Too Much Great Art Is Treated Like A Dirty Picture Used To Be
Sorry, no “dirty” pictures here, just a rant from a girl that’s tired of all this intellectual property crap. Scroll down on the homepage if that’s what you want, and I’ll take my rant into the back room so it doesn’t clutter up Bacchus’s more delightful content.
I just found the website of an artist that I knew of from a great political painting. He’s done alot of equally great paintings that have sexual themes, and I wanted to share one here. But then I read the fine print, which sez: “All images contained herein are the property of (idiot artist du jour). Any further reproduction or redistribution of the contents of this site is a violation of Copyright Law and will result in severe civil and criminal penalties, unless prior authorization has been obtained in writing from (idiot artist du jour).”
It used to be that I would ignore stuff like that, especially if I really liked the work, because I figured any artist would like getting more attention. Seeing people getting sued for ignoring the fine print has me more cautious…….but what changed my mind is the controlling attitude these artists have. You can’t control pixels once they’re published, and only stupid people or corporate clowns try to anymore. They become their worst enemies by trying to control exposure. That limits it too, because they can’t know or predict every area where their work might be enjoyed. And once you’re known as a controlling type, you aren’t easily forgiven……just ask Metallica about that. The artist at the site I just visited sells his paintings…….too bad he won’t get any attention from here, I bet some ErosBlog readers would be interested in them.
Now when I find something really cool, before I look around the site alot I check for a sharing policy. If I find something like the one I copied above, I’m outta there, no exploring, no bookmark, and no word from me anywhere, to anyone. I’ve decided if they want to treat their treasures like some dirty secret, I’ll go along with that because it helps them die faster. I’d much rather help artists who understand the shifts in information tech and making money in new ways from their work.
It’s really sad to think of the neat art out there that will not get any recognition because it’s treated worse than “dirty pictures” used to be, though.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=2295
Amen, Aphrodite!
I used to own a gallery of fine art, representing dozens of top quality local and regional artists. Then I started writing an arts column for a daily paper. And constantly I ran into this problem, trying to explain to artists that it was in their interest to promote their work intelligently on the web, and running into a brick wall.
That was in 1996. Since then (my column ended in 2006), most artists with a clue figured out I was right, you were right, and that they were fools for trying to be controlling idiots. Anyone who still thinks that this is a good idea is beyond salvation – no reason to give them any help or promotion whatsoever.
Jim D.
I fully endorse this sentiment. ;-)
Thank you. I fully endorse the sentiment as well.
I think it also should apply to the “right click image copyright” thing as well.
I wholeheartedly agree.
I gather this applies more to cyber art and blog linkages than what my core concerns are, but here goes anyways…
I’m plus 50 and have gone back to school to learn to create my images digitally. I love it, great new latitudes and possibilities. I can scan my drawings and make high quality prints that I sell inexpensively. At a show last year I noticed that a guy was taking photos of my work at close range with a digital camera. The artist at the booth next to mine informed me that the photographer was probably doing that so he could make his own prints of my work at home. Even my ten dollar prints are made on high quality paper with archival inks that won’t fade in a few months. If people are seeing versions of my work printed on typing paper they assume ‘my’ work is cheap and disposable (well, maybe it is but for different reasons). For the average person this kind of concern is a tempest in a teapot. The computer generation is rapidly negating the very idea of ‘original’. The internet is wonderful but it helps to foster a notion that intellectual property rights are old fashioned and out dated. Why pay for novels if they can be scanned and accessed for free? Why shouldn’t everyone have free access to Moby Dick, the latest Steven King novel or cheap copies of paintings by Jaguar or Mark Rothko?
I’ve been thrilled every time a newspaper would print an image from a show or event I was involved in. I know most people take the cards and flyers to get free cheap copies of my work, but at that level it’s acceptable. The net is so large that it’s not a matter of a few hundred people getting my work and coming to see and maybe buy something of mine in the future but of millions. After a few removes it is easy for attributions to be lost and a viewer to have no idea that I created a particular image. I’m small potatoes but I recently saw a web site where someone was selling a painting he claimed to create that was clearly from an original by the artist Olivia that he had altered in an amateurish way. R. Crumb lost a case against a guy who made posters from his “Keep on Truckin’â€? cartoon because the original had no copyright notice on it. I agree that the Grateful Dead were miles smarter than Metallica and I’d rather follow their model but it’s a scary new world out there for creatives.
And I’m not immune. I’ve lifted ideas and recognizable images from the work of dead artists. I think its fair use but I’m not always sure if some museum still claims copy write over the ‘Mona Lisa’ or whatever. I’ve heard it said that good artists borrow but great artists steal. Perhaps I too should stop being good.
Jaguar
I’m going to have to side with Aphrodite here. There are very few things that are as frustrating as finding something interesting that you want to share with the world via your blog, and help promote an artist at the same time, only to be hamstrung by the worry that an artist will ‘disapprove’ of you showing off their goods.
I see the argument that many creative people have put out there. There are those who attribute properly and then there are those that look to abuse the goodwill of the artists and the communities, just as Jaguar above mentioned.
However, I have to say that you take the good with the bad. Yes, the internet opens you up to people using your images in ways that you wished they wouldn’t, but at the same time, it opened you up to a massive potential base of people that will love your work. And those people that love your work will promote and pay. And they will also quite often call out the illegitimate use of your images for you.
So your choices really are either share it with the world, take the good with the bad and enjoy all of your new-found exposure. Or horde it to yourself, don’t let anyone enjoy it and then languish in obscurity because you were afraid a few bad apples might do something with your images that you don’t like. If you try to eliminate all of the negative uses of your images, you will just eliminate the positive ones as well.
Too right Aphrodite. This makes me think about what baen (publishing company) does. They have a free library online for some of their books (scifi) http://www.baen...rary/ It’s not everything but there’s a reasonable selection. There’s a great article by the author Eric Flint on why they do it–wider exposure. I will say having read books on there led me to buy more books by the author–including some on the site. There’s a certain joy in possessing art–be it literary or paintings or photography. I don’t buy a lot of paintings but I do buy prints in the form of cards or postcards. & I would avoid any artist who acts like Gollum from LOTR.
I’ve noticed that Bondage Blog has started doing right click popups lately which is frustrating for a porn collector such as myself. They’re at least giving a nod to the blogger community by making the popup include code to link to the image. Still frustrating.
K.
I find that annoying as well. Is BB the actual owner/creator of those images? If they just grabbed them from a website or Usenet, why should they care that I keep a copy? Makes me want to stay away from BB. If I go directly to Kaya’s site, she doesn’t mind.
Jaguar: wanting to be able to repost your work for online display and discussion is very different to reselling it for profit. I don’t think anyone here is arguing that that’s ethical.
Hey everybody, I agree with this about not wanting to link to people who obviously don’t want their work widely seen.
I’d like to take a moment to defend the right-click on Bondage Blog, though, since it emphatically has nothing in common with those horrid shrill “Don’t you dare copy this!” javascripts you see on the blogs of clueless people, except that it uses javascript.
First of all, the url of Bondage Blog images is right there in the code the popup offers you. Type or copy that url into your browser’s address bar, and you get the image on its own page for you to save to your heart’s content. Bondage Blog does not use any sort of anti-hotlink protection.
Obviously, that does add a few keystroke’s worth of inconvenience to folks who want to save the image, and for that, I apologize. But I am aiming to make it easier for the folks who want to hotlink the images on their own sites and forums, but who do not know how to craft the html that would let them do so in a socially acceptable way (i.e., with link credit, rather than just ganking my bandwidth). There are a LOT of these folks out there; this is the myspace generation.
At the end of the day, I gotta do something to justify my bandwidth bill. I hate anti-hotlink protection with a passion — I love this bondage stuff and I want people to be able to share it easily — so I had to try and do something. It’s an experiment, we’ll see how it goes.
Thanks for listening!
Rope Guy from Bondage Blog.
I can sort of sympathise, when you think, after spending days, weeks or even years of your life creating something, its difficult to relinquish control of something so personal to you and not know what people are going to do with it, where its going to be reproduced and whether you are going to be comfortable with the implications (social, political, whatever) that arise from that. A lot of artists are terrified their art will be misconstrued, taken out of centext. This is unfortunate, as the great thing about art is that people can see things in it, read messages into it, that you never intended to put there, and it can change your own views or perspectives on things, but it can also be pretty scary, and maybe sometimes people who aren’t artists don’t realise that. I mean, what if your work was reproduced in a blog or article who’s politics you strongly disagree with, and your images came to be associated with that sort of thing, it’d piss you off right? There IS such a thing as bad publicity. Not saying it’s a great idea just to forbid anyone from linking ever, but you can kind of see why some people might feel that way. Us artistes are notoriously difficult people, afterall…
Usually i just comfort myself with the thought that the jpgs online will never look as good as my original paintings do in reality.
This is exactly (well, one of many reasons) why I release all my work under a Creative Commons license. I want people to be comfortable distributing my work, and doing stuff with it. The idea of CC is very flexible, and there are a variety of pre-established licenses to choose from, depending on the piece, I choose different licenses, but I would never want somebody to feel like they couldn’t use a piece of my work on their blog… That’s just the height of selfishness in art, imo, and I also don’t really think it works out too well as a content creator… Just as you said, Aphrodite (in saying that readers here would likely be interested in buying prints), any channel that gets your work seen, and gets your name out there is a Good Thing. And, even if this weren’t true, I’d personally still rather have my work out there and people appreciating it, even if it meant I’d somehow be “losing” (rather, not gaining) money from it. I think people need to realize that people who are interested in artwork are willing to pay for it, to support an artist, even if it is available free (In Rainbows, anyone?).
Jaguar: The guy taking close up shots of your work may not intend to ever print it. Maybe all he wanted was something to use as wallpaper on his computer or something similarly digital.
I visited an art gallery a few months ago, and there was only one section of the gallery that photos were allowed, and it was the oil paintings from the 1800’s. The modern work was restricted. I took pictures of the galleries, and some of the work, more as an aide to my own memory. I don’t have any plans to print these snapshots. But the pictures that were restricted from public photos, I neither remember, nor want to remember.
I don’t know if your customers can get your work in pure digital form. In many ways, this is even more scary for an artist. There is something comforting about selling a printed work, which is hard to copy, for some kind of profit. But from the customer’s point of view, this may not be very useful, nor their preferred medium.
Nobody is going to pay in the dollars range (even $1) for a wallpaper image for their computer, unless it is given more like a donation, to help the artist. Framing your need in a non-threatening way might help. “Please help support the artist” nudges digital consumers toward the real world faster than “Pay up or I’ll sue you.”
I do understand what Jaguar is also saying. I would watermark my items, but still provide linkability to the image, if I was concerned about someone “stealing” my intellectual property.
two points:
1. Why not just link to the image? Same access, and the original artist is guaranteed attribution. I imagine that’s what he’s thinking folks ought to do.
2. Why doesn’t the original artist post a lower resolution version of his image on his website and then just say “to hell with it, if they want the real thing they’ll _have_ to pay me!
Jumpdrive, your #1 is unsatisfactory for everybody.
It’s unsatisfactory for the artist, because people don’t follow links, especially blind links. I can’t tell you how often I say something and link to the explanation / expansion / background, only to have many commenters ask perfectly basic questions that make it clear they didn’t follow the link.
It’s unsatisfactory for the reader, because a blind link (no matter what text accompanies it) doesn’t satisfy the visual interest or provide the most basic information necessary about whether to follow the link. When talking about the visual arts, only a sample (low res, sure, thumbnailed, sure, credited, sure, but it’s still got to be a visual sample) provides the reader with the info he/she needs.
And finally, it’s unsatisfactory for the blogger, because text is grey and most people want to see images when they are discussing image-rich topics. Blogging about an artist without including a sample of the work is like writing food reviews without any adjectives. You can do it, sure, but it’s stupid and pointless and a waste of everybody’s time.