I didn't say 'stealing', I said 'unattributed modification and usage'. I could have added digital reproduction, but that's obvious since we're talking about memes.
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I didn't say 'stealing', I said 'unattributed modification and usage'. I could have added digital reproduction, but that's obvious since we're talking about memes.
The usual usage of that "notice" is not to tell the author that their idea has been reused but to ask the author for permission to use the idea. It is petty, but humans are self-centred and self-interested. I surely am.
Going back to research, Let's say I spend a decade working on thousands of monkeys, secluded in a laboratory in dangerous conditions, trying to identify the gene that causes early-onset Alzheimer's. Let's say I get a satisfactory result and write my words in a Word document in my computer. But there is someone in the building to whom I've trusted my thoughts and well, he thinks that he would probably get a nice monetary reward if he published my words first.
So he hacks into my computer, extracts the document, sends it to an editor, then to the Nature magazine, and here I am sitting in my lab, having used all my life for what I wanted, but I get no attribution for my work. I will spend my years in solitude while my friend spends his life in conferences and luxurious hotel rooms describing to scientists my experiences as I told them to him.
It's not a dance or a recipe, it's work that requires time to create. It's an investment that is easily devalued by the indifference of others toward the expected compromise of exclusivity.