It’s a picture of his nephew; he waited for this smile; he snapped the shutter at just the right moment outside of his house in Dumaguete, one nice afternoon some years ago. 
Hersley was very happy with his picture; he edited it and uploaded it to a number of the websites he uses to share his pictures with the public.
Last week, however, this picture was displayed on a popular national TV show by a man in Manila who claimed it as his own work.
This man had copied Hersley’s picture in spaghetti, and pasted it on a board. He called this “food art”. He also claimed that the boy in the picture was a “cancer survivor” from Batangas.
None of this is true. The boy isn’t from Batangas. He isn’t even sick.
The man is a liar and a thief, simple and shameless; someone attempting to gain fame and money and admiration, by stealing someone else’s work, and then lying about it.
Whether you steal a watch or a car or a picture, it’s still theft — taking something that isn’t yours, for your own use, without permission or payment. It’s a very common thing to do.
Everyone understands that this is a crime in the case of a car or a watch. But many people don’t see that to use a picture, or a movie, or a song, or a computer program without permission or payment is also theft, and also wrong.
Artists who take pictures, write songs, design computer programs, make these things for the pleasure and benefit of the people around them — they survive and make their living by their talent.
If enough people simply steal their works without conscience, time will come when they will not be able to make them anymore.
Watches, cars, and other solid objects are fairly easy to protect from theft. But pictures and songs and computer programs — anything that will go into a computer or iPad — these things have no weight, and no permanent location. But that doesn’t mean nobody owns them.
“Intellectual Property”, though it’s easy to steal, is still property.
Stealing Hersley’s photograph and claiming it as your own may not cost Hersley much more than his anger. But theft like this, without conscience or thought, will cost everyone in society — when no one makes more pictures.
(see related story; click here)
