Are you sharing responsibly?
Most of the content that gains traction on the Internet, whether message boards, social media sites like Google+ and Facebook or through e-mail chains (although becoming less popular) has an origin. A lot of people take for granted the fact that someone took the time and effort to create this work. Instead, they share the image with reckless abandon as if it was their own original work.
Now, that’s not to say that everyone that downloads and image to their computer and shares it on a social network is necessarily in the wrong. A lot of the images that are found throughout the web are not copyrighted and are usually “modifications” of existing images. Think of all of the memes where people take an existing image and populate their own text on top. Just because they captioned the image does not make it theirs, per say.
I was approached today by +Bud Hoffman who pointed out that he shared an image he had found on the Internet and was surprised by the amount of interaction and attention it drew. Bud shared an image of two men smoking and standing beneath a mural to make it look as though they were being buried at a funeral.
