I wrote that online....didn't I?
Sharing images online from various different sources should be thought of differenlty as intellectual property rights. I'm sure if it was a picture of you or me and it was used in a bad way or in a way that could hurt us or to make money off of us then we would be worried. Then we would think more about what pictures we use and take off the net. I believe that there needs to be some kind of line drawn. However, in cyberspace, that's virtually impossible.
I personally haven't bought a cd since 1999, so 7 years now. I use a pay site to get my music or have my friends make me cd's. Do I think this is wrong? A little, if I was an artist I would be a little mad, but how much is actually being copied and shared without paying for it? Instead of an artist selling 2.5 million copies, they may sell 2.3 million copies. They are still going to be able to put food on the table. Buying music the old way is out these days and the norm will be to just make your own cd's. Which I see happening more and more everyday, or even people using there mp3 players where ever they go. Now you really don't need to buy cd's.
I believe that if lots of people are working on a project, website, blog or anything online, intellectual property needs to be shared. It's a tricky thing online, I mean anyone can use anyone elses information, change it up a bit, add to it and then call it there own. It's pretty impossible to give people credit where credit is due online. The Walker article had a good quote about this, "That doesn't mean we don't have to worry about regulating access to those resources. The question is, How do you create enough incentive to produce that resource if everybody can take it without paying for it? That's where excludability becomes important. Once I give a bit of information to the world, it's hard for me to exclude anybody from getting access to that information." (Walker, 1).
If I put something out on the Internet, it can be shared all over the world instantaneously. Someone could cut up what I wrote and change the whole meaning of what I was trying to say about a point I was trying to make. And when it comes back to me, I wouldn't even know who wrote it. It's a big game of telephone that we played as kids, it's just gotten grown up! The Barlow article gives a good insight into this, "I refer to the problem of digitized property. The enigma is this: If our property can be infinitely reproduced and instantaneously distributed all over the planet without cost, without our knowledge, without its even leaving our possession, how can we protect it? How are we going to get paid for the work we do with our minds? And, if we can't get paid, what will assure the continued creation and distribution of such work? (Barlow, 1).