Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I Wrote These Legal Issues For You

There aren’t any legal issues with I Wrote This For You. Neither Jon nor I mind if you copy our content across to your own blog, tumblr, twitter feed, whatever. That’s fine.

What upsets me is identity theft and intellectual property theft. Here’s the fine line.


Scenario 1.

You find the blog, you enjoy it, you want to share it with your friends. You post the line, or the picture and the line and a link back.

Perfect. More people are exposed to our work, you’re the one that discovered it, everyone involved is happy.

Scenario 2.

You find the blog, you enjoy it, you want to share it with your friends. You start a blog with the same name as mine, pretend to be me and then repost my content as your own.

The only person who’s happy in this situation, is you.


Why, I have no idea as I’ve never felt any sense of accomplishment for something I didn’t do.

You’re more than welcome to start a blog based on mine. You’re more than welcome to put my content anywhere you want. But please acknowledge the source.

There’s a story about Pablo Picasso that I really enjoy. It goes something like this.

Picasso was dining at a fancy restaurant in New York. A fan feeling prominent enough to introduce herself to Picasso did exactly that. Blah blah blah blah blah, how the socialite loved his work, how thrilled she was to meet him, how exciting to converse with a legendary painter. Mr Picasso's polite acceptance encouraged the fan to ask if Mr. Picasso could draw her a sketch. While waiters were passing sorbets and parfaits, Mr. Picasso did exactly that: he grabbed a napkin, a pencil and started a quick sketch

As the woman grabbed for the napkin, Mr. Picasso said "Madame, that will be 10000 USD". The women reacted in a shock "but that took you only a few minutes!". "No Madame" replied Pablo Picasso "It took me 50 years".

It’s taken me 29 years to write this for you. Please respect that.

Thank you.

7 comments:

  1. Picasso? Wow. Get an editor. And learn some copyright law.

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  2. You'll notice that I purposely said that there aren't any legal issues (your spelling seems to be spot-on, your comprehension of basic facts on the other hand, is kind of lacking).

    Why don't you go troll somewhere where you'll be more useful?

    *ruffles your hair, pats you on the behind and sends you on your way*

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  3. Even if there is no technically legal issue, it's still theft.

    Stealing anything (goods, thoughts, words, etc) is wrong. (And it's good to claim what is yours.)

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  4. Why is the first Anonymous so rude? And not very bright either.

    I think it's only right that you claim ownership of what belongs to you, and people should respect that regardless of whether it's a legal issue or not. Laws are merely guidelines for moral issues.

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  5. I'm part of Scenario 1 and i'm glad you're happy that we help to spread about your blog. :)
    When I first saw the title on twitter,I was afraid that I had to scan through my posts to remove your quotes :/

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  6. If I post anything of yours, I put it in quotation marks, and if anyone asks I immediately tell them where it's from.

    And I'm going to go the whole way and say that the first poster is an idiot, not just rude.

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  7. copyrighted or not, acknowledging someone's work as yours without any credit given is still a big, big mistake. it might not be the law, it's human's basic logic. to the other side: it's so wrong to call yourself "the love stories" that come from "the heart" when you don't even have the heart to give someone you copied a credit.

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