Pass The Parcel

There is a military meme going about to the effect that after you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is not your friend. Actually, Mr. Grenade isn’t your friend at any time, as his temperment is uncertain in the best of circumstances...and at the point they are issuing him to you, the circumstances are never the best. Mr Howitzer is worse, but we are getting off the topic. The topic is copyright. If you take a picture of someting there is a complex set of rules that governs the intellectual right to that image. Sometimes it awards this to you and sometimes it vests it in the subject of the picture, but somewhere along the line someone has the parcel. If you can reasonably expect to be that owner and discover that someone else has snatched it away from you, you can protest for recovery or compensation. Sometimes you are successful and sometimes it is all too much. This is money and prestige and fierce pride for many people. Corporate power and legal empire too. Once you pull the pin, Mr. Copyright is no-one’s friend... Yet few have stopped to think what happens in reverse. Suppose you made a really good picture and someone pinched it - You’d howl. But suppose you made a really bad image, let it out in a moment of folly, and then saw someone else claim authorship. I would be cautious about it until I saw how it was received. It might draw the condemnation of the world onto the head of the thief. And that would be your clue to lie low until the furore died down. Then you could take more, attribute them to the person who pinched the first one, and run for the slit trench.