Hiding Behind the DMCA

Whatever happened to old-fashioned courtesy?

I recently linked to a cute photograph at icanhascheezeburger.com. To avoid network bandwiidth issues, I put a copy of the image file on my server and linked that back to the original page.

Unfortunately, in this case, the original photo was apparently "borrowed" without authorization from the person who snapped it. When the person who took the photo found out, the fur began to fly. She started sending out stiff-necked, stiffly worded notices to ISPs, mine included:

I am writing to you to avail myself of my rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This letter is a Notice of Infringement as authorized...

Ye gods.

So here's my reply to Ms. Photographer:

I would have preferred that you had sent a short, polite note directly to me, saying "Hello. I never authorized my photo to be captioned and did not give my permission for it to be posted anywhere but on my Flickr site. Please remove your copy. Thank you."

I would have removed the file immediately. And I wouldn't have thought you were a moron.

I might also say... You posted your photo, publicly, on Flickr. If you wanted absolute control, why did you do that?. At the very least, you should have included an artificial watermark on the image. But, to be truly "safe", your best choice would have been not to post your photo publicly, anywhere on the web.

Like it or not, the Web is a medium for sharing. It's becoming increasingly difficult to say "look, but don't touch". Personally, if one of my cats' photos showed up on icanhascheezeburger, I'd feel honored.