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I've seen a fair number of mails to mailing lists in the past few days from people wanting to publish stuff on the 'net, but not let people copy it - both text and images. This is driving me spare; some of these people are working on the 'net for five, six years, and it's plain that they just don't get it.
If I see something on the 'net - anywhere, the web, usenet, email, wherever - my machine has already made a copy of it. It is there, on my screen, on my machine. The internet is not some magic portal through which one can look but not touch - it works, all the time, by making copies. Once it is on my machine, you can't take it back. You can make it difficult for me to keep it, but you can't make it impossible, and it's fairly likely that you'll only piss me off by trying. Indeed, there's a fair argument that showing it to other people at all causes them to make a copy of it in their own heads - this isn't so clear for images or long text, but if you've written a short poem, I defy you to show it to people and not have them memorise it if they want to.
If you do not want people to have copies of your work, you can not place it on the internet - in fact, you're better off not showing it to anyone, ever. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
If I see something on the 'net - anywhere, the web, usenet, email, wherever - my machine has already made a copy of it. It is there, on my screen, on my machine. The internet is not some magic portal through which one can look but not touch - it works, all the time, by making copies. Once it is on my machine, you can't take it back. You can make it difficult for me to keep it, but you can't make it impossible, and it's fairly likely that you'll only piss me off by trying. Indeed, there's a fair argument that showing it to other people at all causes them to make a copy of it in their own heads - this isn't so clear for images or long text, but if you've written a short poem, I defy you to show it to people and not have them memorise it if they want to.
If you do not want people to have copies of your work, you can not place it on the internet - in fact, you're better off not showing it to anyone, ever. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.
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Flamethrower
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Better world to live in.
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