Ah...so 'twist' is right because he has 3000 comments, and Grayhaze is wrong because he's only a professional and has 50 comments.

There's total logic in a nutshell.

Perhaps Neowin is being a bit too insular...certainly some of its members are.

Twist, you are a prat...and you are wrong.
The image of the icon set is to look at, which, by necessity of the methodology used, must be cached onto your harddrive.
THAT is its intended use, and therefore is the limit of its legal copyright use.
Removing it from your temp file/cache and modifying it as a stand-alone icon is beyond that limit and therefore abuse of copyright.
However...
No MATERIAL harm is done by doing this, so it would be highly unlikely to be pursued.
Were you to pass that 'icon' to a third person, THEN you would be in trouble.
In fact, the example image displayed in the thread IS a copyright issue 'just maybe' protected by 'fair use', as it is for 'educational example'.

Bugs me when pseudo experts spout crap.
Leave it to the real ones...

It's the age old issue:

Time vs. Money.

Some guy is going to spend literally dozens of hours to rip the icons for personal use rather than pay $10 for them.

Let's say you make $30,000 per year. That's $15 per hour.

That's why these discussions end up as adults vs. teens. Most adults have jobs. And when you're working 40 hours per week, time becomes a real premium. A teenager has time to burn often times (not always but often).

If something is <$20 then it's an impulse buy for me. Sure, I might be able to spend time on the net trying to find a crack and then downloading it and messing around trying to get it to work but if I can pay $10 or $20 for something and bam, be done with it, then it's a no brainer which way makes more sense.

A 16 year old without a job can't imagine buying icons because either $10 seems like a lot of money to them or they don't see spending a couple hours trying to cobble together something half as good as a bad use of time.

jafo: i don't see how Twist's solution is any different than cutting up a wallpaper into a Litestep theme for personal use. I'm not gonna argue with ya, to each his own, but the sin in question doesn't seem to be worth the attention, since we *all* do stuff like that.

In the same regard, moderate cost of Windows XP is hardly equivalent to the numerous hours it takes to construct skins that make Win98 look like it, nor is it any more legal than what Twist is doing. The same could be said for Beos, OSX, or any sliced up screenshot.

Jafo,I was about to ask you how you can be so against twist in this instance, yet take the "grey area" stance on OS porting, but Auggie beat me to it.

I see from your reply, you're just showing off.

Exactly, Randy....

Twist 'claimed' he was right when he wasn't, Grayhaze claimed he [twist] was wrong which was right, and I claimed twist was a prat [which he is] and Grayhaze was right [which he is], and not a prat [which he isn't], and Evil Jafo was consistent [which he is] and also not me [which he is - not, that is].

So, all's well...

Jafo: never let it be said I stood between a man and a good, needless flaming. I understand completely.

paxx: hmmm... you cook, too. I'll have to be less pissy to you in the future...

I wouldn't take much notice of many of the posters on NeoWin these days (Look at p5 of that thread, it's not really possible to understand what their saying anyway). As for the site itself I think they've lost a lot of their (IT)professional browsers due to not being able to keep their site running over the last few monthes.

And you know your history too, bakerstreet. I guess I'll have to be less pissy to you in the future as well.

this guy ('twist') don't have time to do their icons copy. He spend her time posting messages at forums.
If it really make their copys, he is right, if he don't distribute the icons.
If do you like a song (for example a Sheryl Crow song ), and you are a good music player, and you have a guitar... you can play any times you wish the Sheryl Crow song. Rou can save your results, if you wish, but not distribute the song you saved.
Anyway, it's a stupidity to spend time making a exact copy.

This boy is only speaking for making a 'flame': he never can make a copy of all Orion skin suite (only paying), and i repeat 'he don't have time to make copies of graphics, because he spends her time flamming the forums'.