Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Stealing Intellectual Property Isn't Nice

An earlier post today, "Worst High School Analogies, plus Gilbert and Sullivan," introduced me to a good parody of a Gilbert and Sullivan song.

It also introduced me to another example of Internet users' fast-and-loose treatment of intellectual property rights. The lyrics of "I am the very model of a Newsgroup personality" are funny, and for the most part well-written. They've also been spread across cyberspace, sometimes without an author being claimed. "Tom Holt" may have written the piece, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,"(1) but I wouldn't want to be flattered this way. It's not just pride of authorship, although that's a factor. I'm trying to support my family, partly through income generated by my writing. Writers, particularly those who are so 'inartistic' as to desire monetary rewards for their efforts, may not want their work to be distributed without
  • Consent
  • Acknowledgment of authorship
  • Pay
For professional writers, and writers trying to make a career of using their talent and skill, this sort of casual theft can be a serious matter.

A Google search for "I am the very model of a Newsgroup personality" yielded over a thousand hits. Google's de-duping system pared it down to 22. Here are the links that were still working, and had lyrics at the linked page.I ran the last entry, "c4vct," past the free version of Copyscape. The results were interesting: 10 hits, with a promise of more with the paid version of the service.

Related posts on Apathetic Lemming of the North:(1) Charles Caleb Colton, "Lacon," volume I, no. 183

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