grr.

[arethinn]

Hands up if you think it is unethical to show people someone's public livejournal post by copying and pasting it to a mailing list or something without first getting the permission of the poster to do so.

Right, me too (at least a little).

Now, hands up if you think it is unethical to show people someone's public livejournal post by giving them its URL without first getting the permission of the poster to do so.

No, me neither.

What is the deal with people thinking they can stop people from giving links to things they have publically posted? People who say "hey, you can't link to my website", or "you can't show anyone that post I made" on a public board where anyone random could have strolled by and seen it anyway? If you want to control who sees it, take advantage of the methods available to you for doing so. I am not violating your copyright or anything if I merely give a link to something you put in a public place.

Whiskey, tango, foxtrot, over?

Comments

[doltaghey.livejournal.com]

Surely if someone wants privacy they should keep locked posts. Personally I don't even see a problem with the copy/paste issue either, if the original LJ post is public and the copyer credits it properly (ie attributes it to the correct author and doesn't try to claim it as their own words). Again, if publicity is not wanted the post shouldn't be public in the first place. And materially there's no difference between posting the text, and posting the link to the same text.

(except, if the text is long it had better be behind a link or lj-cut, and not filling my friends-page)