Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
It's breach of copyright and missuse of intellectual property by someone other than the owner of said "property"......penalties wether civil ( and maybe criminal ..yes some juristictions also consider breach of copyright to be a crime which can carry heavy fines or even imprisonment! ) ...Do you ever want to get off a plane in some country and find yourself in jail because you walked on someones copyright and they won alawsuit that you didn't even know about? ......
Either use "copyright free" images ..or make your own from scratch ...
( the above is expert legal point of view )
And its stealing ...this is also (the law everywhere ) ..plus the view of myself as a creative artist .....
Not jumping on your case ..just making the legal and ethical position clear ....any creative professionals work is all they got to negotiate with to keep themselves and their families in bread ....
all creative work should be paid for just like groceries or a plumber wworking on your house ...we dont all create in our "spare time"....
Not a flame ....but I understandably have strong feelings on the subject plus expert legal knowledge ..
Do The right thing :)
These however are icons i'm using from Windows XP, I purchased xp and wasn't sure if I could use certain icons as images to related to different content on my site. I'm not stealing these off another site, simply taking them from winxp os.
Gist of his response was "if you use ANY TINY LITTLE THING derived from ANYTHING within the OS, whether art, text, content, whatever, whether you modify it in a substantial way or not - YOU ARE IN BREACH OF COPYRIGHT." He didn't say whether MS would actually sue - but I wouldn't bet against it.... and I absolutely refuse to get into hashes over whether MS themselves do the same....
I don't have the link to the site any more - machine crash, lost a lot of stuff including links I'd had around for years *sigh* (my own stupidity to not do a decent backup once a month). It might have been one of the WUGNETs, since they do have a fair amount of MS "presence" on occasion.
Since I write, I'm pretty much in favor of the MS rep's response. I've already had to go to court once to stop a plagiarist from using my work as her own, and I won't hesitate to do so again.
If what you want to use doesn't plainly indicate that it's part of PUBLIC DOMAIN, then unless you get clear written permission to use it, YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE OWNER'S COPYRIGHT. This is one of those no-grey-area situations....
[Oh, btw - doesn't matter that you "bought" XP. You need to really READ the conditions you agree to when installing it: you do NOT OWN IT. You are allowed to USE ONE COPY of it - unless of course you bought a multi-license of some sort - and MS retains full rights of ownership to your copy of the OS software. In other words, you're basically a lessee....)
Yeah....that's a plan.
"Dear Microsoft,
I took some of your icons and modified them a touch and then resold them as my own. I assume you are okay with this as I know you had to do the same thing, by court order, when Apple sued you for copying their trashcan icon back in the '80's.
If you are not okay with this, tough luck, you set the precedence, not me, so live with it."
Of course it is only a plan if you want to be held in the same level of ethical regard as Microsoft, but, you could do worse!
