Give credit where credit is due

[Jess]

The point of this thread is to bring to the attention of all something that might be of importance to this and any forum, since it reflects respect among it's members and also reflects respect and appreciation from this community to others who contribute to the forum from outside of it. If the photos you post are not your own, post the names of those who have originally posted them or the source of your find. If the videos are not your own video captures post the names of those who have originally captured them or if you don't know post the names of those who have originally posted them, if it's something you picked up from another website or forum. Remember to always give credit where credit is due

Most of the time the only person that receives any credit is the person who post them at the forum, and then someone might take them somewhere else and he receives credit, and the same thing is done with everything, photos, videos, links, etc. A lot of forums don't care to enforce any type of restriction or rule as far as this goes, as long as they get the content they don't care where it comes from. Notice I'm not making reference to the copyright, these are two different things. I'm specifically making reference to those that deserve the credit of bringing us the original content in the form of purchased photos or in the form of capturing the videos, or simply making reference to others who have originally posted them.

I'll be the first to admit of doing this myself in the past, due to the poor guidance of some forums. I'm now trying not to do the same but to give credit where credit is due. Most english forums are getting a very bad rap at other foreign forums because of this, but it's not just the forums. A few others use hubs to share everything they find or steal from other forums and websites, and give credit to no one but themselves. Then they post it on various forums and when asked where they got it from they say they have connections... he he.

Those that have never paid for the purchase of pictures or have spent the time and money on software and hardware to capture an event on video, might think this is nonsense. A assure you it's not, it takes dedication, time and money to do this. Yet it's very easy for anyone to copy and paste anything and give credit to no one but themselves. But if it wasn't for these guys who originally provide us with these photos and who actually recorded and upload the videos for us, we might have never seen all the Alizée videos and photos.

I see videos on youtube with website watermarks that I know for a fact were not captured by them. Not only do they not give credit to the original capturer or the artist if it's an official video, but they also give the credit to themselves. And then they might try to bully others into thinking they're better and know best, because hey they have connections. If you think it's ok, think again. I can tell you that some are already feeling the effects of this, since they're starting to get banned from official forums for doing exactly this. I hope no one is offended by this, it's not my intention to embarrass anyone yet.

Feel free to post your opinion on the subject ;-)