I like how you put steal in quotes to minimize the fact that is what you are doing. If you walk into an art gallery or musuem, you can't just take art of the wall and walk out with it. Just because the gallery is a website, people feel like they can just right-click and save as and walk out the door with it. Yet, people understand that highlighting text copy&pasting it into their own work is plagiarism. I honestly do not understand the disconnect. If the website felt like the imagery should be free for people to do what they want with, then they would provide a link to a higher quality image rather than a highly compressed one.
Wonky comparison, as plagiarism involves claiming authorship/evading citing, not literally copying text and keeping it somewhere else. I CAN go and copy text from any textbook into my notebook without consequences, why couldn't I download a copy of an image?
Did you ask for permission and were granted permission to take that image from the server for any other use than for viewing in a browser? What is the purpose of downloading the image? To share with friends? Why not send a link to the site? To use a desktop background? Did you pay to license for that use? To store on your phone for your own personal enjoyment? Again, why not reload the website?
As a lowly end user not intending to widely redistribute the content, I decline this absurd level of responsibility, and the doctrine of fair use would tend to agree.
And as long as websites tend to modify, delete, move, or otherwise play games with urls and content, I will see value in saving a permanent copy. That I should be able to do that is frankly how the internet was intended to function; if that's not desirable for the content, then perhaps it should not be published on the internet at all.
>And as long as websites tend to modify, delete, move, or otherwise play games with urls and content <snip> then perhaps it should not be published on the internet at all.
Except an artist can deliberately decide to only make an image publicly available for a limited time, and therefore taken the image down from the website. Just like art moves from museum to museum, an artist can allow an image to be used within a pre-defined window. Just because you have the technical know how to extract an image that is not readibly downloadable via the UI does not mean you should.
Maybe one of the features of JXL would be a timebomb type of setting where after a certain date the data is no longer useable.
I sympathize with both sides of this argument. I get that info wants to be free blah blah, but I also understand that artists are in a difficult situation with the internet. I mean, an artist's work posted on the internet is not the cure for cancer, or basic information on algebra where the info should be evergreen. The group think is more of "I want what I want" vs consideration for what the artist's intentions are. If you enjoy an image so much that you're willing to go to the effort to get the image, why not acquire the image throuh legit method?
If someone saves an image for private use, that doesn't interfere with limited public availability.
> If you enjoy an image so much that you're willing to go to the effort to get the image, why not acquire the image throuh legit method?
Do you make the same argument when people use a VHS? If you're willing to go through the effort to press the record button, you should go buy a copy for $20?
Depends on the purpose the use of the VHS. Copying something you brought home from Blockbuster would definitely qualify. Recording something off of TV to watch at a later more convenient time was just the precursor to DVR.
The image file you downloaded from someone's website without their permission in miles better in quality than the stupid VHS. It's more like the DVD/Blu-ray you ripped from your buddy that actually paid for it. Just because you can doesn't mean you should
Saving an image is very high quality. But so is DVR. Usually a DVR copy is perfect.
DVR sounds like a very good analogy to me. The website is showing you something, and you make a personal capture that you can replay at any time. It was distributed to you specifically, and you're time-shifting it. You're not taking a personal copy held by one person and making it two personal copies held by two people, which is what happens when you rip someone else's DVD. And the same way, you shouldn't take that image you saved and start distributing it around.
It's a bad metaphor, because if you take the image from the gallery, other people cannot enjoy it anymore, while with the right click/save you make a copy, so it's still there for everyone.
A better analogy would be if you make a painting of a painting without paying the original artist, is it stealing ?
It's not : it can be construed as counterfeiting though, and it might cause the artist to stop painting because he does not make enough money, but calling it stealing is simply wrong.
Okay, so you're one of those hung up on a definition. What do you call it when you use something without someone's explicit permission whether because you didn't ask for it first or knowingly using it after it has been posted on a website that you do not have permission to use it?
Regardless of whether it's ethical to copy whatever files in whatever situation being discussed, the term "steal" is intended to sidestep that question and make it feel unethical by drawing an equivalence between it and something most people agree is unethical.
It's a slightly underhanded rhetorical technique, so it's reasonable to put the word "steal" in quotation marks to call attention to it.
Depends on the context. If the person loses access to what I'm taking (typical in the physical world), stealing. If the person does not loses access (typical in the virtual world or with artificial scarcity items), counterfeiting.
