Copyright isn't just a suggestion...

A common meme today is "once it's on the Internet, it's forever". While that's pretty true, it's starting to irk me that many adult-fetish bloggers are swiping material, usually photos, and reposting them with no attributions whatsoever. (Videos usually don't have this problem, as they're most often embedded content from a remote site, to which the user could click to see the original author. But this rant still partly applies to video material.)

For years, I've been overlooking this trend of blatant copyright ignorance. I shouldn't have been caught off-guard when I started seeing reposted photos of people I personally recognize. While I know that some of the pictures' authors would give permission for reposting, if asked, these posts include no links to the authors' profiles, e-mail addresses, anything to tie the pictures to their source. Worse yet, some of these images are being posted without so much as mentioning whose they are. In some cases watermarks, such as gearfetish.com's user identification text, are cropped off of the photos.

Some stolen photos are pulled from Facebook profiles of people who were linked to the bloggers as "friends" — seriously, is this how "friends" should act? We're talking about highly personal material in most of these cases; after all, they are appearing are adult-themed blogs. It's quite obvious that these unattributed reposts are being done without the author's permission.

Most of the civilized world abides by the Berne Convention, which protects authors of material from others copying their material without consent. Are we really so desperate for Yet Another Fetish Photo that we have to steal from each other to get material? If you think the photos in someone's site profile are worthy of reposting, is it such a big deal to ask the author for permission first? You might gain a closer friendship in the process.

It saddens me that people I respect, through their writings and actions, are some of the worst offenders of photo thievery. For that reason, I'm not calling them out by name here, in hope that they will do the right thing in the future. (Rest assured, I'll let each of you know privately when you pull this stunt again, and I can identify the photos' owners.)

At some point we have to stop ripping each other off and start being real friends to each other.

I'm in disbelief that I even have to write this post. I'm giving it the new tag "what the fuck?" for that reason.

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Now that the above is out of the way... Yeah, I know I haven't posted in a while. I got a lot more busy than I expected in January (a relatively new job can do that), but I promise to get back to writing soon.