Originally posted by Foresteer
Originally posted by Golbez
I consider it illegal, though, for someone to alter my images in one way or another without my explicit consent
well being quite proud of my ability to sidestep the law as much as one can whenever possible 
i\'ll interject.. unless you have it copyrighted and then they (the person who changes the image) changes and then calls it their own, uses it widespread or uses it for profit then its legal :/
If they changed it for thier own wallpaper or something then thiers not much if anything you could do XD.. and thats even if you HAVE a copyright.. if its not copyrighted then as far as i know anybody can use it for anything O.o
EDIT i may be wrong feel free to correct
Intellectual Property surely is a double-edged sword. It must find a sensible balance between the interests of the creator and the interests of the society as a whole. For the creator, obviously it would be best to totally restrict everything, just like the RIAA is attempting to do. (DMCA, anyone?)
For society as a whole, it is best to have no restrictions at all, because then creativity of others isn\'t hampered, so that the most benefit can be derived from the original work.
Therefore, it is uaually legal to modify and do whatever you please with anything as long as it\'s for personal use. Personal use usually includes not only desktop wallpapers, but also the usual sharing with friends. Real ones, not the ones on the other end of the world that just happen to connect to your emule server.
Avatars and signatures are a bit of a problem, because the potential is there that the work gets distributed to many people. However, usually the avatar and signature images are very small and only excerpts, so that they are quite unusable for anything except their original use, so they don\'t do much damage, if at all.
The same is true for audio files: excerpts that are of insignificant duration compared to the entire work are AFAIK legal.
Furthermore, modifications and derivative works are
always legal if they are made for parody purposes. That\'s because parody is an extremely important part of free speech, and as such rightfully is protected.
Because society has so much to lose, people using any form of Intellectual Property need to be very careful not to overuse the rights that were granted to them by society, because, as the RIAA and
Software Patents show, society will, due to the immense damage stemming from it, only tolerate such abuse to a certain extent, which is likely to result in a severe reduction of those rights in the long run. Therefore, it is in the IP owners own best interest to use common sense and not restrict fair use, as is for the society to not abuse the it\'s freedom.
Originally posted by Foresteer
Sidenote: its said once it data is posted on the internet its NEVER EVER lost.. somebody has it or its in cache SOMEWHERE but it will always exist for the most part... thats kinda scary 
Not everything, but anything that gets at least somewhat popular. Newsgroup archives also are giant libraries, because AFAIK some people save every single message that ever was posted. That and the wayback machine, which stores websites.
http://www.oldversion.com stores program files.
This is quite important, because it will give historians in the far future a really good understanding of what our society was. Also, it will preserve every dumb thing that you say on the net for your personal embarrassment.
