Oh hi there

Using watermarked pictures without paying is actually illegal yet i am fully on board and welcome this behavior.

Digital goods are infinite and therefor should be free, physical resources to survive are expensive enough as they are.

The only reason i know this is spiffing brit had to buy the stockphoto picture he was using and gave them his own watermark to stay legal.

damn i just googled the legality and it seems you're right. i thought the watermarked versions would be fine to use since it's advertising the site... i guess i hope for "fair use"
- I would argue that adding your own edit to a stock image would be considered a "parody" of the original, therefore legal to use.
- Oof
Digital goods are infinite but the cost to produce them is real. If stock images were free there wouldn’t be very many of them.
- I do understand what you mean.
  I am not saying that the people who create digital goods don’t deserve a living. they do, all contribution to society is valid and every human deserves a humane life.
  I am just morally against economic commoditization of digital goods on the web using the same currency people use to buy food and healthcare. No amount of fortnite skins and adobe licenses can compare to the value of a single small piece of bread for a starving child.
  Stock pictures shouldn’t exist, when i was young uploading a picture online meant it was now free for the taking by anyone and there was absolutely no shortage of those. Now it seems whenever you search for something basic like “transparant vector image of a set of stars” all your top results are watermark and require some amount of money or data. These are the kind of images i can easily make in photoshop myself but i didn’t need to because thousands of others already did.
  The diverse, creative sites for humans and by humans which used to fill my “online sources” when making school reports have seized to exist and made way for “by t, for profit” models instead.

Hey that's me! Glad to inspire some. Now go and make better memes than me. Shouldn't be hard xD

Gotta break up the Comrade Dale posting so that it doesnt get stale, thanks for the inspiration!!

Wait, I thought it was one person? I don't want to gatekeep that there can only be one stock photo memer, I like the memes and would like to see it as a new trend. Just for my understanding, is it already a trend or is the trend starting with this post?

it was me. i am glad to have started something. what i did wasn't new so i'm not claiming I invented anything. i just made it visible here on lemmy. spread the news :)
- Too late, I've joined the Mighty Militia and am going to war against the blasphemous GrayOxen Army. Those heathens dare create false memes that bastardize the one true Mighty Memer.
I didn't know it was a thing. I simply needed a stock photo yesterday for something quick and easy.
- It might be another community. Maybe one of the 196 (as in that's their name but there are several on different instances)? But why not make it a thing here too?