First of all, this is not a thread whose primary topic is the LEGALITY of visual collage. Based on my reading on the topic, it is now illegal to reproduce just about everything.
What I AM interested in is getting Doper opinions is this: is there a point at which you can combine pre-existing images which are copyrighted, or can be assumed to be copyrighted, to create a new image that should be considered a work of art on its own, and not subject to the others’ copyright.
Let me five you a couples of frexes:
An artist finds pictures of a tyrannosaurus, several duck-billed dinosaurs, a lush tropical landscape and a naked woman crouching in fear. He combines them to create a fantasy image of a naked woman crouching in fear, hiding in the foliage while a nearby tyrannosaur stalks her … or is it the duckbills it’s interested in?
Now, the original images all had their own meanings – the landscape was just a landscape, the dinosaurs were drawn just to show what dinosaurs looked like, and the naked woman was softcore porn. But the resulting image has an entirely different narrative. If the artist has to contact each and every copyright holder and get their permission to use (a difficult task, esp. since a naked female image is involved) the new image would not exist.
I would argue that since the resulting vision is clearly differnet from any of the originals, it’s original work and should stand. But my reading of this board is that some would differ, and I’d like to hear their ethical and logical arguments as to why this shouldn’t be an independent, copyrightable piece of art.
I think there IS a point where it should be ok, but I don’t think it’s been reached in that case.
A reasonable test might be, as ‘fair use’ in law, to what extent it replaces the original. For instance, if it incorporates all of an original image, then the derivative work could make it impossible to sell the original - hardly fair. Say, fan fiction, would be a bit further along imho - stealing a character and background by no means makes a novel, however, it does reduce the potential for the original author to make derivative works. I’m trying to think of an example that everyone can agree should be fair use, but I’m not sure.
I don’t think the resulting images harms the originals.
The landscape fans would say, “Nice landscape, too bad you gunked it up with dinosaurs and naked women.”
The dinosaur fans would say, “That species of duckbill was not contemporaneous with that species of carnosaur – they were separated by at least 20 million years. And let us not even speak of the naked cavewoman, or the wristwatch she is wearing.”
The naked woman fans would be saying, “why’d you gunk up the babe with all the background stuff?”
No, the markets for the original works would still be there. I say the new art is new art, for a new market.
I’m not clear about what you have in mind here, Evil. In your example, an artist combines images from different sources into something that is supposed to be his/hers. If the person is an artist, wouldn’t he/she render the t-rex, the duckbills, the crouching nude and the landscape him/herself? The resulting image would be original, if derivitive.
If by picture you mean photograph from a published, copyrighted source, it sounds as if you’ve described a collage, which, as far as I know, is already considered “original”, being different in both appearance and intent from its separate elements.
I guess I’m basically agreeing with you. The work should stand on its own.
Your understanding of copyright law isn’t quite accurate. It is within fair use to copy a work for the following purposes:
• news reporting
• criticism
• scholarship / research
• parody
• teaching
• comment
Regarding your example, the rule of thumb is: Can an ordinary person, looking at the original work and the work copied from it recognize that it has been copied? So in your example, you are violating copyright law.
If you think that the original work is so insubstantial to your work, go ahead and create your own version of it: Draw your own tryrannosaurus, photograph your own landscape, find some platypusses and photograph them and take your own picture of a bucknaked lady. If you think it would take too much time, effort and money to do all of the above, then you are proving that those original works have some value.
You can’t expect to achieve personal gain from work performed by other people unless you cut them in on the action. Granted, you are doing your own part in your new composition, but you are not doing it all, therefore you can’t expect to take all the profit from such an image.
I should have been more clear. In my example, the artist scans in the elements and then Photoshops them as necessary to make them match in terms of lighting, pose, etc., which might require some redrawing, or even extensive redrawing. But the works are copied.
I may have been engaging in a bit of hyperbole in the OP when I said it was illegal to reproduce anything.
[qoute]Regarding your example, the rule of thumb is: Can an ordinary person, looking at the original work and the work copied from it recognize that it has been copied? So in your example, you are violating copyright law.
[/quote]
But what is or is not legal was ruled out in the OP. I am more interested in the ethics and logic of it.
This is more like it, but what claim do the people who created the artwork really have on the creator of the collage? It seems to me that if any of them had wanted to create an artwork featuring naked women, dinosaurs and lush tropical landscapes any of them could have done so and reaped whatever rewards there might be to be reaped by creating such art. But they didn’t. The vision was in the mind of the collagist, shouldn’t he or she reap the rewards?
They don’t have a claim on the entire collage, just a portion of it.
No one’s preventing you from combining all these separate elements into a single compositional masterpiece. Create all the elements yourself and join them together…you’re golden. But as soon as you start taking shortcuts by appropriating other people’s work for your own personal gain without getting their permission (and paying them for it if they require), you are acting unethically.
Consider another hypothetical: Someone uses your collage combined with an etching of a tree, and an oil painting of a giant lobster. He copyrights it and makes $12.54 billion in licensing it to major motion picture studios and media outlets. His “artwork” would be compositionally lacking if it weren’t for the component of yours that he “borrowed.” How do you feel about that? Listen to that voice… that’s your ethics speaking.
(1) If the dinosaur could have been drawn by anyone. He should be able to hire someone, or license a picture for a nominal fee. Think clip-art: if you want a pcture of a duck smashing a computer someone has to draw it, but little investment is made in the original image, so you can get hold of the picture freeish of copyright.
(2) If the dinosaur couldn’t be drawn by just anyone - then both the original artist and the collagier have contributed toward the finished product, and should share any rewards in a proportion they negotiate - or the work should not be produced if they can’t agree on something.
I see what you’re saying, but I think in this example too much of the original work shows through for it to be copyright free.
Imagine for instance, people flock to the painting saying “It’s amazing! It’s the best dinosaur I’ve ever seen! And the landscape and woman add just that something that make it special!” Obviously the original artist contributed a lot, though not everything.
I think Shade has touched upon an interesting point.
I’ve often said that if someone wants to swipe one of my many Half Dome photos and use in something else, as long as I can’t recognize it as my photo in the end, then they should copy away. There are a jillion Half Dome pictures out there, taken by tourists from the same viewpoints in Yosemite, taken during similar weather conditions, etc. Someone could have used their own photo taken during their last visit, or my photo, or a photo from the Yosemite site. If they alter the picture enough in the end so that none of us is certain where the photo originated, where is the harm?
However, if someone were to use one of my original unique drawings and it still was quite recognizable as my drawing, then that would be a different matter.
Perhaps. the problem with Fair Use, as opposed to Public Domain, is that generally one cannot say authoritatively that something is Fair Use without precedent to rely upon for their specific situation. You can only say that your defense is “Fair Use” and give reasons why under the Section you feel your defense is strong.
What Court decision are you relying on for that precedent? I’ve never heard of that “rule of thumb”.
No court decision, but the standards and practices set forth by the company I work for. Said company likely has more artists on the payroll than any other company on earth and has a team of lawyers to keep it from getting sued. All artists are required to attend a class specially prepared by the company to keep it’s artists acting ethically. The rule of thumb came from the materials disbursed from that session. Being an artist (and not a lawyer) I don’t have the references that connect my company’s practices to specific court rulings, but given the OP’s attitude on legality vs. ethics, I felt the rule of thumb I offered was more than satisfactory for (his/her) needs.
Before discussing wheter is ethical or not to profit from such a collage think for a moment why you had to use the images, for example, the dinosaur, the cases I can think of are:
A) You could make it by yourself, but as a shortcut you rather paste someone elses´s dinosaur to save time and work.
In that case you owe the original artist recognition and/or compensation for using his/her work, after all you are saving time and effort because the original artist had to do the work for you.
B) You actually can´t make it by your self, so you paste the critter on your collage.
Same as above, without the other artist´s dinosaur your collage wouldn´t be possible because you can´t do it by yourself.
C) You modify the image, this one splits in 1) Little retouch, like adding a tu-tu to the dino, but everyone would still recognize the original artwork , A and B would apply here too IMO. 2) Heavy retouching, like using only the dinosuar nails on your own artwork, or zooming in on the skin so that the irregular folds turn into a landscape, modifications that are not readily asociated to the original artwork; that I think, would be OK to use without worries. Of course there´s a lot of grey in between.
Now, in my opinion,
Matching lighting doesn´t cut it, changing poses neither, if you cut a limb, rotate it and paste it again you´re still using the same artwork in puzzle form. Now, for the redrawing, it depends on how much redrawing we are talking about, but I think Hey You! has already nailed that very well with his rule of thumb.
You forgot the big important one- the one that perhaps is the crux of this debate:
C. The dinosaur has some irreprasable cultural value
For example, the dinosaur was used in a George W Bush presidential campaign ad, and by setting it in the jungle you are making a comment on Bush’s expansionist ideas while the naked woman represents the lure of American Capitalism (or something). In this context, the dinosaur also seems to subtly imply the oil industry and the old wealth establishment. Nothing can replace the cultural weight that that dinosaur has. We’ve all seen it. We’ve all got some feelings about it. And it’s impossible to create a work that adresses the same issues without using the dinosaur.
For example, collage artists will often use advertisments from previous eras in their works. Now I could try to fake a “get your man to show he loves you by having him buy you a washing machine” ad from the fifties, but frankly I’m probably not going to be able to come up with something that rings the same bells in the audience, and the fact that it was a fake would be an unwanted distraction (and could, indeed, change the very meaning of my work).
The origional artist did not create the cultural value the dinosaur has- that is a result of how it has been used in the past and how it looks from the present cultural perspective. Instead, the dinosaur’s status as “cultural background noise” make it something that is useful to use in art when making statments about said culture. And that right there is the value of public domain and fair use- we need to be able to talk freely about the things in our culture using the same terms as this culture (dinosaur). To restrict this stifles both art and the culture as a whole.
Can you please define “irreprasable” for me? I don’t know that word.
Anyone’s lack of skill in recreating a style is NEVER justification for using someone else’s work without their consent. If you absolutely NEED to use someone else’s work in yours, you need to Get Their Permission. Let me ask you: if you use someone else’s work in your own for means of profit or promotion, how do you feel about informing the original artist after the fact? Or would you feel better if they never need know about it?
It’s use isn’t restricted from “culture.” Again: It is within fair use to copy a work for the following purposes:
• news reporting
• criticism
• scholarship / research
• parody
• teaching
• comment
OK, I’ve found a good example. I was attempting to animate a running ogre. I found an animated gif of a running woman. I traced over the woman, stick-figure-style, and used that skeleton to draw the ogre on. Could and should I be able to redistribute that work? I genuinely couldn’t have done it myself, yet I genuinely could have used any running animation.
I think this is the kind of example the OP was looking for.
(Fortunately, this didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, so I scrapped the whole thing, and will try another approach, so while I might technically have broken copyright, since no-one but me saw the result, and it’s now gone, I think that’s ok.)