I wonder how owners of the Klipdrift brand feel about these guys poaching their slogan?
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Tag Archives: theft
Meme encourages theft
There is a “CD Cover Meme” doing the rounds at the moment that is not quite as harmless as it might seem.
It involves visiting certain sites to obtain text for use as artist name and album title; then the third step of the meme suggests that you should
Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days.
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
What people may not realise is that doing this will in all likelihood be stealing. Although there is a chance that the photo in question might be Creative Commons licenced and allow derivative works, it is more likely that it will be licenced as “All Rights Reserved” or CC licenced but not allow derivative works. In that case, your use of the image for the meme will be theft; so don’t do it. Respect the rights of other publishers just as you would like others to respect yours.
Image courtesy of lovelypetal.
Hunters and Collectors
As an active Flickr member I am always dismayed when I come across an account belonging to what I call a collector. This is someone who has created a free account, not added a custom icon or profile details and has posted no photographs. They simply collect huge numbers of favourites, usually of a narrow set of subject matter, often of the eye candy variety.
This morning such a person added some of my photographs of female surfers to their favourites. I found that this person has almost 8,000 favourites but that gathering favourites is their only activity on Flickr. As someone whose images have been targeted by this person I am curious as to what the purpose of the collection is. In the case of this person, the favourites are largely photographs containing women wearing tight clothing. Among the targets are surfers, triathletes, women swimming with dolphins and women dressed as superheroes. It almost conjures up visions of some socially inadequate guy living in his Mom’s basement, sitting in front of his computer wearing women’s underwear and a leather mask; frantically rubbing himself while scrolling through his thousands of favourites, deriving sexual pleasure from images that are not sexy at all to the average person. Freaky!
As Flickr is a photo sharing site, I am certainly not in favour of these collectors and tend to ban them when I find them targeting my images. This doesn’t mean I ban everyone with favourites but no images of their own. If someone has a varied, and reasonably small collection of favourites, that’s fine. It’s the creepy ones with the huge, narrow and vaguely fetishy collections that I object to.
Desperate Measures
It is said, that “Desperate times call for desperate measures”. When there is a water shortage, water prices are high and you have no garden fence or wall, it is time for desperate measures to protect your garden tap from being the target of those who would steal your water.
Covers like this one are fairly common in South Africa where home owners have their garden taps used by those passing by, who sometimes leave them dripping or even running, wasting water and costing the owner money.
Car Guards
Here in South Africa car theft is a big problem so every parking lot has car guards. Some are uniformed and employed by malls while others are unemployed people who work daily for an organisation that issues them with a vest carrying the information that they are car guards. They pay a token fee to use this for the day and then get to keep the tips that motorists give them. I have no problem with this and always try to give them a reasonable tip, although I sometimes wonder whether they could actually stop someone from stealing a car.
What really bugs me is that when it comes time to reverse out of the parking bay, they feel that they must direct me. Now, in order to get a driver’s licence one must be able to do this unaided so I don’t need any help. They always seem to stand right behind your car and in effect only add another variable to the problem of reversing out. Instead of only having to worry about hitting the cars on either side and watching out for cars approaching down the lane, you must also watch out that you don’t run over the idiot standing behind you waving his arms.
craniac's place 