Steal This Blog

Come on, everybody's doing it. Sites touting "embed" code for music and videos are cropping up faster than new Starbuck's locations, and YouTube has gone from nothing to one of the biggest sites on the internet in just a few months.

Why? Copyright violation. YouTube lets people upload whatever they want, but claims they only have to take it down when the copyright holder informs them of it. Meanwhile seven other people have uploaded the same thing under a different name.

Sure, they pull it down, like when this guy brought to the world's attention that he found 38 full movies on YouTube. But isn't that like robbing someone's house and when interrupted by the owner's early return saying, "Gosh! Am I robbing your house? Gee, I'll just stop then. Here's your stuff back and have a nice day."?

Supporters say that sharing video doesn't hurt anyone and is actually free promotion for the creators, and in some cases, that is certainly true. But not always, and once again the internets are changing the way the world works.

Because now it's gotten so commonplace that people aren't even noticing it anymore, which brings me to my ironic point. Revolutionary and Gizmondo fanatic Jess Ragan brought this link to my attention the other day.

It's a GameTrailers.com segment, stolen from them and then reposted on YouTube (GameTrailers, by the way, is owned by MTV).

The best part? Most of the GameTrailers segment is just a buch of footage ripped off from CNN. Can you steal stolen property that was previously stolen from someone else? I guess so, because I just did.

Somone, cut and paste this page, and post it somewhere else. You dirty thief. Then, someone else steal that. Let's see how far we can extend this chain of theft.