Stealing (and showing, but not selling) stolen work.

September 4, 2009 9:11 PM

I have an internet etiquette question. If I reproduce someone else's drawing/vector/artists interpretation of a copyrighted image and then post my rendition to flikr or whatever, should I get permission from the original interpreter?

I'm sorry. I have no idea how to frame this question so it makes sense.

This was my last question. Via Google's image search, I found this drawing of Mr. Stay Puft. I printed the image, traced it to fabric and embroidered it. My embroidery is not as detailed as the drawing, but the general outlines were copied from the drawing.

I'm guessing that most artists who do their own interpretations don't get permission from the company that created the characters. I also know that two wrongs don't make a right. I do not plan on selling my finished project or profit from it in any way. If I post pictures it will probably just be to flikr, and maybe facebook.

Should I try to contact each artist whose work I use for permission to post pictures of my finished work to the internet? Should I make the futile attempt to contact the copyright-owning company? If I should, what if I can't find the artist or get no response? Should I blur out those images?

posted by dogmom to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I'd think it was cool if as part of the post you mentioned that it is inspired/based on a drawing by...

Copyright doesn't really come into play here, but it's always cool to give credit if it's due.
posted by teishu at 9:30 PM on September 4

It's honestly very fair and not at all weasely to ask whether any of it is really infringement, even if you sold it. Mattel has a $1.8 million hole in its bank account as a result of having too much faith in its claim on the image of Barbie. It's clear you're not really stepping on anyone's rights or markets so acknowledge the secondary source (always decent to spread that link-love around) and stop worry about it.
posted by nanojath at 10:46 PM on September 4

(And please post a Project when the images are up!)
posted by nanojath at 10:47 PM on September 4

I think the earlier posters are wrong, although I Am Not A Lawyer.

Pictures, photographs, statues, books, poems and so forth are all classed as "works". Every "work" is copyright by the artist/writer/composer or the person who hired him or her to create that "work". When you base your "work" on someone else's you create a "derivative work". You may or may not have breached that artist's copyright, but you do own the copyright to the "work" you have created.

In your case I very much suspect that you will breach the creator's copyright by copying the image. The artist may not bother suing you but s/he could probably get the image removed from flickr and facebook while you fight it out.

Nanojath's reference to Mattel's case was about trademark infringement, not about breach of copyright. One of the quirks of intellectual property law is that mass-produced physical items (like dolls) are protected by patents, design registrations and trademarks, but not copyright. You might conceivably be breaching the trademark of whoever owns Stay Puft, but this is unlikely outside a commercial setting.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:43 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

I've done this before, with a picture from flickr that I used to make tshirts for a specific event. After asking my other artist friends for advice, I contacted the photographer and asked for permission to use the image. I did not sell any of the shirts, just made them for our use. He was a professional photographer and was very nice about the whole thing. I had the shirts printed, took tons of pictures of the event, and sent them to him for his website. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

I printed the shirts through zazzle, where you can also sell your creations. If I had decided to sell them, I would have probably just sent him a portion of the profits.
posted by raisingsand at 6:05 AM on September 5

Dogmom, you have created a derivative work without permission, of a sort that is not covered by (U.S.) fair use or alternate formats or other exemptions. It seems clear to me you have committed copyright infringement. But so do a lot of people, and not everyone particularly cares.

A crucial factor in the original artist’s response will, I predict, be the fact that you have changed the medium of expression. A sketch and a piece of embroidery are two different species. They aren’t remotely interchangeable the way a photograph (of, say, Barack Obama) and an illustration (of, say, Barack Obama rendered in primary colours captioned with the word HOPE) might be. Nor is this case akin to writing a movie or a book based on viewing the original sketch.

Hence even though you may be committing copyright infringement, an additional reason why the original artist may not care is because the media of expression are so different as to be irrelevant to each other. Your embroidery carries out no insult to that sketch.
posted by joeclark at 9:50 AM on September 5

What I'm going to do is contact the artists whose work I copy for permission, but probably not the major corporations whose work I'm also copying. I've already e-mailed the guy who drew the Stay Puft, but I have no idea who owns MTV and how to contact the person who will give me permission to use their logo in an embroidery project. Yes, that's the lazy and irresponsible way, but I can also envision being done with this thing and having it hang on my wall for a year before anyone at Major-Multinational-Company gets back to me (if they do at all).
posted by dogmom at 11:07 AM on September 5

Standard Operating Proceedure at Major Multinational Companies these days is to err on the side of saying "no". It's safer for them that way, and even if you ask regarding a matter sufficiently removed that you don't need to ask about because they have no legal right to stop you, well, you didn't ask them if you had the legal right, and you didn't ask them for legal advice, you asked for their permission, and they will likely tell you that you do not have their permission.

(My work is sometimes credited for getting that ball rolling. Many years ago, I asked a big movie studio if it was ok to do some amateur fan work, I got a provisional OK, and unfortunately it bit them in the ass. Their policy changed to the safer blanket "no", and others major companies followed suit)

But, yeah - it sounds like you're doing it right; pay mind to what the law expects of you, and don't bring any parties into it unless either the law suggests you need to, or the situation is such that being polite is more important than completing the project.

If the embroidery is a one-off artefact by you for your own use, then typically no-one cares, unless they're very amateur and/or naive. If your work has not been exposed to the marketplace, and has not enabled people to bypass the marketplace, then it's difficult to show damages, which takes a lot of wind out of a claim that copyright infringement took place, even when infringement clearly did take place.
posted by -harlequin- at 12:29 PM on September 5

You might want to check this out. Someone supposedly copied photos from doll owners (as well as other artists), without permission, then got famous.
posted by cass at 1:03 PM on September 8