Quote:
Originally Posted by grandeweasel
All the same, he's raising a valid point about people's bullshit tendencies to expect more credit and prerogative for posting a picture than they gave to the actual owner in the first place. Not owning the intellectual property does mean that you don't have the right to distribute it, even if you own a copy of it.
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Intellectual property law is heavily misunderstood, even though it's not rocket science.
Ownership and any of the protected rights of copyright are separable, and one person can own a thing while they contract to give others any or all of the other rights, such as distribution, reproduction, etc. None of the summaries above is strictly correct, but the key point is that the Internet is full of reproduced works with almost no ability to confirm or even deny that they are reproduced without permission.
Simply put (but there's always more to it, based on the fact pattern), it's often the case that one CAN make a copy of a work/picture/etc even though one MAY not do so legally based on the permissions they've secured, or lack thereof.
But it's STILL a wild west as far as asserting copyrights online, and expecting pics in forums to be handled the same way photos used in textbooks are handled, is kind of silly. Laws like the California revenge bill are more likely to be problems for places like this than the Copyright Act.