[rescue] Re: HP-UX laptops on eBay

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 14 Mar 2003, Gavin Hubbard wrote:

> I especially liked the "This ad and the pictures are property of Aleksey
> Zimin. Unauthorized use of the description and/or pictures is a violation
> of US copyright laws."

The attitude evident in that copyright "disclaimer" really hacks me off.
Accurate pictures of equipment are -hard- to find, and not every has or can
afford a decent digital camera.  Invariably, there'll be a good picture on
eBay with some wanker's name or copyright notice spewed right across the
middle.

Come on, people aren't going to win awards for pictures of dual-R10k
processor modules.  Why bother ruining it or watermarking it?  By putting
it out there and letting people use copies[0] of them, the entire eBay
community benefits from better and more accurate photographs.

And, more often than not, these descriptions that they also guard so
vehemently are litterally copied-and-pasted from the vendor's web site.

Have we become such a consumer-oriented culture that the mediocre amount
of effort put into snapping a picture of a piece of hardware is
exceptional enough to warrant threats of lawsuits if someone copies it?

People suck.


[0] Quite different from linking to the original copy on someone else's
    server, which is really bad form.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke  *)  "They're like candy for your ass."
Thorndale, TX      (*                       --Doc Shipley