4/17/2015 7 Comments I'm not making money from it...!I started writing, or rather being brave enough to share my writing with other people, by dabbling in fan fiction. My chosen fandom was Fantasy Island, which was good for me, because the main characters had no real backstory, and there were two-three guests per week with original stories to tell. That meant very little canon to worry about and lots of creative freedom.
The standard disclaimer was about how Fantasy Island wasn't mine, no infringement intended, and lots of names about who owned it at the time (Sony, among others). Credit where due, and all that. Also the "written for love not money" because using other people's work for no profit is totes okay. In fan-fiction. Depending on the generous nature of the copyright holders. Who generally don't object. But they could if they wanted to. And some have! However. The idea that one can use someone else's work so long as you don't make money from it has spread to other areas, images in particular. I was rather distressed to discover this attitude on a writing site, where "please don't steal my stories!" is a common plea. Because some writers there seem terribly protective of their own work, while stealing others without a qualm. Images. They make book covers for their stories, which is fine, I do that, too. It's fun. It's a great form of procrastination and it helps you feel like a "real writer", I get that. But the idea that "most images are free to use so long as you don't make money from them" is very strong there. Sorry, kids, it doesn't work like that. Images aren't born out of thin air, they were created, just like your stories were created by you. The rights to use those images belong to the creator and it doesn't matter that it's "on the Internet" -- you're posting your story "on the Internet" does that mean I can change a few names and call it mine, so long as I don't make any money from it? No? Google actually has a usage search in the image search function, so you can search for images free to use for non-commercial purposes, either modified or without modification. Photographers and graphic artists get to decide that. Otherwise, it's just as much stealing as downloading movies and music. But it's a little hypocritical to cry "don't steal my ideas!" over your own work while posting it with a cover made of stolen images.
7 Comments
Patricia
4/17/2015 01:05:30 am
Well said.
Reply
Dick
4/17/2015 03:44:50 am
Agree.
Reply
davidd
4/17/2015 04:26:53 pm
My feeling, through experience, is that pretty much anything you post to the internet, if it's good enough, will be "borrowed without permission" at some point, sometimes for not-for-profit or free use, but as or more often by publications and web sites, often major magazines and newspapers as well as innumerable small-site bloggers, who are definitely "for profit" entities. For that reason, I license almost everything I post to Flickr or iPernity under Creative Commons - Attribution licensing. This allows anyone to use my images for any purpose, for-profit or non-profit, altered or original. I figure if they're gonna be used anyway, I'd like to get credit for some of it. In theory those who use the images are supposed to provide a credit. I doubt that always happens. It used to be that conscientious bloggers or web sites would notify photographers when their CC images were being used, but for me that hasn't happened in two or three years. I find out where my images are showing up through the stats page on Flickr.
Reply
Syd
4/22/2015 08:43:42 am
I've had an entire book stolen, but since I'm embarrassed I ever wrote it to begin with, I didn't want to step up and say, Hey, that's mine...
Reply
davidd
4/23/2015 07:32:22 pm
It would be amusing to publish that manuscript yourself -- under a pseudonym, if it's that embarrassing -- and see if the "thief" tries to blame you for plagiarism!
Reply
CSG
6/8/2015 10:15:31 pm
This is a very topical situation on the internet as well of recent. Some jackass has been stealing people's images off the internet and then printing them and selling them in galleries for absurd amounts of money. What gets me the most is I can't think of what is worse, the thief or the rich a-hole buying the works.
Reply
Syd
6/11/2015 04:22:35 am
That situation irks me, too -- my question is, although Richard Prince is selling the works for $90 thou,... has anyone actually bought one? I can't recall any of the stories mentioning if he's had any sales.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
November 2019
|