Making Content More Valuable or Stealing Revenue?

TechDirt has an interesting look at the short history of complaints over meta content delivery and traffic generation. Looking at everything from complaints over Google's Print program to RSS companies delivering ads on someone else's content the article begs the question, where should the line be drawn? One of the examples, Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc., even chimed in as one of the first few comments.

Comments

BY-NC

[Wellington Grey]

How do you define ... non-commercial use in this context?

This is the question I've always had with creative commons: just what counts as non-commercial? If I take a BY-NC image off flickr, and want to use it in my blog, is that OK? What if I have google ads on my blog? Is that still OK? Does it make any difference if I'm actually making a profit or not? I've gone so far as to email some of the CC lawyers about this issue, and there seems to be no clear answer.

-Grey

It's obviously stealing

[Digital Vomit]

It's obviously stealing revenue. I mean, I've got over $200,000,000.00 in a box at home that I've saved (I mean, stolen) because of piracy. All those media cartels are right: pirates have collectively stolen trillions of dollars from them over the past few decades. Check under your beds; you'll probably find a big box of money like I did.

I think it works like this:

• For every mp3 you download, $2 appears under your bed.
• For every movie you download, $20 appears under your bed.
• For every half-hour of television you download, $5 appears under your bed.
• For every game you download, $50 appears under your bed.
• For every book you download, $10 appears under your bed (upwards of $100 or more if it's a textbook or reference book).
• For every video clip of a movie or TV show you see online, $0.25 appears under your bed.

Try it (not that I am advocating stealing, mind you). It's amazing! And all this money is coming straight out of the bank accounts of various media cartels. I think it has something to do with that "voodoo economics" I heard about a few years back.

I don't know why it doesn't work when you steal shows or movies over the TV, or music over the radio. Maybe because it's older technology and the media cartels put anti-theft technology in it, and with computers they have yet to do so because that's newer technology.

Oh, crap. I just thought of something. I just posted this on Slashdot! Now thousands of people will be stealing it from me! That's what I get for posting my two cents worth of intellectual property. :(