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by enraged_camel 4568 days ago
Not all copying is fair. Many copyrighted content is copied without the author's permission and used in non-fair-use contexts. Therefore it seems reasonable for the copyright holder to alter the behavior of the copy function and append the URL to the copied text.

But I say that because I'm a reasonable person. If you feel entitled to being able to copy everything as is, then I suppose you won't like it being altered.
2 comments
kaoD 4568 days ago
If I want to copy content without authors permission, I won't copy and paste and will just wget the shit out of your web page and carry on. You prevented nothing.

But as a regular user, you just made me angry preventing me to copy and paste or adding obnoxious content (which I'm going to delete anyways).

So you traded a light barrier (if any) to unfair users for a huge annoyance to legitimate ones. Not very smart IMHO.

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regularfry 4568 days ago
That is not a reasonable stance. What you're saying is that the site owner is entitled to pre-judge any copy and paste as inherently unfair, and break everyone's experience as a result. That's not a judgement they should be able to make, and it's not a right they have.
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enraged_camel 4568 days ago
>>and break everyone's experience

Come on. Appending a URL to the copied text doesn't break anyone's experience. It's a very tiny inconvenience at best.

As for them pre-judging any copy and paste as inherently unfair, most people on the Internet copy and steal things without giving credit. Appending a URL to a chunk of copied text is a way of nudging them to cite the material. As for fair-use folks, I see it as helpful. I always cite material I copy from elsewhere manually, but now the script does it for me. In either case, it's a win.

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pavel_lishin 4567 days ago
> As for them pre-judging any copy and paste as inherently unfair, most people on the Internet copy and steal things without giving credit.

You're justifying their pre-judgment of people by pre-judging more people.

> I always cite material I copy from elsewhere manually, but now the script does it for me. In either case, it's a win.

Citing material by leaving the "\n\nRead more at http://something.somewhere/content.html" isn't a format I've ever seen anywhere, and seems like it would be incredibly annoying to parse.

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regularfry 4567 days ago
> Come on. Appending a URL to the copied text doesn't break anyone's experience. It's a very tiny inconvenience at best.

No. It makes something that should be in muscle memory, which I shouldn't even have to think about, which I do countless times a day on other sites and with other tools exactly the way I expect, and forces me to stop and think about it. It breaks my concentration and breaks my flow. Sites which do this are broken. The site owners have reached out and purposefully chosen to make my tools misbehave. You don't get to tell me that's a "tiny inconvenience". Especially not when the reasoning behind it is so utterly asinine.

> most people on the Internet copy and steal things without giving credit.

I really, really hope you're trolling. Even if this bore the slightest, tiniest resemblance to reality, it wouldn't justify trying to break my tools. "There exists an infringing use case therefore all uses must be interfered with"? No. No. NO.

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