Stop the Image Thieves?


There have been, and still are, many campaigns that try to "Stop the Image Thieves". Their whole campaign is extremely ironic considering the images don't belong to them in the first place. If we "stop the image thieves", there won't be any images for us to use but fanart! None of the Sailormoon drawings belong to any of us. They belong to the talented Naoko and the anime images belong to Kodansha. How can we, the webmasters/mistresses, place rules and regualtions on images that aren't ours to begin with? I can understand that us webmistresses spend a lot of time scanning and editing these images and then type up the html for them, I know, I do it almost everyday, but neither myself or anyone else, bsides Naoko and Kodansha, own these images so we can't say who can have them and who can't.

Let's go back in time. Back in the day when you first became a part of the Sailormoon Community (SMC). You were a newbie, hey, we all were at some time! I remember when I made my first page, I did everything wrong. To name a few; clashing colors, stolen images, I used a WYSIWYG editor on AOL, didn't give credit where it was deserved, had a huge image gallery with no thumbnails or text links, and had incorrect information. Most people's including my own, forst pages were based on the dub,a nd I don't know aobut you, but I had at least three SOS banners on my index page. I think the majority of everyone in the SMC had a page like this to begin with. So, in reality, the creators of these campaigns most likely started out the exact same way I did, doing the thing they're campaigning against. Everybody's stolen an image or images in their lifetime. No one can be immune from it.

Another thing, say you go to a website and find a unique, beautiful image that for some reason or another, captivates you for some reason or another. You want this image. Since the author explicitly stated they didn't want this picture stolen, you decided to download it, but keep it in your own, personal collection. You move your mouse to the image and right-click to save the image, but wait! The author used an html block to keep you from right-clicking! I feel these html blocks are pointless and stupid. Anyone who knows anything aobut html knows how to get past a stupid block like that. Those people have no right to keep people from those images that aren't theirs to begin with, unless it's original fanart.

I wish all the irony on this subject would just end. Don't we all have enough problems on our own to have to worry about so-called "stolen" image police? all this petty fighting and stupid campaigns are what's ruining the entire online SMC for everyone. Think about it, if we "stopped the image thieves", what would be left for us webmistresses to put on our pages but info and images we drew ourselves? Have these campaigners thought about that? "Stop the image thieves!", eh?