Mike Masnick beschreibt bei Techdirt in einem lesenswerten Beitrag aus eigener Erfahrung einen Umstand, den u.a. jeder Blogger wird nachvollziehen können:

► How Social Mores Can Deal With ‘Unfair’ Copying, Even In Absence Of Copyright

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Even in cases where there is no intellectual property right, social mores, social expectations and desire to keep one’s own reputation, can actually solve such issues.

Believers in strong copyright act as if this is impossible or that it never happens. But that’s not the case. In both my example above, and in the situation Cory faced, there were no intellectual property rights at stake. There was no legal obligation to credit whatsoever. But there was tremendous social pressure to do so. There’s actually been some serious economic research on this topic, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics for exactly this type of research — showing that social mores within certain communities can often act as a better regulator of “public goods” rather than any government mandated privileges or property rights.

Does this mean that copying without credit is stopped entirely? Of course not. But it does show that it is not, as some people claim, a “costless,” situation. There can be a tremendous cost to reputation in doing so.

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