O RLY?

[tikistitch]

We didn't realize there was a controversy! The things you learn on the Intarnets!!

BTW, according to the Google, there really is something called the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

Comments

[homestar.livejournal.com]

...I always thought the IC3 was just a myth.

The More You Know™

[aoi-no-neko.livejournal.com]

is it correct this guy was selling t-shirts with that icon on it? then opps, bad him.

not the same as toysRgus, which was utter bad business by that company. amazing how many of their stores are no longer around...

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely more sympathetic to an individual copyright holder than to some stupid corporation that employs teams of lawyers to mooch around looking for trouble.

But "I sue the Intarnets!" just seems pointless and absurd. I swear, intellectual property law is still stuck in the 19th century--there's gotta be a fairer way to do this.

[aoi-no-neko.livejournal.com]

Has this photographer gone after people just using it as an icon? I mean if people aren't making money from it or damaging him to the point of it being disabling (and that he has to really show proof of)...well it's so rapant there I don't think he'd have much luck.

I guess it depends if someone was actually making money from selling his image. It's not even a characture.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

The thing is, it's complicated. It needs a real live intellectual property lawyer to sort it out--in other words, a guy who bills $200 an hour--and not a bunch of us guys on the internet who know the term "fair use" and not much else.

But evidently Rowland doesn't feel it's worth consulting a lawyer, so instead he writes a lawyer-esque email (the whole "You have 24 hours" deal--why 24 hours? Why not 36 hours?) and then threatens to go to this body that sounds like it's actually been set up to investigate spam and phishing--ie, NOT intellectual property disputes. I mean, Jeff, as an artist, probably should have done his homework about potential copyright holders (I'm not saying he gets a free pass on this--I honestly don't know), but it seems like a lot of very unproductive fuss.