It's Natural To Freak Out Over Someone Copying Your Stuff... But It Doesn't Make It Rational

from the getting-past-the-oh-shit-moment dept

Thu, Oct 15th 2009 7:40am — Mike Masnick

Owen Kelly has a nice post up, where he basically admits that, even though he's not against copying, he had an initial visceral bad reaction when he recently saw his own work copied, but after taking a step back and thinking about it rationally, he realized it wasn't so bad. The problem is that most people, when they see their own work copied, never take that second step. They see it, they freak out and go negative (or, worse, call in the lawyers). But if you take a step back, you can ask yourself (1) if the copying really matters one way or another and (2) if there's any way to use that copying to your advantage, rather than freaking out about it. That's the point we've been trying to make for years. In most cases, freaking out isn't going to make the situation any better (and it has a better than even chance of making it worse). But embracing it, and figuring out ways to use the copying to your own benefit can be tremendously rewarding.

But, of course, that doesn't mean we don't recognize that normal impulse reaction. It's entirely natural, even if it's irrational. So, we're not necessarily surprised when people overreact to such things -- even if we think it's not a particularly smart long-term strategy. But, hopefully, as more and more people show how allowing more widespread copying helped rather than harmed them, this won't seem so counterintuitive to so many people.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: copying, rational

19 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Robert Ring (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 7:48am

Corporations
The thing that gets me is how irrationally reactive corporations can be to this kind of stuff. It's perfectly understandable for an individual to go gut-reaction and freak out, but when you have a table of supposedly intelligent people trying to decide on a course of action, how are they so blinded so as not to think of better courses of actions than to sue, when that is often the worst thing they can do? I don't have the answer, but my guess is that it comes down to businesses letting the legal department run things. The lawyers see these infractions in purely legal terms: it is illegal, therefore we must sue. Whereas if the marketers were allowed to address the problem (and if they did so from a marketing standpoint), many cases of copied work can be turned around for their benefit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2009 @ 8:12am

Re: Corporations
I don't think corporations even care that much. Someone in the corporation sees their content or name being used in a way not authorized by them. They shoot an email over to legal (cc'ing 90 other people). Legal sends out a standard C&D. The reason you don't have the "step back and think about it" is because no one wants that responsibility. I bet if you go into any number of these companies who have stepped into a PR disaster because they were so quick to go legal you'd be hard pressed to find someone who actually made that decision.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dark Helmet (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 8:14am

Re: Re: Corporations
I assume you mean other than either the jackass attorney or the jackass executive that ordered that standad C&D letters go out immediately?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 8:19am

Re: Corporations
Corporations traditionally depend on one thing to make wads of cash for the all-important shareholders - control. Everything related to mainstream corporate media over the last 50+ years has been about controlling outlets (e.g. ClearChannel) and artists (e.g. notoriously one-sided controls). This includes the marketers - it took a long time for them to use media channels they didn't directly control. They also still try to insist on things like exclusive outlets for trailers, music videos and the like, despite the obvious idiocy of limiting the number of people able to see your advertisement.

Combine the fact that they not only can't control digital outlets as effectively, but also just don't understand digital technology as they do physical media, that's where you get the freak-outs. The lawyers just do the bidding of the corporate heads, and don't really care whether they do the right thing for the company as long as they can bill for their time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Kurt Fattig, 15 Oct 2009 @ 8:40am

The Law
I studied IP (Intellectual Property) in college when I got my degree in Computer and Information Science. And, I've worked with patent attorneys at large corporations. Put simply, unless you ACTIVELY protect your trademarks, service marks, patents, and copyrights - against ALL infringements - even if they aren't making any money from it - then you can lose them when you go after someone in court later. So, you have to prove that you have protected all along - not just when someone tries to make a buck from your hard work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Brooks (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 8:40am

Are we just trained?
Maybe this all goes back to grade school, where we were taught that copying off other peoples' papers was cheating, and that if we saw people copying from us we should notify the teacher? Certainly a lot of our psychology is cemented in those formative years.

Maybe the copyright insanity going on is just an unintended side effect of the formalization of education that we've seen in the past 100 years? Maybe, just to brainstorm, greater focus on teamwork and collaborative assignments might reverse the trend?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2009 @ 9:04am

Re: The Law
You should have studied harded. Only trademarks can be lost by not actively protecting them and using them. You can selectively enforce copyright and patents however you like. People use this excuse all the time ("We have to sue you for copyright infringement or we lose the copyright!").
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2009 @ 9:11am

Re: The Law
Was that college hosted on GeoCities, by any chance?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chronno S. Trigger (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 9:15am

Re: Are we just trained?
Move away from a test based system and more to a hands on system? I like it. Definitely pointed out the people who knew what they were doing and who didn't when we did it in high school and college. It was also more educating than memorizing facts.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike Masnick (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 9:19am

Re: The Law
Put simply, unless you ACTIVELY protect your trademarks, service marks, patents, and copyrights - against ALL infringements - even if they aren't making any money from it - then you can lose them when you go after someone in court later.

That's incorrect. For trademarks it's almost true, but not at all true for copyright or patents. Even for trademarks there are some limitations on that.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
TSO, 15 Oct 2009 @ 9:31am

Plain and simple: our primal brains couldn't have learned the idea of non-scarce resources, because from the evolutionary standpoint, there were none. (Maybe except for air, which we didn't worry about polluting because it SEEMED non-scarce).

Nevertheless, the above means that our FIRST reaction will always be "STEALING!" because, well, it LOOKS like stealing. Lizard brain doesn't know copying, and mammalian brain has to correct it.

To bad that RIAA is run by people who don't have mammalian brain.

I, for one, welcome our lizard overlords.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2009 @ 10:18am

The lawyers see these infractions in purely legal terms: it is illegal, therefore we must sue. Whereas if the marketers were allowed to address the problem (and if they did so from a marketing standpoint), many cases of copied work can be turned around for their benefit.

If giving away your work for free is such a good strategy, you have to wonder why all the major artists aren’t doing it. Don’t the big record companies have any economists working for them? Or is it possible that the people with advanced degrees in business and economics know more about business and economics than the people downloading music with one hand, while masturbating furiously with the other, and wishing they had a tail to hold the bong? - Scott Adams
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Christian Heretic, 15 Oct 2009 @ 10:19am

One of the happiest moments I had as a writer was, during a Google search, finding copies of some of my blog posts on other sites. This means that people are actually reading (and appreciating) my writing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 10:28am

Re:
Take me to your lizard.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2009 @ 11:37am

Re:
If giving away your work for free is such a good strategy, you have to wonder why all the major artists aren’t doing it. Don’t the big record companies have any economists working for them? Or is it possible that the people with advanced degrees in business and economics know more about business and economics than the people downloading music with one hand, while masturbating furiously with the other, and wishing they had a tail to hold the bong? - Scott Adams

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. - John Lennon
[ link to this | view in thread ]
nasch (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 1:07pm

Re:
Or is it possible that for the most part musicians don't hold the copyright for their own works?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ojkelly (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 3:28pm

Re: The Law
But thats the catch now isn't it. You don't really need to worry about protecting your copyrights. Your brand sure, but the individual copyrights... especially in such an ecosystem as the internet where copying is, well to be expected.

Oh and thanks for the link Mike, woke up to a nice surprise in my RSS reader with this post.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike Masnick (profile), 15 Oct 2009 @ 4:14pm

Re:
Yes, it's always good to trust a cartoonist on how businesses operate.

But to respond to Adams' point (which we did when he first made it as well), more and more artists are going that way and have realized that it makes them more money. But no one expects everyone to figure this out overnight. These things take time.

And I love the fact that "because everyone's not doing" somehow means "it can't work" when the actual evidence of looking at those who HAVE DONE IT shows that it does work.

Thank goodness most people recognize this basic economic fact. Otherwise, we'd be hearing about how automobiles were a failure because some people still bought horse carriages.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dark Helmet (profile), 16 Oct 2009 @ 10:26am

Re: Re:
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it. - John Lennon"

....wow!

Question: exactly how much time passed between John making that statement and some "lone nut" putting a couple of bullets in him?

Just saying...
[ link to this | view in thread ]