Photo thief

Just one addition, which is very interesting in my opinion. I tried several times to contact these "thiefs", confronted them with a proposal to remove the pictures OR to give credit to the author and the place the picture was taken.
Out of ten, 8 of'em preferred to delete the pictures....one can think about the reasons for this decision......

And my last contribution, just to think about it:

Thinking and discussing about change of laws is democracy.
Approving to not obeying existing laws leads to anarchy.

And copyright IS an existing law!

I have had problems with the stealing of photos in the past as well. It went down like this... I get inquiries into some prospective snake sales. I forward pictures, and lineage info. Then, I see an ad selling the snakes from another person. They are showing my pictures and even including the various morph potentiality. All photos and the information was stolen from me, and zero credit given. Thieves are thieves, scoundrels of the worse type. IMO it is best to call them out on their lies and let the entire community see it. At least that way the rightful owner of the pictures and animals will get due deserved credit along with the thief being exposed. Just my two cents.

Regards,
Greg Spencer

Guenter, copyright protection is an existing law, right? Exactly which law are you talking about - US law, Chinese law? The net is world-wide, remember. And if you kindly ask the Chinese to obey copyright, they sure will agree and in return ask you to bann all their "terrorists" from the net (thats how they call their dissidents, people of different political opinion in their country). So as you are saying correctly, not obeying the law leads to anarchy. I fully agree with you on that, but in the case of the net I would indeed like to argue in favor of anarchy (and only there, to make myself clear!). Why? An overegulated net will end up being like any other media - controlled by somebody. And then the Murdochs and Berlusconis of this world will dictate what they think should be on the net and what not. I'm repeating myself (see post above) by saying that I do indeed respect copyright. Only in the case of the net we should seriously ask ourselves if it could be a higher good to keep that place "anarchic". That way we assure that people like currently those of Syria have a way to communicate and to instill upon the world at least a bad conscience for not doing anything when they are getting slaughtered by their own government.

The first snake pic I posted on the net, many years ago, was a shot of one of my boomslangs. A while later I found exactly that pic on the front page of a cataloque of a big Germany Pharmaceutical company. What did I do about it? Nothing. I was happy somebody liked it. Would I tolerate somebody stealing some of my printed publications (technically, we are acutally talking about plagiarization rather than theft throughout this thread - after all, the originals are still in place, aren't they? A small but important difference.)? No way! As I said, I regard copyright regulations as critically important. Only when it comes to the net I would like to kindly ask my fellow discussion partners to think again.
No offense.

Sorry, can't follow this accumulation of inappropriate comparisons, contradictions and polemics.

Klaus, as a Dr. You should be able to follow a stringent argumentation
OK, I'll put it simple (very oversimplified maybe):

Even in China copyright is a law though one may have difficulties to execute it against a chinese here in Europe, but that does not make a difference.

A girl who wears a sexy skirt and is therefor being raped may also have troubles to get justification.

A tourist whose bag got stolen because he left it unattended for the moment when he took a photo may have problems too.

And 80 years ago six million jews also had problems to get their human rights - ah, I forget, they had nearly no rights then in Germany.

But You may see anyway where Your argumentation leads to.
First it is just a stolen picture. Why not take the next step with the bag? Or the rape? Or ...

Where do YOU set the limit for obeying laws or not?

Guenter said:
Where do YOU set the limit for obeying laws or not?

Good question, for all of us, actually. Is cheating on the tax declaration disobeying the law? Certainly, but irrespective of knowing that most of us are less than honest when it comes to taxes. And in the case of the net I'm sticking to my opinion that this is not an easy question to answer. Nonetheless, we gotta sort it out somehow. Best would be to leave the net anarchic for the reasons put forward by me above. That way pictures and videos of war atrocities and crimes against humanity could be more easily distributed. Should it be so anarchic to allow distribution of hatred and discrimination of other people or groups? Certainly not! However, my feeling is that the red line between this and perhaps a more relaxed copyright regulation should be easily drawable by law professionals. Just my personal opinion.

And by the way: Firstly, my feeling-strongly about these things has nothing to do with any title – your’s or anybody’s guess on these topics is as good as mine; secondly: I would like to kindly remind you that the Germans don’t hold the exclusive “copyright” of the millenium crime committed against the Jewish people - Austrians were quite willingly and actively participating. Just for the record (sorry, but I'm sensitive when it comes to that issue, even though I'm Dutch by birth, not German)."

Sometimes You have to realize that it is just as You send Your words to a black hole when trying to argue ...

I'm not willing to put more energy into this discussion. Klaus seems to have his own little world of rules and how and when to obey depends just on his own interpretation. This is kind of an "closed argumentation circle" and anything which does not fit into it - may it be true or false - is just to be neglected.

Reminds me a bit about the argumentation of the "flat earth community" ... You won't ever explain them that the world is nearly a ball. Even if they organize a congress on the other side. They just close their eyes during the flight ...

I therefor opt out here.