CK showed up in my Facebook feed.

[synkr0nized]

I guess this must be going around parts of the Internet? I don't suspect the person who posted it had ever even heard of our community or was the type to be following Tumblr artists.

While this is just another case of ignoring proper accreditation over the Internet, it also invites discussion on whether fanart, something made based on the IP of another person/party, has a leg to stand on for invoking copyright claims**. It's been a while since I last read up on copyright cases and researched Interent+copyright law, but as far as I am aware several things still hold true: the creator of content has the copyright at the time of creation, and posting it online is a form of publishing; publishing and making a work available on the Internet is not the same as providing others freedom to use it / licensing a work for free use (unless of course you're using something like GPL); when making money is involved then work that is not yours used in helping to generate that money (e.g. attract people to a Kickstarter page/campaign and contribute funds) needs to be licensed, or at least used with permission.

Anita or her representative should have used only in-game or official game images for the characters on that banner, anyway, and not artwork from anyone on the Internet (the official art would probably have served the argument even better as well, considering that character). Even then, there's no nod to the game or publishing companies for the characters represented in that banner/logo, so I suppose they'd be free to stir up a fuss too if they cared.

**Edit: to be more clear about this point -- CK's letter notes that her art is how she makes her living, and then goes on to emphasize the improper use of her image in a project that generated money for someone else without her permission or a license. But the character design is originally Don Bluth's, and to claim to be making money off of something he was paid to design and create is problematic. Often, fanart is given a "pass" due to derivative works often having little to no effect on the original copyright holder's ability to make use of their own work, or because the derivative work isn't meant to be used for economic gains or is used for educational purposes. So, for example, all of the free art folks make for Blizzard games or DotA 2 and whatnot, game-based community sites using official artwork, etc. are usually fine. It's because CK brings in her financial reliance on fanart that it's an issue, not that it is fanart alone.


Edit2: The other issue is that Anita is basically just using all kinds of things without anyone's permission. Originally the media and promotional images from games, but also fanart, Let's Play and other videos posted on Youtube, etc.

[Agent]

who cares

[synkr0nized]

probably no-one

I like talking about copyright as it relates to the Internet, and I thought this might be interesting to someone other than me among the few of you still posting here. No worries if not!

[Agent]

only assholes write open letters

[dexeron]

I'm friends with CK on FB and follow her on Twitter, so I saw this a couple days ago. I'm definitely on board with the idea that using stuff without attribution is just crappy, and if being used in a commercial venture might spell compensation. I don't know how it works though when the unattributed work being used was itself a derivative work of someone else's IP. Intellectual property makes my head hurt, largely because the way we deal with it is so fundamentally broken here in the U.S.

Shrug. I'm sure it will all work itself out. In the meantime, go check out the project CK has been working on which is cute and actually pretty cool:

http://animationdock.com/

[cain]

tl:dr

[dexeron]

tr;dl

[Samurai]

You're right about copyright as it applies to created content; the creator does not expressly or implicitly grant licence to re-use simply by posting it online (otherwise there would be tremendous problems with newspaper imagery on the company's website, for example). The main point of interest here from a legal standpoint is the one you identified, Synk -- whether CK can assert copyright for an image that is derivative of another work. Hopefully this will be resolved without recourse to the lawyers, as one they're involved, the lawyers tend to be the main beneficiaries. But if this issues hasn't yet been tested in court, it could provide a useful opportunity to do so (given the current mess that is IP law in many common law jurisdictions) should one of the participants refuse to compromise or back down.

We'll see, I suppose -- or at least, we will if someone reports back on developments, as I'm not intending to monitor the situation myself.

[Emoore]

[Agent]

your gonna get seud