Look With Your Eyes, Not With Your Hands

What would you think if you were randomly checking your stats and were made aware that files from your website were being copied onto someone else's server for whatever purpose, for whatever reason, valid or not?

Maybe they were just using your files for "research" as a class project at the University of Indiana. Maybe they were using a lot of randomly chosen files. Does that make it any less offensive? It isn't supposed to matter that they didn't bother to ask permission to copy actual files? If they are "just looking" couldn't they just link to the site via the permalink?

I didn't have a copyright notice on my site before because I foolishly assumed that people pretty much have a general respect for not doing that sort of thing. Even if the only reason they did it is just so they can study you or your site or catagorize you or your content. That doesn't make it nice or acceptable.

I notice this person has a copyright notice at the bottom of their site. Do you think it would be the same perfectly acceptable thing if I copied her blog files to my server and posted them to my site? For whatever reason, without her permission?

I am not thinking so.

Every single time we are in someone else's house or in a store I remind my children that you look with your eyes, not with your hands. That means don't pick things up, don't carry them around and place them where they don't belong, or just where you feel like it because it is not yours to touch. It means have respect for other people's property and don't do anything with it without permission from the owner. To me the ideas that come from people's minds would seem like property that should be treated with the same respect.

You would think the University of Indiana would teach their students the same thing.

Posted by gwendolyn on May 08, 2003 at 10:39 PM