Part of my morning catch up when i get into the office is coffee, emails, tickets then some other sites i love.
Today, facebook showed a new comic of one of my favourites, The Oatmeal, so i tried to view it, but the site was down – which was odd.
A little digging turned up a full on Internet war between Funnyjunk and The Oatmeal
In a nutshell (and there is MUCH more to it, i suggest you go read about it) – Funny junk had has (appears to have been removed now) a mirror of the entire site with the copyright information removed of who originally produced the work. Which is just crap!
I love internet comics – they speak to an audience and can be produced quickly, infact, if you hit some of the error pages of this site, you will see some XKCD comics, with full credit to the artist.
Sites like funny junk have a place, which is to allow content to be brought together in one place to make browsing easier, but doing that at the expense of the artist is just rubbish.
Without The Oatmeal, funny junk would have no content, without content, the site dies. Without credit The Oatmeal gets nothing from it (besides his own enjoyment) and stops producing. The circle of the internet.
What am I trying to say here?
That i agree with The Oatmeal – don’t go after the little guy, when you (the big guy) are in the wrong.
Credit where credit is due.
“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.”
― Eric Schmidt – Former Google CEO
Further reading starts at: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk
