A Tough Question
I was listening to a knitting podcast the other day (what? Cast On rocks.) and one of the host’s big concerns is the freedom of artists. Not just being free in the sense of allowed to leave the house, but free to create whatever they want, to build on their predecessors, to continue or riff off of, or improve upon the work that has come before. That could mean anything from artists sitting in a museum and copying from the work of the masters, or a knitter finding a picture of a sweater in an old magazine and updating the look to design a new sweater for today to a musician making a rock band because they are so totally into the Rolling Stones or U2. Artistic freedom in this sense means the freedom to take inspiration from wherever it comes.
Of course, there is a flip side to this freedom: intellectual property is the easiest way to refer to it. Nobody is going to be able to realistically claim the Mona Lisa as their own original work, but what about the work of artists that aren’t protected by the vast shields of history and fame? What about your favorite webcomic? There are plenty of examples of webcomics having work taken from their website and represented as the work of someone else. I know that one of my friends had art taken from his online gallery and printed in Greece on stationary notebooks- when I heard about it, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and it wasn’t even MY work!
When I asked Mohammad ‘Hawk’ Haque about it, he was pretty clear on where he drew the line: sometimes it’s flattering when a fan is inspired by your work to create an homage to it-as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off that homage. “If the artist admits their piece was an idea from [an]other piece… admitting it I don’t have a problem. But it comes down to… are you talking about character design, exact same pose, exact same concept, etc, or someone else’s character in a different pose… which turns out to be a fanart… selling fanart… I don’t agree.”
Garth Graham agrees: “Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but sincere flattery gives credit where credit is do. Fan art is fantastic, it’s awesome, it makes us artist feel all warm and fuzzy. It’s a wonderful affirmation of “someone else likes our work.” And fan artists should be entitled to the credit of creating said works of fanart. … Artists put a lot of effort into creating characters and stories and franchises that people love and adore. And when you go take those characters who are not yours and make money off of them, you rob the artist your imitating of some of his work. We’re not even talking monetary kind of thing, but you’re leaching off of someone else’s effort. And that’s a terrible thing.”
Our very own resident graphic artist Jason points out, however, that he draws inspiration from everything that he sees, the work of other artists included. It can form a very important part of an artist’s development to imitate the work of others: “What’s fun is looking at other works and figuring out *how* they did it, and that can be inspiring — fills in the gaps to works you can’t quite execute.”
So. Where’s the line to be drawn? It’s hard to see what is legitimately an artistic inspiration and what is outright theft. Shouldn’t artists and writers be allowed to profit from their own work? Why should some stranger who finds a page on Deviant Art or a personal online gallery be allowed to print off a few posters and sets up shop selling ‘original prints’? What if they take that work and flip the colors around to negative? Would it be original art then? It’s a tough question, and as an artist and a friend to artists, even I don’t know what the answer is. All I know is that as long as there is art and creativity, there will be people who will try to profit off artistic work that isn’t theirs.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
You’ve hit on a serious problem with the net and protecting one’s creations. I’m not aware of anything that can be done to reduce the problem as most people that lift or “borrow” someone’s work really aren’t worth going after legally or in any other fashion.
Any ideas on how to reduce the problem?
March 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am
David: Control the *content*, not the accessibility. Post and provide works that won’t incur a huge loss to you or risk your most valuable creative visions. Throw chaff to deter enemy missiles.
March 4th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
What about non digital work? I didn’t mean to get us side tracked on stealing art off websites specifically…
March 5th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Neomera: Ye Olde (Gather All Materials, Seal In Envelope, Notarize The Contents, Never Open It) Poor-Man’s Copyright still holds water.
Thing is, the issue is complicated through each individual situation. Someone might copy your knit pattern, because it’s an homage to something they feel is pure genius (that’s great!) Or they might take it because they’re just using it for practice and the display isn’t “come look at MY pattern” but “come look at the pattern *I* copied (and give me some pointers!)”
There ARE horror stories and rumor mills devoted to plagarized materials (I remember one tying NBC’s Heroes to Top Cow Comic’s Rising Stars!) But I’m one to think that those dirty individuals who actually DO plagarize at profit, don’t see a huge return in the end (Calvin unrinating on a Ford logo in rural communities), die off within that five-year window of entrepreneurship (sp) (see the silkscreened button downs of Samurai Shodown characters at anime cons in 1999-2004) or usually get smoked out relatively quickly (some comic book artists get publically flogged for their panel flipping or photo references.)
Personally, I think the worry given to this sort of thing is worse than the actual crisis that MIGHT occur. It still pays to be observant, cover your back and understand the situation at hand.