Copyrights. Oh crap. I hate this subject. I (that I am aware of) have not been formally infringed upon. So I have no experience or emotions regarding infringees. Therefore the below comments are meant to be jovial commentary. I read ahead in the Tao and found out that communication should not be contradictory. I tried my best.
I posed this question about claiming identity awhile back on Pikaland and Typepad user kt140 (perfectly adding to the topic of mysteriousness and identity) put it this way:
I think of it as blueberry muffins. There are so many people out there making blueberry muffins, do we get upset about this? No, most of us do not. But for some reason we do when it comes to art, we can be so possessive and scared that people are going to steal our ideas (as if they are only ours and no one before us ever had them). Which brings me back to the blueberry muffin, you do end up tasting one that ends up being your favorite. They are each made slightly different because of the person that makes them, that is the secret ingredient! Lastly, in case I have offended anyone with the muffin equals art idea, there is an art to cooking just like there is an art to how you see your art and it’s relationship to life.
There's been a lot of style stealing happening lately online. My Twitter feed has been crazy. People are getting frightened. Some are even too scared to share art online or worse, typing their name over their artwork making sure credit is claimed in fonts like Comic Sans, Papyrus, and Tahoma. Mass hysteria is ensuing. Every hour a post of the copied image in question is juxtaposed next to the original piece and is Twittered. "Am I crazy? Really? Am I nuts? Look at it! They copied me." People are obsessing.
I think I'm sick of it*. I haven't read far ahead enough to have gotten to the part of the Tao where compassion and empathy are discussed.
Listen, copying and stealing is awful. I do not condone it, but we all appropriate in some fashion. The irony here is the above image was "inspired" (the politically correct term artists use for the word stealing) by pattern designs I saw in a notebook I bought from Barnes & Noble 4 years ago. My apologies to the artist who at some point in her life remembered a scene of flowers and put them in a drawing. Should I worry that those flowers will sue me for defamation of character? Better question: were those flowers even the original source of inspiration for the anonymous artist I appropriated from, or perhaps was she inspired by another artist's flower patterns?
My father is a lawyer.
I'm not sure what I feel for those blatantly obvious barren robbers of art**. Those whose case is more subtle in appearances, the weird thing is, I do have compassion for. They are so sadly creatively lost, lacking self confidence in their abilities and potential for growth that they think they need to resort to copying.
The good thing is the artist can catch a copy cat quick and can call said infringer out, publicly. God Bless the Internet, the same forum that created this mess. I finally understand Yin and Yang! I've seen these copy cats ba-raided on their blogs and sites with hateful comments. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they have been ganged up on. Thanks to hourly Twittering, a following can be built up very fast, a movement of hatred is created and is thrust upon the copy cat. Keyboards as pitchforks.
I understand the argument: punishment. Don't do the crime if you don't want to pay the fine. I trademark the previous statement, unless it's already been. Is it too much to consider that the person who copied was already creatively suffering and by satisfying your own artistic ego you must bruise an already broken one?
At the same time, for the artist who is copied I can't imagine what that feels like, especially after all that hard work.
Art is made and no one owns it, and if your style is stolen, find out what piece made the culprit copy and give it to them. I can only hope that one day I give away a lot of freakin' art.
*This crazy rant argument is based on copyright cases where the details of infringement are subtle. Usually the images are very commercialized in style.
**I stole part of that phrase from the Tao, from when I read ahead.
