Monday 6 March 2017

Copyright and Plagiarism - BAIL104

Copyright is "the exclusive and assignable legal right, given to the originator for a fixed number of years, to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material" [1].

If someone breaches a copyright law, they would be stealing or copying a piece of protected work as their own. This dramatically impacts the initial creator, as their designs are being sold elsewhere, meaning that profits are not being made by the designer. Furthermore, it is common for well known companies to steal the work of lesser-known illustrators and designers, and so they wrongly take the recognition for pieces of work curated by upcoming artists. Copyright laws can also be breeched even if a design has been slightly changed, as very often the original sourced image remains very prominent in the final design.

Rights grabs are when designers upload their work onto platforms such as Instagram, and the company then owns the rights to the images that are uploaded. These rights are normally hidden within the small print or terms and conditions of the site, and aren't commonly known about among artists. Therefore, as the websites have rights over the uploaded artwork, they can use the images in promotional products such as advertising, or they can sell them on to third parties.

Royalty agreements are when artists are given a percentage of money for each sale of the item that includes their artwork or designs. For example the designer of a book cover or album artwork might receive royalties from each unit sale of the item, and so the more items sold, the more money goes back to the designer/illustrator.

'The AOI Code of Professional Conduct' is a document that outlines the rules and regulations that illustrators must follow when being represented by the AOI, i.e following copyright and plagiarism guidelines. It is as follows: [2]

1. At all times, business shall be conducted competently, with integrity and honesty.

2. When accepting a commission the illustrator should ensure that clients are aware of the extent of the rights they are purchasing. If no contract has been supplied by the client, the illustrator should provide written confirmation of engagement which includes this information.

3. The illustrator shall treat all information relating to their client's business as confidential.

4. Good communication between the illustrator and client is encouraged at all times. Any envisaged problems over the style or content of artwork should be aired as soon as possible.

5. The illustrator shall not subcontract work without the agreement of the client, except in areas of illustration where this is customary (eg storyboards).

6. Once the client has approved a rough, the illustrator should not make significant changes at artwork stage without prior approval.

7. If an illustrator is given an open brief there must be, as far as possible, a proper understanding of the boundaries of the illustrator's creativity in order to avoid making huge changes at rough stage.

8. Artwork should of similar style and standard to that already approved in the artist's portfolio, unless otherwise agreed with the client.

9. The illustrator may charge a reasonable fee for significant alterations which were not in the original brief, however, the illustrator may not charge extra fees for alterations which are the fault of the artist, nor for trivial alterations.

10. The illustrator must use their best endeavours to deliver work on time and if they anticipate any delay, must inform the client at the first opportunity.

11. The illustrator must not licence artwork to a third party during the currency of an existing licence unless agreed with the client. In addition, advertising illustration should not be re-licensed to a third party after the expiry of the licence if such action is likely to be detrimental to the client's business.

12. Illustrators working on advertising or promotional illustration should not knowingly work simultaneously for clients who are in direct competition with one another without the agreement of both. In the case of conflict, the illustrator should accept the commission of the first comer.

13. The illustrator must not act recklessly to endanger the relationship between an intermediary (eg design group or advertising agency) and its client. In particular, the illustrator should inform the intermediary before taking any legal action against its client and give it a reasonable opportunity to settle the matter itself.

Speculative Work

14. Illustrators should not undertake speculative work without a fee except in the case of self-generated work.

Protecting your work
It is important to protect your work when posting them online, so that they cannot be stolen or sold elsewhere. Simple ways of doing this include placing a watermark on your images, or even reducing he resolution of your images that you upload. This way your original artworks will be protected against people stealing your work, however it does not stop people from visually replicating your designs.

If you were commissioned to produce a portrait of Bill Murray, you might take inspiration from multiple different images of him, in aim to not violate any copyright laws. For example I would source several different photos, all of him with a similar expression/age, and would take elements from each image to draw from. This way I would not be plagiarising any work, but instead being inspired by certain elements - my final portrait would be an entirely new image.


Example of plagiarism


[3]

This is an example of plagiarism, as no attempt has been made to re-imagine or change the original image. Although there are some really subtle changes in the design of the dogs face, none of these are drastic enough to change the artwork overall. The dogs face is even cropped in the same place as the original, meaning that Schuh's design is beyond it being just a coincidence. 

Example of Inspiration (not plagiarism)
Here are some examples where I do not believe plagiarism has been committed:

[3]
I think that the designer has taken inspiration from the original, and has made sufficient changes to their design in order to not to violate any copyright laws.

[3]
This example is perhaps harder to judge, but I still believe that enough changes have been made to the design and the style of the drawing, in order for it to become a 'new' piece of artwork. It is however, more obvious that inspiration has been directly taken from Jayde Hillard's work.

[1] Oxford Dictionary (no date) Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/copyright (Accessed: 6th March 2017).
[2] Barradell, Sue. "AOI Code of Conduct". Suebarradell.eclipse.co.uk. N.p., 2002. (Accessed: 6th March 2017).
[3] YTWWN - You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice". Youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com. N.p., 2017. (Accessed: Web. 6th Mar. 2017).

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