[urbunner]

Hello folks
I was interested in some input on something that's been sticking in my craw for a while. I recently started at a school that has an associates degree in graphic design. The first class you take is intro to graphic design. The problem I have is the instructor. He pretty much openly promotes plagiarism, saying that all you have to do is change an image by 30%.He freely accepts slightly altered work ( example: A logo design for Bandai with a swipe of a Tetsuo Image From Akira). My qusetion, is this still plariarism and can the school be held accountable if students use these works for there portfolios?

[Ian Jones]

Your instructor sounds extremely unprofessional. Do not listen to him, and certainly don't participate in any form of plagiarism. Yes, the school could be held liable for some copyright infringements... its a very grey area though, so its hard to make any definitive statments.

[Drew]

[jfrancis]

With stories like Snow White, and Cinderella, companies like Disney owe their very existence to the public domain. Now they are the chief opponents of it. The loss of the public domain is a far, far greater threat to creativity than the specter of copyright infringement.

Check out some alternative approaches to copyright:

http://creativecommons.org/

[urbunner]

Yeah I think I might go to the lead administrator. The only thing i dont get is this guy has been an instructor for over 3 years and is held with pretty high esteem around the place so I find it hard to believe that I'm the first person to have issues with him. That's why I feel that mabey the rest of the faculty is just turning a blind eye to what he's doing.

[Ian Jones]

Go to your student union and talk to them, thats exactly what they are there for. Try to stay anonymous of course, hopefully they can take on board your concerns and get a little investigation rolling.

[urbunner]

The student union sounds like a good idea. ill try that see if it goes anywhere

[jfrancis]

See if you can get them to close the library, while you're at it. I hear they have one copy of copyrighted material and they let all kinds of people access it!

[bearsclover]

[jfrancis]

Yes, I understand that you don't want that. After all, your own turn at the big brass ring is right around the corner, if you just hang in there. At any rate, you're asking the wrong crowd. Of course they don't want it; they are the original creators. But copyright is not just for the benefit of the original creator, in fact it's largely for the benefit of EVERYONE BUT. It lays out the rights other creators have to copy the work. That's why it is called copyRIGHT. At least, that's why it was called that. It's been systematically destroyed.

"Intellectual Property Laws bad for business" (just yesterday on Slashdot) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/01/1137208&mode=thread According to this article, interest in alternative forms of copyright are climbing rapidly. I'm not wildly off-topic to think someone around here might be interested.

The 30% thing is a myth -- widespread, but false. So yeah, don't do it. On the other hand, are you familiar with the legal battles surrounding, for example, Alice Randall's book, The Wind Done Gone, a scathing and HIGHLY DERIVATIVE retelling of Gone With the Wind from a slaves POV?

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/randall_url/

I guess she shouldn't have done that, either, right?

[bearsclover]

[Drunken Monkey]

according to slashdot capitalism is bad for business!

[goldenavatar0]

[urbunner]

The instructor allows students to turn in projects that have taken images from magazines (and other sources) and redraw certain parts of the ad.
Basically taking an image out of it's original context and placing it in a new concept formed by the student. He has never openly said steal this image but has never questioned anyone on where they got there source material. This would be fine if youre using a photo for reference but not directly copying it. like i mentioned before he says all you have to do is change the original piece of work by 30% and it's alright.

[xheadinthecloudx]

[fae]

yeh, companies have to buy stock, do photo shoots, etc... the marketing company i work with will FPO (for position only) an image if it's not high res or unprofessional --- then they go and have a photoshoot done.

i dunno how well this applies, but in my CSIS class, we were discussing direct linking of other images to our own site --- my professor said they could easily sue someone for doing that and 'stealing' their pic --- however, he noted, since we were students we prolly wouldn't get sued etc.

i guess it all depends on how exactly he's presenting it... but 30% isn't much, and continuously using other images isn't gonna help anyone get better. i guess it depends on the project and the intent of it. maybe the focus isn't the whole process of making the ad, but figuring out how to convey the msg. i dunno =\
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[jfrancis]

If you guys are really so concerned about artists rights, you should work to do away with the concept of work-for-hire and REALLY protect the rights of the original creator. Corporations with work-for-hire arrangements who complain about piracy and cpoyright infringement are really just saying, "Hey! Screwing the artist is OUR job!"

[Drew]

[jfrancis]

The way the tv industry is set up, for example, or with actors in commercials, they track every appearance of that actor and pay them royalties long after the original job is done. Somehow they manage this complex bookkeeping perfectly well. And they don't say, "Hey, you did a day's work and were paid for a day's work." No. They continue to participate as as true owners of their creative work. Yet somehow these industries don't similarly recognize the artistry of the below-the-line members of the crews on whose work those productions also depend. Working artists in other mediums deserve no less. Bookkeeping nightmare? Obvious bull-.

Paying royalties to someone, or someone's estate every time a coca-cola logo flashes on screen might raise prices? That's funny, no one uses the counter argument to eliminate any existing royalties.

Eliminate work-for-hire. Keep ownership of creative work from being transferred away from the creator, and then you'll be protecting artists rights.

Where does it end? Will the plasterers on crews want the same rights? I dunno. Maybe. Would they have a point? I dunno. Maybe. But dark visions of "going too far" are no justification for leaving things where they are now.

[Drew]

Interesting thoughts. The reason actors are given money every time their work is shown is not because the studios respect them more. It's because actors belong to an actor's guild, and they refuse work that doesn't give them what they want. This works because so many people are in this thing that any company that plans on using actors more than a couple of times needs to work with guild members in order to consistantly produce high quality results. AFAIK artists like us have no such powerful organazation to work with.

I think you're aiming your arguement at companies, when in order to make a difference you need to be aiming it at other artists, to encourage them to do like the actors have. Of course, this can easily be compared to engineers who work for a company, invent things, and don't keep the patent. It could be argued, however, that the engineer gains access to information and equipment that he would not have if not for the company, so the company should retain the patent. Shoud the same be said for artists using render farms to produce their work? It's a confusing issue.

I do believe that it would be a bookkeeping nightmare, though. I suspect that acting clips are spread around a company for other projects much less than, say, a logo might be. Nike would have to keep track of pretty much every single thing they ever sold or showed on TV or in a movie. That sounds like a nightmare to me.

If that is done, the prices will certainly go up. Someone has to pay the artist, right? It's just a question of who pays. What the price arguement is really saying is that the company will lose money by paying the artist.

Will plasterers on crews want the same rights? Sure they will. But the only people who get these rights are people that have abillities that others can't do without. If you're really that concerned about retaining rights, which really means that you're concerned about making money, then I suggest you concentrate on making yourself as valuable as possible, and sticking to work where you can retain the rights on your work.

This forum needs a :beer: emoticon.

[bearsclover]

Work-for-hire is nasty and I was coached in art school to avoid it when possible. Of course, there will be times when it is difficult to avoid. But there are a lot of different kinds of art and artists that never have to deal with work-for-hire. Not that I'm saying that it doesn't matter, but I don't think its existence affects as many artists as, say, removing copyright would.

Also, work-for-hire is a contract that an artist doesn't have to enter into. It's their choice. An artist should be able to sell rights to their work if they choose. (Granted, I don't think that many would prefer to sell all rights, but if they want to and they don't feel harmed by it, then in their particular case, work-for-hire is Not A Bad Thing.)
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Madness takes its toll - please have exact change.

[goldenavatar0]

[Jin]

Visit this site:

Graphic Artists Guild

Also take a look at the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook for Pricing and Ethical Standards. It should be available in any good bookstore and probably online at Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble.

They do a lot to protect artists: Contract Monitor (review contracts), Group Health Insurance, Copyright Info, forums (not currently available while the site is being updated), and more.


Jinny Brown
Painter Classes at TutorAlley Forums
Tutorials and Painter Info at PixelAlley

[nixjim13]

I think what he's talking about is known in the fine arts world as 'Appropriation' - a world which seems to be somewhat removed from the 'commercial' world

We were told a very similar thing (I did a BA in fine arts so slightly different to design), but this was also based on the understanding that the context of the art was changed and that the use of the original piece of work added meaning to what essentially was conceptual art. (It was also expected that you indicated whose work the piece was based upon.) Under educational settings the rules of what is acceptable and what isn't is different. The minute you try and make money off it or promote it as being yours you will most likely be breaking the law.

I wouldn't advise having a portfolio with work that has copyright infringements in it. You want people to view you as a professional artist anyway.
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