right click mania

Flickr, the service I've been experimenting with, as a better way to house my images... is changing... its been taken over by yahoo... and it has also removed its flash wrapper from the main photo display page.... so what does that mean in english.. it means the viewer can easily download an image by just pressing the right click on the menu and selecting save image as.... this is creating a lot of discussion




the issue is an interesting one as a lot of folk confuse being "able to copy" with "copyright". and anything displayed on the internet is also "able to be copied" from the interenet. why publish any of your precious works on the net.... they will always be fair game for the unscrupulous to copy...




I want my images protected by copyright so why to i post here... well the answer is easy I want to share them... i need people to see them... the internet is one hell of a big art gallery. I've been thinking about copyright since I began posting... the artist in me one day hopes that I can sell sketches and perhaps even support myself with that income... but i know that will not occur until my work is known and appreciated... i expect that will take time... I like the way the creative common licenses are both worded and organised... and will support them as my way to effect a legal copyright the works in this blog... the downside is i don't know how enforceable those licenses are



i do think that the net is a wonderful place and the vast majority of users do use it wisely... but it does make copyright of anything published on it difficult to enforce. Copyright is a legal concept of ownership of intellectual property.. as far as i can find out it was developed during the 17th century england to protect mainly the fashionable painters of the time... it was designed to stop other from profiting from an artists work... yet today copyright, particularly in the record and film industries does the reverse, it ensure that most money goes to the "industry" not the artist themselves. did yahoo buy flickr beacuse it was neat? or to get acess to all those clicks and the money such traffic can generate?