely pirating content.
"Most other copyright holders" -- this is much too general a claim.
Do people really complain if a south park episode is taken down from youtube? No, they don't. South Park episodes can easily be viewed at South Park studios.
Do people really complain that their bootlegged copy of Avengers got taken down from a filesharing site? Yes, but not from a vigilante-style moral high ground. What people really complain about is when invasive DRM-schemes are deployed that prevent normal people from, say, making a single copy of a movie they paid for.
Do people complain when a short youtube clip is taken down (eg, a highlight from a sports game)? Yes. Why? When the clip is not available anyhwere else and it kills the conversation. People linked that video in articles and forums and emails and discussions and now it's gone.
Do people complain when mashups involving copyrighted content are taken down? Yes, because mashups are believed to be fair use.
Do people complain when a home video gets taken down because for several seconds you can hear a copyrighted movie playing in the background? Yes, because that's just fucking ridiculous and I'm sure you agree.
I think you can now see some distinctions between what internet vigilantes tend to complain about and what actually happened with TheOatmeal, and the contradction only appears because you've abstracted and stereotyped way too much.
- recoil 14y ago> Do people really complain if a south park episode is taken down from youtube? Actually, it does kind of annoy me: http://www.southparkstudios.com/layout/common/img/geoblock/messages/au.jpg http://www.southparkstudios.com/layout/common/img/geoblock/m... I've been seeing that for yonks now... In fact, this is one of the things that pisses me off most about copyright law: the fact that it's still rooted in a pre-internet past where content owners are able to exploit geography for financial gain.
- grhino 14y agoAnd it's not even clear to me what additional financial gain they are getting from most of the geo-blocking shenanigans.
- vacri 14y agoI think it has to do with non-compete licensing. If they've licensed for Foo to be their distribution agent in country Bar, it doesn't do well to undermine their distribution rights with the online offering.
- Goladus 14y agoFair enough. I think you get the main idea, though, which is that the "vibe" regarding exercise of copyright is influenced by many specific and often important details, even if not every person is always able to clearly articulate those details. Glossing over those important details is what makes the behavior appear inconsistent (or "confused" as the previous poster suggested).
- EricDeb 14y agoAnother thing that annoys me about southparkstudios is you cannot view a new episode for an extended period of time. Why not just have another advertisement or two for the latest episodes and allow viewers to see them immediately? It's like every little step towards the media availability that users deserve has to be beaten out of these studios. Granted that southparkstudios.com is a huge step forward....