It seems everything ends up online eventually. Some cheeky monkeys have uploaded all the pages from a series of articles I wrote for the Judge Dredd Megazine about ground-breaking British war comic Battle. I'm less than impressed about having my copyright so egregiously violated. Perhaps if those responsible had bothered to ask first, or if they had uploaded only a page or two from the articles, that would qualify as fair use. But the whole thing? Tsk!Of course, there's a delicious irony to all of this. I once wrote a fan novelisation based on the Douglas Adams script for Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet, and that's recently been uploaded to the digital world. Like the Battle site, that was done on a not-for-profit basis, but it's still morally dubious ground in terms of copyright. I guess one difference is the fact my fanboy novelisation was an adaptation, whereas the Battle site simply reproduces my articles wholesale.
Now, where did I put that petard of mine?
3 comments:
Did you read their copyright page?
Putting up a notice acknowledging someone's copyright while at the same time breaching it isn't really much of a defence, imo.
The copyright holder hasn't been given the choice of whether they want their property appearing for free on someone'e internet site.
It's an interesting one.
I've, an odd time, posted a full article with an obvious link to where I copied it from. My main reason, from one particular source, is that they normally start charging to read their archives and I know I wouldn't be bothered paying just to see one article.
I do think what these 'cheeky monkeys' have done is definitley going too far and for that quantity and quality of material for their website they should've asked.
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