Stronger Copyrights Are Important! Except, You Know, When It Means We Have To Pay Some Money

from the funny-how-that-works... dept

It's always amusing to catch the hypocritical actions of the groups that purport to be in favor of strong copyright rules, but throw those rules right out the window the second it saves them a few bucks. The latest such story involves a group called Prism that is against the idea that publicly-funded research should be available to the public for free. The group bases a lot of its claims on the importance of strong copyrights, but apparently it's not such a huge fan of living up its own standards. As Slashdot highlights the group not only copied some images from Getty Images without paying for them, it put them up on its website with the digital watermarks clearly visible. If you've ever bought stock photography licenses, you know that as you sort through the images, they all contain these visible watermarks to prevent people from doing exactly this type of thing. You only get the watermark-free versions after you've purchased a license. Of course, with the avalanche of Slashdot users, it looks like the group quickly ran out and licensed the photos it was using -- but it again highlights the hypocracy of those who claim to be in favor of strong copyright, when they really just want a monopoly for themselves when it helps themselves.

Filed Under: copyright, hypocracy, violations
Companies: prism