You bring up interesting points. These are the types of posts that we should be discussing. Sadly the Slack is closed so it's not possible to have an efficient conversation.

> Therefore, it would seem, that anyone who posts original content online, regardless of intention and without protecting it from being copied, is knowingly subjecting it to be copied, sold, or otherwise distributed without attribution or permission.

Agreed, they are putting it on the sidewalk for anyone to pick it up and walk off with, so to speak, but we still call the person a thief even if the owner of the bike in front of their house didn't want to have their bike stolen.

We are expected to police each other by downvoting for spam and abuse in posts, so then why are we to turn a blind eye when someone is in a grey area such as reposting content that clearly they didn't produce? Aren't we doing everyone a favor by making sure that content shared here won't cause a problem down the road? Let alone it's just the right thing to do in making sure someone else isn't being taken advantage of.

> who sues Steemit, or a user of Steemit, for copyright infringement while knowing that they could have posted on Steemit themselves and made the money outright, will in effect be attempting to shut down the very thing they are claiming to protect—the rights of the Artist to his or her own work.

Indeed, which is why it behooves us to get this right sooner rather than later. If this system can reach its full potential and fully disturb the payment model for creative endeavors we will want it to not suffer from attacks without already having a strong defense. The individual or companies that might attack copyright infringement situations here might very well be harming artists rights to their own work in a way. That would be most unfortunate.

I can only imagine having something like Steemit when I was active as an illustrator. There are times where I would have liked to make some extra money on a project that I created that couldn't be reprinted and that I might not want to sell the original art for or I didn't have the original work in my possession any more. Especially when I was first getting started as a freelancer with not enough clients and clout to ever get comfortable. Oh, insurance? 401k?.... So, yeah. Steemit is personal to me. I want the artists of today and the future to get compensated for their work as much as possible because the artists around us are undervalued.

Keep up the conversation and hope to read and see more of your work in the future.

> All photography is original. Thank you for reading.

Thank you for writing and creating your own works to share. This, my friends, is what it's all about.