As you may know, there has been some serious acusations of copyright and content infringement and plagiarism plaguing the web development community. I do not wish to go point fingers, but I do want to look at both sides of the story a bit more in depth.
Given some of the activity from the infringing parties, I do think that I am giving more credit than is due, but let's continue anyway.
Understanding Copywrite and Ownership of Creative Works
From written tutorials, to full length video series, putting out content is tough and time consuming. This is creative work, just like songwriting, coding an app, or directing a movie. The product we produce is our intellectual property. We may distribute it for free or charge for it but it is not to be stolen or used without permission.
Maybe It's A Western Thing?
This gets into the specifics and is not meant to be racial, but rather culturally factual. The origin of the latest copyright attack in the community has come from Eastern Asia. This area is known for shamelessly infringing copyrights and intellectual property. From mock toys like the laughable miniPolyStation3 to the more serious movie replicators, faux couture, Faybans, and $100 Rolexes: this is illegal in most countries, but often ignored in some East Asian countries.
But, I think it goes further than that. I don't think its just about a quick buck taking advantage of someone else's hard work. From talking to friends from the area and hearing stories from close friends working with exhange students from the area, there seems to be a disconnect in morality.
For many western students cheating is a serious offense often taken to lighten the load and get a better grade. Talking to East Asian students, there seems to be a higher correlation of where the student doesnit seem to see cheating as morally wrong but a way to ensure success. The difference is the moral understanding that stealing someone else's work was wrong.
I could be wrong. I could be giving way too much credit to the infringing party. My experfences and those of the people around me may be misinformed.
Anyway, I take the infringmeant of my own work, the work of those around me, and the reputation of the community as a whole very seriously. I will continue to speak out about this and will seek proper and legal action to be taken.