Gwenn Seemel shows her very interesting take on Copyrights in the Crafting and Art world with her video “Copyright is for scaredy Cats”.
Do we really need to get a lawyer to help us to copyright our images, patterns and ideas? Is a lawyer going to actually stop someone from being better than us? Gwenn touches on some real home truths about how copyright and the fear or copyright infringement is our own fear of someone being better than us.
Ask yourself when it comes to someone copying your work what are you afraid of? Is it that someone will come along and market or sell it better than you could? Make more money than you?
Have you had your work copied? What was your plan of attack? Did you confront them? Did you threaten to get a lawyer? How should we be handling copyright in todays “free share” world?
Share your thoughts below.
It is not that simple.
Without a copyright one has no legal basis for taking action. The outcome of taking legal action may not always be fruitful, but not copyrighting states that one doesn’t care if another person steals your work and sells it as their own.
It is called stealing, whether they sell more, do it better or anything else is not the point. They took something that you CREATED AND copied it. It is called having pride in what you do. It is not the sincerest form of flattery.
What is the big deal. The world is big enough for more than one person making the same thing. Don’t think so much of yourself that you think that no one had the same idea. Get over yourself.
Perhaps if you don’t want copied, do not put it out for others to see. Hide it under a bushel and keep it for yourself. Sharing is a greater virtue than being selfish. Blessimgs
Its not a question of “believing in copyright OR believing in yourself” Its a question of caring enough about your work that you value it enough to protect it.http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/ which is full of people ripping off artists. I’m all for people voicing their opinion, but when you say people copyright work due to fear, rather than integrity, it makes me mad. Copyright is stealing (as the above comment said), and while I hope it never happens to you, I would certainly be interested to hear your comments if one of your paintings ever ended up being mass produced on T-shirts or somesuch.
The problem would be for someone to make something like you do without the quality that you put in it. That can give your product a bad rep also. Someone from overseas can make things more cheaply and flood the market with your idea.
An artist, whose work has been copied and used on a an individual piece or worse, on a mass production scale (t-shirts, mugs, stationary, etc.) for financial gain, is not fearful or lacking integrity or inadequately promoting. That’s faulty logic. Stealing is stealing and it’s wrong. If someone took a possession, especially one you worked hard to create, without asking first, wouldn’t you be upset? If a company overseas starts making cheap knock-offs of your paintings and they flood the local discount big-box stores, would you say you are inadequately promoting your art? Would you still be able to sell your work? What would you do about it? Even if someone started cranking out copies of your work on Etsy for a lot cheaper, is it really no big deal because you obviously aren’t promoting your work? When this happens, & it does happen, does the artist deserve? This sounds like blame the victim. Where’s the integrity in that?