Britney Spears's Minge*

GumGum Launches New Image Licensing Platform

GumGum launches an ambitious new project today - a new platform and business model for licensing content on the Internet, beginning with images. Image piracy runs rampant on the Internet, of course. Blogger Perez Hilton was sued for stealing images of celebrities...Attributor, a Silicon Valley startup, helps content owners track their intellectual property to find examples of infringement. But until now, no one has really thought about a better way to license content on the Internet, so that both large and tiny publishers have an incentive to avoid simply stealing stuff.

I don't believe that using small, low resolution copies of images on a non-commercial blog constitutes theft. The interesting thing is that many of the people who rail against record companies for pursuing music downloaders and who, themselves, are happy to rip free music are the same people that get all righteous about the 'theft' of images or so-called 'creative content'. Here are some comments from the Techcrunch post which reflect my own feelings on the subject. Yes, that's right! I've 'stolen' the comments (ie. the creative efforts of others) to save me the bother of working out my own response thereby allowing me more time to enjoy my mug of tea and bourbon biscuits.

Ooooh, arrest me!

(Comment 3) When people speak about licensing content on the internet...I always want to say think about how internet was born and what it was made for:academic information exchange! Now the information is not quite academic but its still exchange, almost no production cost information share. Today that information is software, video, music, ebooks, etc. You cant stop it, learn to live with it.

(Comment 5) I still don’t see the difference between “downloading music” and “using a photo”. Music is much more labour intensive than taking a photo, but people seem to think its worth protecting. WTF? Set up the pirate bay for images already.

(Comment 20) @5 brings up the best point…how is this any different than music? TechCrunch says that the record labels just need to deal with it and accept the inevitable. Why not the same message for photographers?

So, why does downloading an image of Britney Spears's minge* amount to 'theft' but downloading one of her dire ditties is considered fair game? More to the point, why would anyone do either?!

*Cynical search engine attention grabber. Watch my stats grow today!