Back when the world was young and none of us even knew that Al Gore was inventing the internet and WAY before Donald Trump used the threat of political correctness to excuse sexist misogyny, I wrote this piece for the Wall Street Journal. It ended up on hundreds of fledgling list-shares. (NOTE: Boys and Girls, that’s what we used for sharing stuff before we had Twitter and Instagram. Our dinosaurs loved it.) It was my very first viral. The thing is that it almost never had my name attached and I rarely got credit.
“But that’s okay,” I said. “When they shake the bugs out of this world wide web thingy, that kind of thing won’t happen any more.”
That was in 1994, over twenty years ago. And you know what? It happens ALL the time. There are people out there who call themselves “aggregators”, which apparently means “trolls who steal humor other people have written, and post it without even attempting to credit sources”. If it’s out there for free, it’s free for the stealing seems to be their reasoning.
Only… they’re making money on it. Big money. Some have huge numbers of followers, which means they can rake in money from brand placements and advertising.
No, the real problem is that there is a deep-seated, fundamental belief that the internet and everything on it should be free. It’s the internet’s greatest strength and its Achilles heel.
Fast forward to today, when I saw this tweet from Maura Quint @behindyourback:
Please click on graphic and retweet. You know you want to!
Maura is angry about having her work stolen, and used by someone for personal gain. She isn’t alone. All over the web, people are getting angry—here at Buzzfeed and here at the Washington Post and here and lots more places.
The problem, though, isn’t just that thieving POS bastards like Josh Ostrovsky (Fat Jew) can and do grab material from all over the web. Or that his followers and fans and celebrity friends all think that’s just fine. Or that advertisers are willing to pay thousands for ads and brand placement to monetize those thefts. Or that he has just been signed with an agent, and that he has his own wine label. Or even that Time Magazine listed him in a March 5, 2015 article on The 30 Most Influential People on the Internet, saying “The raunchy comedian is the Internet’s court jester, posting funny photo memes (many of which he lifts from sites like Reddit and Tumblr) and absurdly posed photos of himself, all to the delight—and sometimes chagrin—of his 3.2 million Instagram followers.”
No, the real problem is that there is a deep-seated, fundamental belief that the internet and everything on it should be free. It’s the internet’s greatest strength and its Achilles heel.
The music and film industry has changed incredibly to respond to the web’s insatiable demand and belief that they have a right to…well, free everything… Graphic artists and designers, and other writers like me see our work available for free from pirate sites. Software developers find apps that were developed by dedicated teams being given away. Last week I was at a gathering where the dog and I were the only ones in the room without PhDs, and everyone was talking about how to find free books and movies for download.
Mostly, we shrug. What can you do?
Maybe, not much. Maybe not enough.
But Maura asks that right here, right now we all do something. It’s easy. If you have liked/friended/followed the Fat Jew, then unfollow him.
If you think his stuff is funny (and it is hilarious, it’s just not his stuff), then DM Maura (@behindyourback) and she’ll send you a list of the actual people who wrote the stuff and who are still posting their original hilarious work online.
You don’t go to the grocery store, fill up your cart, and walk out without paying. You don’t go to work and do your job and then accept that your company isn’t going to pay you because they’re giving away what you do for free.
Why would you support a thief who not only steals, but uses what he’s taken to make himself rich? Let’s not tell Maura and the rest of the creative, hard-working people on the web they will have to wait another twenty years to see if the internet will shake these bugs out.
Barb Taub 
Well said. I don’t follow him and certainly won’t now. The Internet is wonderful but there is a downside which is truly rotten. Actually several truly rotten downsides but sticking to this one, I’ve almost given up on asking for my books to be taken down from pirate sites because it’s impossible to keep up wth them as more and more pop up every day. I don’t think anyone actually gets a free book from those sites – they just get infected with a horrible virus but this is is different though and if enough people shout about it maybe he’ll find he can’t go about stealing other people’s material.
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Apparently plenty of people are getting those free books. I was talking to some people in Spain, where the bookstores all charge 20 euros and up for print books. So they think it’s almost their duty to grab titles from pirate sites. It’s a vicious circle. (Of course, all I could do was stare when they inevitably followed this with a question about when my books would come out in Spanish…)
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Well said.
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So many artists are saying it much better than I ever could. But I just don’t know what it might take to change the fundamental belief that if it’s on the web, it should be free for the taking.
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Bloody hell. Am just going to go and check.
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Bloody indeed!
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Never heard of him until this kerfuffle, but the creative types need to rethink their use of social media w/r/t their ultimate goal to be paid for their work/art. If you’re giving your stuff away, perhaps you shouldn’t be too surprised when someone takes it. Do I sound like I’m blaming the victims? I probably do, but artists need to stop providing free content on the internet, unless they’re certain (or somewhat certain) that their actions support their financial/professional goal. This distribution of work with the only compensation offered the nebulous concept of “exposure” is so stupid it makes my brain hurt. When will it stop?
And I know that it’s way harder to pound the virtual sidewalks of the internet looking for someone to pay for your work than it is to Tweet, but no one is going to pay when they can get the same content for free.
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No, actually this isn’t an issue of whether or not posting your work online is a good business model or not, anymore than it’s the victim’s fault for what she wore or where she was, or what she drank if she’s raped or assaulted. Museums in Scotland are free, but I don’t think anybody would look kindly on my popping in and cherry-picking the pieces I like, taking them home, putting my own name on them, and charging people to see them. I’m sure your town has parks that are freely available to all, but they would probably not be happy if you were to pick all the flowers, help yourself to a statue or two, and then sell them on for your own benefit.
Copyright violation falls under property rights, or—as they called it long before it was carved into those stone tablets—THEFT. And in civilized countries, that should result in a change of address and wardrobe to where orange is the new black.
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Except the user content posted on Twitter is public, and users give up certain publication rights to Twitter and Twitter’s partners at least when users Tweet.
When you purchase a ticket to a museum, you don’t purchase the Mona Lisa. You purchase access to view the Mona Lisa. Likewise with a public park. You’re not purchasing the bench, your paying (through taxes) the ability to sit on the bench for a reasonable amount of time.
In the U.S., at least, copyright infringement is a civil offense and authors can enforce their rights through the courts. Looks like this guy has been following the law and pulling down content when authors notify him. What he’s doing is no different from how Ariana Huffington made her zillion dollar deal with AOL after HuffPo made its reputation on the backs of writers who provided content for free. I don’t like it either. Exert your rights and get paid for your work.
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Again, I have to disagree. Twitter, like most social media providers, is extremely careful to state clearly that you retain all rights to your own content. The last thing on the planet they would ever want is to own (and thus be legally liable for) user content.
From Twitter’s Terms of Service: “But what’s yours is yours – you own your Content (and your photos are part of that Content).” [https://twitter.com/tos?lang=en]
Further, they promise to enforce your copyrights and punish violations. And they’re not alone. Tumblr has booted out even very popular, highly-followed bloggers for copyright violation, from mega-blogger Bohemea and continuing today.
So stripping all ownership from content that is the property of another and publishing that content does, in fact, NOT fall under the terms of service with Twitter or other forms of social media.
And the big, huge, elephant-in-the-room difference between what the “aggregators” are doing and even Ariana Huff’s deal is just that—ownership. At no point did the owners of the content stolen by Fat Jew and his ilk ever consent to having their work used, their ownership stripped out, and their rights eliminated. Didn’t happen. (I have never published with Huff Post, but I know that when I published with newspapers and magazines, there was always a contract stating who would hold copyright. I assume that something like that occurred with Huff Post, but regardless, no author would have agreed to hand over their work without having it published under their name and receiving creative credit.)
Would it be a better business model for comedy writers to insist on being paid for every joke before they put it online? Maybe. But it is completely clear that no part of their business model or personal choice included having their work stolen.
Your objections to my (admittedly stupid) examples of theft from public museums and parks are valid. However, you actually prove my point. Property rights still exist even in public venues, and thus violating them constitutes theft.
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Well said. I don’t follow him or other thieves like him, but it’s good to spread the word about them.
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Thanks, David!
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