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
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.
