Thinking of copying, defacing or photographing someone else’s work? ... and passing it off as your ‘art’ ? Read these and think about your idea. Your might need some good lawyers – or a lot of money to get yourself out of gaol/jail.
Author’s and moral rights on the digital field
This is not aimed at scaring anyone, only to inform and educate. Plagiarism might be flattery, but making money out of someone’s work is immoral.
IMPORTANT NOTE
This is not advice, nor an instruction or demand. I merely provide the information so that everyone can determine if they are making the correct choice.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL (Added 01.Jan.2008)
Copyright.org.au, an Australian website, now have an extensive library of important information for visual artists, photographers, craft workers, graphic designers, fashion designers, illustrators, architects, galleries, museums.
All Australian artists should read through this site before considering defacing the artwork of album-covers, any photograph they find on the net, any of the great painters or any other art-form. You might find yourself infringing upon either an Australian or International law.
Here are a few pages within this site:
> Contracts: assigning & licensing rights
> Copyright collecting societies
> Copyright in Australia: information sources
> Copyright protection in other countries
> Fees & royalties for use of copyright material
Other links of similar information:
World Intellectual Property Organization
WIPO treaties
World Trade Organization
US Copyright Office
UK Patent Office
Copyright Licensing Agency
Laws Against Defacing Art
Plagiarism might be flattery, but making money out of someone’s work is immoral.
Elaine van Dyk, about 1 year ago
A must read I think, not that I use other people’s work, but simply for knowing. Thanks stephentrepreneur.
Paul Fleming, about 1 year ago
quite informative reading there. Do you have links to the Australian laws/angle on the above areas though? I noticed these are predomintly from overseas…
kseriphyn
,
about 1 year ago
I assume stock images are a different scenario? Especially, when you receive consent from the image owner prior to a design?
Stephen Mitchell, about 1 year ago
@Whirlgig – I aim to please. (scuse the photographic pun!)
@CuriousNature – I will be doing more research (as time permits) into Australian laws on this important issue. I would hope that anyone that engages in copying the work of artists would spend their own time to ensure they are not contravening any laws.
@kseriphyn. I don’t know. That’s why I give the internet links.
Scott Robinson, about 1 year ago
It`s an interesting topic, especially for here..
I myself have pulled an image off redbubble due to the fact it used a known charector/design, but i see a lot of them here that haven`t been removed, I`m not sure how mine differed.
Stock imagery is another thing, my understanding is that they are fine to use, but not in a re-sellable form without expressed consent , but that may be wrong, there is a lot of misinformation around regarding this..
The worst being the “10% rule”, which is something along the lines of “if I change it 10%, then i`m free to use it,” which is totally baseless.
The next being scans from magazines, they`re not free for you to use either, Its not your imagery, it`s not yours to use to create imagery from it…
Feel free to correct me if I`m wrong here…I`m all about learning.
Graeme Hindmarsh, about 1 year ago
As someone who uses a lot of stock photography in their works, I’m acutely aware of the issues surrounding copyright, plagiarism and intellectual property.
I’ve found that the easiest and safest way out of this mine field is to simply buy the appropriate licence in the first place. Most Stock Photography sources offer numerous licences to cater for all needs (web usage, advertising, print usage etc etc.) which are all explained in plain English. It should be noted that these licences do differ from supplier to supplier.
For example, in my work The Assumption II, it cost me around $400 to secure the rights to use all the different images. (and nobody has even bothered to leave a comment on it yet :-( hint, hint) The licences I’ve purchased allow me to print up to 10,000 copies, to sell the work, to paint the work and to make derivative works from it. But licences for some of the images used allow me to print and sell up to 100,000 copies (I should be so lucky!) so it does vary.
I’m a firm believer in rewarding those who produce the content in the first place. And, if you play by the rules, you have no need to worry about the possibility of copyright infringement and costly litigation.
What does worry me are sites like DeviantArt whose members offer “Stock” content but offer no legal licences. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that sooner or later some people are going to get very burnt.
HouseDad, 6 months ago
Unfortunately, I suffer the same problem with my music… especially from China and Europe. Pirated copies still keep turning up but I have no funds to fight, which probably sums up most artists plight.
On a lighter not… love your images however.
Stephen Mitchell, 6 months ago
Scott, Graeme, sorry not responding to your comments earlier. As you are no doubt aware, sometimes a comment has no answer nor suitable response. All I can say is, your contribution has been ad continues to be good reading and worth contemplating.
Hello John ... just, thanks for the ‘lighter note’. This subject has been done to death and we should just be thankful our work sells on Redbubble. It certainly makes up for any possibility of internet-theft.