the problem is no religion (except zen, afaik) provides a method to approach those questions, but random invented answers so you stop asking.

we humans are indeed religious beings, but most human religions are bullshit. keyword: crowd control.

ancient japanese got it right, they were utterly tolerant about religion which was considered a private affair (as it should). this could only be so because their society was already so strictly classed and the authority so indisputable that they didn't need to use religion for that.

yes, they did slaughter some christians at some point. but only after realizing how they were creeping for influence and power. nobody had invited them, after all.

believe me, you would have a hard time debating with someone who seriously insists he (and everything around him) was created by a flying spaghetti monster, although you can't prove that's impossible.

if you want to assert bullshit like "a woman spontaneously conceived the son of god" then that's your problem, pal. and i've no problem at all with the crap you may believe, as long as you don't want me to behave according to your beliefs. be rational, or forget about being taken seriously.

every novel has one. the earliest record in jesus' life which is historically accepted is that he was baptized, some few years before death. everything before that is just gospell, brought up almost a century after the facts to give the emerging new cult some proper mythical background. regardless of what the usual meaning of 'virgin' was at the time, the gospells actually meant 'conceived without bang' because that's the dogma they explicitly established, that he was the son of god blablabla. yes, people was gullible at the time ... oh, wait!

didn't you watch brian's life, you blasphemous clod??

you don get it. of course there are bugs. the aim is not a defect free system, but to avoid a total catastrophe in a system built and maintained by waves of replaceable monkeys. it's already remarkable that it works at all, but yes, this is the industry average. shrug.

Yep, there are a few transformative angles you can take.

First thing to note, is that it is unlikely that Richard Prince would sue. I guess that for the price tag, each print is unique. Why would he print twice the same thing when it takes him all of 10 minutes to find a decent image, screenshot it, print it and sign it (apparently for the Instagram copies, his comment is the signature, he doesn't even bother to sign) ? There is no loss of sales for him, and he's able to find suckers for his "unique" prints. Why would he risk losing a case ?

But in the hypothetical case... the courts say that an use is transformative (Firefox's spell checker doesn't like that word...) when it is "altering the original with new expression, meaning, or message".

About the expression, given that Suicide Girls have the original image, they could "reinterpret" the print by enhancing it with the original quality instead of the screenshot quality, and argue how it's adding depth, or adding contrast with the surrounding low-res text or whatever.

Or if it is about the context changing its meaning, at first it was an Instagram post, then it was a part of an art exhibition, then it is a re-appropriation for a charity. Hence I'm arguing that Mark Meyer's comment on how "While Prince’s use of Mooney’s photos adds new and significant context, Mooney is simply selling copies of Prince’s work with no additional contextual commentary" is wrong. In the end, the "context" is only about your capacity to convince that, really, "it isn't what it looks like". And Richard Prince is much more seasoned at that game than Mooney ever will.

About the message, I was thinking along the same line as you did. Something like, this is the actual message (the $90,000 / $90 poster), and the sold prints are only parts of the overall artwork, as so many parts of the message. With both Prince and Mooney, it's the same relation between the individual print and the "meaningful context" (art exhibition / re-appropriation for a charity).

However, I agree with Mark Meyer on that point, the "we added the "suicide girl true art" message" is probably not going to cut it.

with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

this is also necessary condition for 'theft' in about any legal code. this condition is not met in this case, and unless you can prove it is, your discourse just doesn't stand.

if you're betting on 'loss of rightful revenue', it's a skewed and controversial concept. the problem here is the term 'rightful' which is a nebulose trying to coerce 'their right to sell' into 'my obligation to buy'. needless to say, i don't buy it. but even then, assuming some imaginary context where that 'rightful revenue' really existed ... you can't 'deprive' someone of something they never had. so without deprivation it can't possibly be theft, and i'm not a thief. you should be really able to grasp this simple and fundamental fact.

call it something else. take your pick, i don't care. but calling it theft is irrational or dishonest or both.

Actually, it doesn't do exactly the same thing.
:x writes only if the file has been modified (only the file's access time is updated).
:wq writes unconditionnally (creates an empty file if it didn't exist, updates the file's modification time).

sigh ... since you insist in totally ignoring the accepted meaning of 'theft' i assume you are not interested in any rational discussion whatsoever. as for me, i'm not interested in watching you writing 'thief' in a loop, in bold caps and with exclamation marks, as if you were having a mental breakdown. you have made your point. have a cookie. take care.

i have no need to define such a person because i see nothing special or particularly defining in that act, so please suit yourself. my point, however, is that equating this with 'theft' or 'piracy' can't possibly be attributed to lack of knowledge of the language, but very much with deliberate misrepresentation and intoxication. not saying you are the source, though, it's very widespread bullshit and my impression is that you just swallowed it without critical thinking. i hereby just invite you to deeper reflection. how would YOU call such a person?

words have meaning, meaning is important. you even spout that proudly on your own sig.

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

so since i'm not depriving anyone of anything, not even 'loss of rightful revenue" because there never was any to begin with, what i do can harldy be theft, no matter how much you want to put it in bold letters and ... well, twist the meaning of words to misrepresent it. catch the irony, troll.

and i dislike the bullshit in equating use of software without a license to piracy. so what? do you have something interesting to say about the topic or not?

i don't. but that's just because i don't give a crap about windows and its licenses. i have non-genuine w7 to run games, i would't personally use it for anything else, nor do i want it, so why should i pay any license? and no doubt i will have a non-genuine w-whatever as soon as games ask for it. that's a deal between game developers and microsoft, they should sort that out themselves or else let me choose. i don't think the game developer has any issue with my windows being non-genuine, so why should i? you calling me a pirate because of this only makes you look funny. you know, 'pirates', those guys used to barbecue your guts after pulling them out of you after raping you. you ip zealots really should get a grip already.

you need to save the new setting and reboot.

yet another victim of the cloud. tragic.

i do understand intellectual property rights, that's how i know intellectual property is fundamentally wrong.

you, however, seem to fail to understand how the media industry works.

Oh no !
Web browsers allow for remote code execution through Javascript ! (and Flash and Java applets, if you feel adventurous)
We're all doomed !