After watching the video explaining Freebooting by Destin from SmarterEveryDay, I was appalled at the concept. I was even more disgusted when I heard about the responses from Facebook and Bauer Media Group. In school if you do this it is called plagiarism and you fail the course or are kicked out. But when a major company does it, nothing really happens. In a way, it reminded me of a part from Ken Robinson's video: Changing Education Paradigms. He says "In school we say...Don't look! Don't copy, because that's cheating. Outside schools, that's called collaboration..." There seems to be a double standard.
We have seen this an incredible amount recently. One could even use Apple vs. Samsung as an example. They have been fighting over smartphones since they first came out. Each one accuses the other of stealing something. In the end, even if there is a monetary punishment or a ban on the sale of the device, the process has taken so long that the item in question is not being made anymore. The ban is, therefore, irrelevant. The monetary fines also typically pale in comparison to the amount of money made stealing the idea.
The problem with this is that the people responsible for the uploading might think they are sharing something with all their friends, but Facebook is profiting hugely. There are also foreign companies that edit and re-upload things as their own. This is harder to deal with because of different laws around the world.
When I learned about Aaron's story and Napster and such, I wondered about the downloading of music, movies and other content without paying for it. At first, I thought that it was different because the uploader of some content wasn't necessarily profiting and neither was the downloader. Then I realized that all the torrent sites and such that host and share these links, have huge amounts of ads. They must profit greatly from this piracy!
I read through some of the comments on the Destin's video, and a few people suggested suing Facebook or the content uploader for damages.This might be a seemingly sure win case if you have taken time to document the evidence, but it will also cost a fortune in lawyer fees. Someone also suggested watermarking your videos with your name and channel to avoid unauthorized use.
If you watch the video, check out the links in the video description.
It is definitely sad that the world and greed has come to this.
Image source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VkGFhDRg204/maxresdefault.jpg