Gettingit.com: Internet For Assholes

Internet For Assholes

This week: Copyright Infringement for Assholes

by Lou Cabron

Published November 10, 1999 in Whoa!

The Internet creates never-before-realized opportunities for being an asshole. For instance, one Webmaster pointed a camera out his window at the corner where people buy crack. After filming them, he gave the footage titles like "Crack Dance" and "Good Old Boys," and Web-cast the movies.

See also...

... by Lou Cabron
... in the Whoa! section
... from November 10, 1999

The lesson here? No matter how pathetic your life is, there's someone out there even more pathetic -- and making fun of others will give you a sense of superiority. But why taunt badly dressed people loitering around your local bus stop when the Internet lets you view Web pages of strangers -- remotely! From a safe distance! Where it's harder for them to retaliate...

And taunting is only the first step. Why not try stolen-image theatre? Create your own comic strip based entirely on pictures stolen from other Web sites! Remember: Appropriation is the sincerest form of flattery.

You don't even need to copy the images. Right-clicking your mouse on an image in your Web browser allows you to copy its exact location. Use that as the "image source" on your own Web page to create masterpieces -- like this little gem about AOL President Steve Case.

Never let lingering doubts about your rights to images spoil your fun. Just repeat after me: Copyright, schmopyright. Old-timers still whisper the legend of "the Dilbert Hole." Nearly four years ago, Tristan Farnon scanned 17 "Dilbert" comic strips, and then changed the dialogue. On his Leisure Town Web site, he used the revised images as illustrations for a Web-based story about a frustrated and psychotic giraffe stuck at a white-collar job. Dilbert's lawyers were not amused -- mainly because the strip's characters were now shouting things like "Hey look gang -- I'm beating off under the table!" and "Okay faggots, listen up. Mandatory drug tests today." Farnon substituted "backup artwork" -- the same dialogue over drawings of stick figures -- until the lawyers went away.

Then he put the original images back online.

It's an age-old theory: If you ignore a problem, maybe it will go away. And it worked -- at least until the lawyers came back and he had to remove the images again. But there's a moral to this story.

Lawyers are stupid.

There are dozens of ways to have fun with other people's Web pages. Try starting a collection of the stupidest pages you can find. Link to the pages with the ugliest pictures -- then add appropriate commentary!

I mean, come on -- how can you NOT mock a loser in full goth makeup sitting on a forklift? Especially when he calls himself "Cryptie."

Cryptie's Web site offers a biography ("for all those single nocturnal ladies that seek desire") and offers details of his alluring lifestyle. (Nocturnal ladies shouldn't get their hopes up. He's a 37-year-old forklift operator in Pontiac, Michigan.)

Predictably, he's never been married.

The wannabe's page features a photo gallery of poses -- most with self-serving descriptions. One boasts, "My offerings are always accepted by the dead." (Well duh! 'Cause they're DEAD!!!!) There are other alluring shots of Cryptie -- riding the forklift, wearing a goofy black gown with a pentagram necklace, preening in fishnet stockings in a cemetery. Any page that links to blow-up doll vendor RealDoll.com is just begging for an asshole to make fun of it.

Another site that keeps track of such things quickly dubbed Cryptie's page "the Cheeziest Goth Site of the Week" and it even qualified for a special mention on Fugly.net, a Web site dedicated to making fun of people with ugly pictures on their Web pages. ("[I]f folks had any conscience, shame, or sense, this would be wholly unnecessary...") After reviewing Cryptie's page, Fugly noted that, if he's so evil and yet still a forklift operator, "The Wages of Sin are about $6.50 an hour."

Creating a Web page takes naive faith in the good nature of those who'll read it. Newbies offer you a chance to fill an instructive role, by reminding these neophytes that everybody will see their Web pages. Including assholes!

They'll soon realize that including their home phone number on the page was a bad idea...

Bored? Try giving false hope to losers! Send one of these desperate date-seekers an email saying you'll go out with them. Write that their clunky attempt at a Web page was charmingly unpretentious. That you've waited your whole life for someone who collects Star Wars action figures and works the night shift at a Kmart in Iowa.

Just don't give them your phone number.

The phone number of one of your co-workers is an acceptable substitute.

Lou Cabron is GettingIt's resident asshole.

Internet for Assholes runs each Wednesday on GettingIt.