Theft, the final straw that broke the camel's back... In this article, I'll be exploring the possibilities in which someone's ire bursts past the boiling point and causes them to want to choke-hold the closest thief in frustration. Lately, I've noticed quite a number of people just up and taking information and/or images off of someone else's site and putting up onto their own site with little to no changes, credit and/or thought as to the consequences as to the outcome.

Some attribute the theft to the (physical) age of the thief in question believing that the thief must be young and thus not know better, yet others believe that age has nothing to do with it. In my belief, if the thief gets caught and plays the 'age card' (I'm only X years old! I didn't know what I was doing was wrong!), it's just about the same as saying that their parents weren't as good as they ought to have been while they were growing up (and never taught them that stealing was wrong).

Ignorance is another attribute amongst art/content thefts. Some claim ingorance while others truely are ignorant. Usually when it's only claimed ignorance, they might also claim that they didn't see the text that says "DO NOT STEAL" even if it's impossible to miss. In fact, some thieves take it one step further and put up the same exact sign upon their own site... and then also claim that they worked oh so hard at getting the information.

Bandwidth theft is also intertwined within the whole mess. It might not seem like much to those who have their sites hosted on free site providers (like Geocities, FreeWebs or the like) but those who have their own sites and have them hosted on paid hosts have to pay for bandwidth as well. It's really annoying for those who have to pay for the bandwidth that would normally have enough bandwidth up the wazoo finds out that due to either excessive downloading (a slightly different situation) or bandwidth stealing that their sites are down/offline until they either buy more bandwidth or wait until the next day/week/month before their site comes back online again.

Along the lines of 'ignorance' and bandwidth theft is yet another sub-species of thief called the 'Attention Whore' who at first claims they don't know what they did was wrong but in truth, they know full well what they are doing and will do it again in a heartbeat just to get reactions. On the flip side of this, if it's done often enough by the thief, then they can wind up being banned from sites/internet (until they find another way around).

The outcome for art/content/bandwidth theft spans in a few different directions. When they're contacted about the theft (if they're contactable at all that is), they could either 1) not reply at all and think you're a total idiot for saying that what they did was wrong (and then wonder why their site's deleted a few days later for breaking terms of service), 2) apologize and take the stolen content down, 3) think that linking back to where they got the content is a sufficient compromise (even when it's not) and/or 4) be the cause of an all out flame war.

Questions? Comments? Wish to flame me? Contact me through the guestbook or e-mail me at .

[ Print This Page | Back to the Articles ]