It was nice to see Charles of Little Green Footballs make a clear statement about his position on intellectual property. LGF is one of my favorite sites, but some of the rare times issues like IP come up it seemed like Charles and many LGF commenters didn’t really understand the issue. I’ve been trying to post some examples of this, but I’m not having much luck with the LGF search feature. It doesn’t matter, though, because Charles let everybody know what he thinks. And I think this is a great post!

I’ve had this discussion so many times with so many people that my eyes start to glaze over when it comes up.

You either respect the concept of intellectual property, or you don’t.

A whole lot of people don’t even know the concept exists.

Some of this is healthy; challenges lead to stronger systems. But the troubling part here is that, in way too many cases, the insistence on “fair use” is coupled with a thuggish and ignorant disregard for the intellectual property of the creators of the work.