Just another blog!

No, I have not been. But someone I don't know is probably being deemed guilty of copyright infringement this very moment, as you read this blog. This post came about from a rather wild reaction on Google Plus. As might have been hammered into your skulls As you may have guessed from reading the previous n posts, I follow a number of photographers whose work I enjoy on Plus. Recently, there was a frenzied reaction amongst a large number of them about a guy from I-don't-know-where stealing their photographs. What with frenzied requests to Google to take down his profile, with calling him a thief, I felt like the poor guy was in a mob about to lynch him. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sympathising with him, I'm merely stating the almost animal like tendencies of all the civilized folk when they noticed a relatively minor infringement of their copyright. Why minor, you may ask? Well, the person uploaded extremely small prints, the type you'd get from screenshots, left...

This may easily be the most difficult post I've written. For once, I cannot take recourse to the meta-element, or to meaningless digressions, but I need to stick to what I think, hard facts and personal opinions. So here goes... What exactly is intellectual property? Ideas? Seems so, in the most general sense. Of course, lawyers would have their own definition, but who here speaks gobbledygook lawyer-speak? So, if you have an idea, is it your intellectual property? Or do you have to state an assertion towards your ownership? Or, for that matter, can an idea be owned? Let's say I have an apple and you have an apple. I give you my apple and you give me yours. We both have an apple each, still. Now, let's say I have an idea and you have an idea. I give you my idea and you give me yours. Now, we both have two ideas each. And that is the fundamental issue with intellectual property. Unlike other forms of property, intellectual property does not terminate its ownership. It has t...