This is a classic mafia move. It will end with the mafia owning something that used to belong to someone else even though that person did not want to sell it.

Again, you misunderstand. They arrest you because of your actions and specifically because of the intent.

You misunderstand. Soliciting merely means the act of trying to procure sex for money.

They don’t need a sting for that. They just sit someone near a red light district and roll every car that pulls up and let’s known sex workers get in their car.

Edit: not saying any of that is right though. It certainly feels like punching down… And if anything, it encourages some far more dangerous practices, particularly for sex workers.

Often countries have laws that make the solicitation the illegal act for that exact reason.

Or the arrest folk for conducting their business in public… So lewd behaviour.

The big brain move was to ask them first, thereby proving you wanted to use their IP.

If he had just faked it anyway without asking he might have got away with it.

Genius strategist.

I’m telling you this as someone that works in the arts, that’s just not true.

You can pirate digital material and repackage it. I see illustrators getting their designs ripped off by large scale clothing manufacturers all the time.

Similarly, I know some acts that have heard their music on adverts and films and haven’t been paid. It seems like it is being stolen if you ask me.

There needs to be protection or the creation of art becomes a luxury for those that can afford to not make money from it.

What’s wild here is that when you talk about IP you are talking about entertainment and art and not lifesaving drugs and technologies on a global scale.

It’s a very privilidged western view of copyright and IP.

And as I said in my comment, it isn’t my customers that want stuff for free, often they want to pay to support me. Those laws stop big multinational corporations from taking my work and selling it on their t-shirts.

We are social creatures, but fuck me, we need to eat and pay rent.

I see you make art. What if I said to you, I’d like to give you some money for that art, for maybe a print of it. Not just so that I can own some but because I want to support you.

And then someone just copies your art and gives it to me free. You get no money for it.

Are you genuinely OK with that? Are you saying that everything you make is copyright free?

So you think that because some people chose to make things for free there should be no legal protection for people that want to sell what they make?

The only people who can choose to make things for free are the privilidged few.

As someone who makes minimum wage from my intellectual property, the IP laws (in the UK) have allowed me to prevent the very wealthy just taking my ideas and profiting from them.

And they have tried repeatedly.

It isn’t the law, but the corruption of the law that’s at issue. However, without that legal framework there would be no financial incentive for anyone but the wealthy to make IP.

Is that what you want? Entertainment by big corporations only, and art made solely by the upper middle classes?

I like following verbal meme trends, then watching them die out.

Couple of years ago everyone described nearly everything as “spicy”.

The overuse if “hear me out” before making a mid statement.

That dark period of time when people used “amazeballs”.

Yes, do this if you want your work to have the same feel as every other writer who runs their work through an llm.

Right you are. They started in 2003 a full two years before YouTube and a solid four years after the 90s.

I’m betting they weren’t around in the early 90s. I mean… If we are talking any real sort of publicly available machinima, we must be talking about the start of YouTube.

Unless watching your mate, Gary, do that thing where he voiced over Zangief as if we was a WWF wrester counts.

It is a great step forward, but the barrier to entry is relatively high. You can sign up to substack for free and they take a cut of your profits (that most writers don’t draw enough attention to earn.

Meanwhile ghost charges $9 a month, billed annually.

That’s a significant barrier to anyone that can’t afford to see if their writing will be popular and as long as that remains it will struggle to gain traction in the same way.

And yeah, I know you could host your own too, but again a price point and a technical barrier.

I like ghost, the interface and the ecology, but the truth is that it isn’t going to attract the sort of vibrant, young community it needs if you have to stump up $108 just to see.

I think one of the great things about 2000s/early 2010s internet was the proliferation of free to use platforms like livejournal, blogger and WordPress. Sure there was a lot or jank, but I found some of my favourite writers back when they were scratching their name into the internet.

Get a point for being bold enough to nominate yourself too.

I mean it, that was a cool thing to do and I’m glad you recognise it.

I was so glad when we slipped out of the bulbous silver aesthetic.

Everything looking like a Tonka toy Geiger.

And now I look at it and it seems like home.

Ah. Let’s celebrate Irish nationality with crude tropes!

Looks like a shoddy iron maiden cover.