Places to download pretty pictures |and still avoid jail time

HABITUAL USERS OF the social media in Thailand have duly taken note of amendments to the Copyright Act that came into effect on Tuesday, threatening mean, careless and just plain dumb people with hefty fines and prison terms if they misuse other folks’ property. The word’s gone around on Facebook and the Line app that you’d better think twice before copying or reposting anything without explicit permission.
One of the big questions being asked, though, is whether the law applies to those cute or otherwise enchanting pictures with heart-warming messages on them that are constantly being shared around. These little feel-good forwards are popular among older netizens in particular, a way of encouraging each other to stay cheerful in the autumn of life. But almost none of the people who send them actually created these images, so are we about to see a lot of senior citizens hauled off to jail?
Well, your parents (and grandparents) can relax about it because now there’s a Facebook page called “Roop Nee Mae Tong Dee Jai Mak” (“Mums would be glad to have these photos”), set up specifically to provide a source of free-to-use photos. No copyright hassles there.
“This page was set up by young people to return happiness for our beloved senior people,” the proprietors say, coddling to the generals by paraphrasing the coup’s stated intention. “They are photos that we took and they can use them without worry. It helps them avoid downloading photos from Google, which might be subject to copyright protection.”
A couple thousand people have signed on for the free images, with the only “requirement” being that they retain the hashtag “Roop Nee Mae Tong Dee Jai Mak” when sharing the photos. So far there have been photo-greetings for each day of the week, like “Sawasdee Monday”, featuring lovely images of flowers and scenery.
Another Facebook page, “Page Nee Mee Wai Bang Pan” (“This page is for sharing”) has meanwhile accumulated more than 23,000 followers. There it’s more about information that’s useful in daily life. “Everything on this page can be shared,” it says. On Monday when the amended law took effect it also urged online copyright holders to specify which items are protected. “Actually, if you don’t want anyone to see or share it, you shouldn’t have posted it on the social media in the first place,” it remarks cheekily.
In related news (as they say in the biz), a Thai law expert was quoted this week as saying that sending things like flower photos to a friend via Line is anyway considered “private conversation” and thus within the law. That’s nice to know but, to be on the safe side, users of this kind of material should stick to “Page Nee Mee Wai Bang Pan”.
At any rate, the primary abusers of the Thai copyright law aren’t old-timers but people who knowingly steal the creations of others. The “Slowerlife” Facebook page recently took a satirical swing at them by posting a photo of one of Lad Phrao’s notorious traffic jams simply captioned “slow life”. Beneath the message was a dotted line, as if for cutting with scissors, and then the name of the source – as if it could be trimmed off to avoid giving anyone credit.
We’re not sure how many people would want to forward a photo of snarled traffic, but the clever picture went viral.