The ambiguous "use" / GioCities
I keep seeing people make this error, especially in social media discourse. Somebody wants to “use” something. Except obviously, it’s not theirs, and so it’s absurd for them to make that demand, right?
I’m not trying to pick on this person at all: they’re not a twitter main character, they’re not expressing an unusual opinion here, they seem completely nice and cool. But I think this cartoon they drew does a good job of capturing this sort of argument-interaction, which I’ve seen a lot:
I’ve also seen the exact inverse of this: people getting upset at artists because once the work is “out there” anyone should be able to “use” it. (But I don’t have a cartoon of this.)
There is an extremely specific error being made in both cases here, and if you can learn to spot it, you can save yourself some grief. What misuse is being objected to? What are the rights to “certain things” being claimed?
