I have been in the online art community a long time, a lot longer than I wish to admit. At my highest I belonged to thirty different online art communities, but at present I only participate in five of the original thirty and one that is new. I will be the first to admit that I am not very active, though my graduate program is most to blame for that, but I still go and check the sites daily to see what my fellow artists and writers are up to. In the past weeks there have been a slew of journals talking about art theft and the tidal wave of it that was coming. I didn’t think it would be that bad since there have been times like these before, but with this latest up draft in art theft numbers, I’m beginning to notice a startling trend occurring.
The offenders don’t think that anything is wrong with what they’re doing.
If I walk into a store and pick a piece of candy up and walk out with it, that’s clearly defined as stealing. In the art community the same rules apply, but there are conditionals applied.
When I first started learning to draw I would sit at the computer for hours and pour through hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures. It was an inspiration breeding ground and the perfect place to let a beginner artist begin. I will be the first to admit that I printed out a great many pictures and copied them (not the direct tracing kind). It helped me learn anatomy and that a person should have a softly curving neck instead of a stiff rectangle. The different between what I did when I was a teen and what is going on currently is drastically different.
Most would agree this is a great way to first start out in addition to sketching from life, but I never broke the cardinal rule. I never claimed the drawings as my own and posted them online as such. It seems that the up and coming generation of artists is having a particularly difficult time grasping this concept, though I’m not sure where it becomes confusing for them.
Did you draw the original? No.
Did you at least give credit to the original artist? No.
Then why did you upload it as your own? Because I drew it.
This would be the point where I silently hit my head against the desk hoping to be smited by a lightning bolt.
Even if the artist understands you are trying to learn, if you don’t give credit you have destroyed one potential friendship and mentor. While most artist might spare thieves who give credit, you should run fast if they catch you without a link back to the original. It’s not the pressure even coming from the artist themselves that make it a deadly mistake. Most of the communities I belong to allow you to add friends and to post to each other’s journals and comment on artworks. If an artist has thousands of followers, which is considered popular on one board, you have now not only angered the artist, but their legion of followers. It’s a deadly position to be in.
The part I find harder to swallow is the absolute lack of caring on behalf of the thief. When they are caught they just shrug it off or try to make excuses. They might not know any better, but they do nothing to try and rectify the situation at hand. I know it is not a lack of morals, and if not, is it the ready access to technology that is changing the current trend in the art world?
A good 75% of the artworks on only one site I visit are created purely from the computer. In past decades and centuries, artworks were created by hand, away from any sort of technology (unless you are talking about photography). It was rare that the artwork would be seen by millions of people in the lifetime of the artist. In today’s’ world it’s easy to achieve tens of millions of eyes look at your pieces in only a few days.
There will always be art thievery in the world. I am not denying that, but we need broader education about what is acceptable and what should be avoided at all costs.
