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The bottom line is this: 1. Elise Andrew is making money off IFLS. (Whether or not she's giving it out to charities is non-relevant.) 2. IFLS' success rests l
by dvt 14y ago
The bottom line is this:
1. Elise Andrew is making money off IFLS. (Whether or not she's giving it out to charities is non-relevant.)
2. IFLS' success rests largely on the high quality content created by artists, scientists, photographers
3. A small part of IFLS' success rests on Andrews' eye for picking out good/funny/clever quotes/cartoons/photographs/artwork
Given (1) and (2), I'd say not only is IFLS largely indebted to the artist/photographer/science community at large, but not attributing work is an incredibly selfish thing to do. Whether she didn't attribute the work out of laziness, negligence or malice is non-relevant. My only point is that IFLS is a very good target for the blog post.
If someone stole my code and used it without attribution and to make money off of it, I would be pissed. If someone that's received the major media attention IFLS has stole my code and used it without attribution to make money, I'd be even more pissed.
Also note that artwork can have varying licenses, as well - similar to MIT, GPL, etc. licenses we see in source code. Some licenses preclude all non-endorsed distribution. She's had a ton of media coverage in the past 6 months (especially after the whole Twitter thing), so the "small corner of the internet" argument won't fly.
Neither will the "Reddit/9gag/etc. does it" argument. Reddit, for example, is a mass-user-driven aggregate. Reddit can't possibly police all posts and ensure that attribution is given. Conversely, the IFLS page is not an aggregate. Andrews picks the images very carefully and in a conscious manner; in the latter case, there is clearly room for attribution.
However, I think that IFLS has garnered the same type of militant defenders as /r/atheism/ or fans of Carl Sagan (or, more recently, NDGT). Ironically, this type of blind following is exactly what the aforementioned groups are trying to dissolve. Andrews screwed up. Badly. This is not a rookie mistake; it's something she could get sued for. Lets leave it at that.. enough with the apologists.
Edit: I would just like to re-iterate that the burden does NOT lie on the artists to scour the internet looking for mis-attributed pieces of artwork. But rather, on the distributor of the work. Just about every judge in existence would agree with this.
- markdown 14y ago> 3. A small part of IFLS' success rests on Andrews' eye for picking out good/funny/clever quotes/cartoons/photographs/artwork This isn't hard, and can be automated... it's the 9gag model. Just view the cream of the crop that bubbles to the top of reddit and randomly pick out a few every day.
- scotty79 14y agoSmall part of Shakespeare was picking the right words and phrases and putting them in right order. Small part of every DJ is picking the righ music to remix.
- dvt 14y agoI'm sorry, are you seriously comparing Elise Andrew with Shakespeare? "Picking the right words and phrases and putting them in the right order" is not even in the same plane of existence as "looking at a picture and deciding if it's remotely funny or interesting."
- scotty79 14y agoNope. Not seriously. I just feel that belittling her work on finding the right content is very wrong. More serious analogy would be photography. How you do make good photos? Do you create them? No. You just make hundreds of photos (adhering to some technical limitations) and the you pick and crop the right ones from all the photos you made. That's what Bresson did. Picking content is the creative part. The rest is just pointing the camera, turning the knobs and pushing the button. On the internet artists create respective images. But she's also the artist who picks and crops creating her feed which many people apreciate the value of.
- dvt 14y agoBresson was a pioneer of the French New Wave. Again, the comparison is just completely off-base, I'm afraid. What Andrews is doing is just plain theft. (Especially given the fact that she's making money off of IFLS.)
- scotty79 14y agoI'm not comparing her to Bresson. I'm comparing her to a photographer. Bresson is just an example. My friend who photographs does exactly the same. I just invoked Bresson to show that even masters in the field do that. Also it's a keyword for google so you can see what his creative process consisted of. You just completely missed my point that picking content and reframing it is valuable creative activity. Theft would be to resell those images as stock photos. Besides seems your broad definitions of theft would classify half on the internet as such. That's not a very pleasent view of the biggest cultural invention since printing press.