You've Got a Lot of Nerve -COPYRIGHT RANT-

EDIT: Kind of a disclaimer, kind of a surprised blink at the sudden ton of attention my journal has gotten in the past day (I've been out all day, so this was really unexpected!). I am in no way a legal professional. I do a butt ton of research on topics that interest me, and I HAVE owned a business in art before. I know a lot of the legalities but I don't know everything. If you can actually find a loophole in my own research or know of part of the law that I don't, please let me know! What I'm working on are things I learned and had to deal with in my own business that I owned three years ago, and things I have researched into but might not have seen the absolute entirety of either because of how hard it is to decipher legal jargon. So while I did put several hours of research, care, and planning, and several years of business experience into this rant, I don't claim to be absolutely correct, especially in terminology. I especially don't claim to know the exact legalities of other countries! Copyright is similar in most cases, but not exact same for everyone. The best thing anyone could do is to research their own country's laws to at least know their own rights and choose what they want to do with them.

I am also in no way saying that artists should not sell the rights to their images if they want to. I am saying that you should INFORM yourself so you are never taken advantage of. It may not seem like it should be a big deal, but large companies and even small ones prey on young artists that dont know any better. The best way to protect yourself is knowledge. It is power, especially here.

//END EDIT

You've got a lot of nerve.

Before we go into anything, let's discuss Copyright, it's laws, and all that good stuff, shall we?

Because hey, Copyright is really important to all us artists. Almost everyone you find on Deviantart is a freelance artist; we do commissions, and we try and scrape by in life with maybe a little extra on the side. I'm not saying DA should be your bread and butter, heck no, but a little extra cash never hurt anyone!

...that is, unless you're making it off the backs of other artists, behind their backs.

Oh yeah. That's right, Kero is stepping into this gigantic debacle that revolves around the resale of art that comes with adoptable characters (or any character in general, actually). Get ready, because I'm not going to censor this one little bit:

If you are an artist that thinks the resale of copy-written works of other artists to turn a profit for your own gain is in any way morally acceptable, no matter what the reason for this profit, you are a hypocritical, deplorable, and uneducated human being who is not only breaking terms of service, but is also displaying criminal behavior that can be taken to a court of law no matter what your age.

Got that?

Here's another one.

If you are an artist that openly displays contempt for the idea that you cannot sell another artists work to increase the value of something you 'own' because you plan to resell it in the future, you are a bad example to the adoptable community, and a terrible example of an artist, and should be ashamed of your actions.

Has it sunk in yet?

Good.


Now I'm not talking about people who did this without KNOWING. God knows there's a ton of kids here that have about as much of an idea of what's written in the copyright laws as they do of what's written in the entire collected works of Shakespeare... which is to say not a lot. Unfortunately, it's been a practice that has run rampant in the adoptable community since it's humble beginnings, so it -seemed- perfectly fine. The truth is... it's not. It's not fine at all, and just because everyone has been going along with it doesn't make it fine.

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”

So, because of that, we end up with a TON of people doing this:

"Oh hey, I can sell this, and make back the money I paid for my art? That's in the TOS that I can add to the price depending on the value of the work I got for it? Great! I'll do that!"

Hold up, kid.

There are things you do not understand about Copyright.

I'm gonna play the broken record here and state what too many people have done in the past. A commissioned work, no matter where you get it on Deviantart, Furaffinity, Weasyl, what have you, is a paid SERVICE. You are paying the artist for their time, directing them what to work on, but the finished product and everything about the image does not belong to you. By buying the artist's time, you have not granted yourself the right to display, copy, redistribute, or alter the artwork in any way. What you have bought is the right to hold a copy for your own personal use, and nothing more. The artist, NOT YOU, decides when and where their work will be copied, bought, sold, or used in any way.

If you feel cheated, then you should have researched before you went spending your money willy-nilly. This is the real world: grow up.

Now, some of you that actually KNOW copyright law and some of the terminology (which I'm sure some of you have looked up by now) know about the idea of 'Work for Hire'. A Work for Hire is a specific part of the copyright law that states that someone who is employed and does the work while in the employment of the commissioner automatically transfers the rights to their work to their EMPLOYER. There are many out there that will try and twist the "Work for Hire" statute by saying 'But I hired the artist! This work is a Work for Hire, that means I own the rights!'

No. Saying that does not mean you own the rights to the work you commissioned an artist to do. An employee and a commissioned artist are not the same. An employee has a salary, often with benefits and long term employment from their employer. A commission is a one-off, freelance work, and does not hold a salary or benefits.

Refer to a section of the United States Copyright Law here:

"A “work made for hire” is— 

(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or

(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities."

A “collective work” is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.

The artist of the work holds the copyright to every commissioned work you will ever receive UNLESS YOU SPECIFICALLY MAKE A CONTRACT BEFOREHAND STATING OTHERWISE that BOTH of you sign and agree to.

Yeah, that's right. That means even if they don't have a T.O.S., you hold ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to use their work unless they have given you specific WRITTEN permission to do so, and even then, you may only use the work in the specific manner they have written.

This means that the Species Creator, whoever they may be, has no right to tell you if you can and can not sell the works of other artists. No matter what is in their Terms of Service, you do not have the legal right to adjust the price of your adoptable according to the value of the artwork that goes with it. By law, neither of you own any part of the works made by others, even if that work displays a character design that she or he created.

This ALSO means that, by law, the artist can not only demand and get a court order that you remove any and all copies of their work from your own collection once you infringe upon their legal rights, they can also demand compensation for damages. That's right! If you upsell or even just sell, the artist whose work you infringed upon can legally ask you to pay them for damages, and can sue you if you refuse to comply. If you are not of the 'legal age' to be sued, your legal guardians (parents or otherwise) will be held accountable for your actions, and they will have to pay for the damages caused by you.

This is real.

So, I guess you don't really need all that extra cash you just got by flipping characters, huh? Because it belongs to a few people you just scammed, and they want it back, and they have every advantage over you.

After all, you've broken the law.

Now pay the fucking fine.

I am sick and tired of seeing kids act entitled to something just because they feel like they have the right to do it. A mature, law-abiding person would look this information up beforehand, or afterwards, and correct their mistakes. No amount of complaining, whining, or saying that 'I don't think it's right that I can't earn back what I spent' grants you ANY god-given right to take what doesn't belong to you and turn a profit from it. If you don't like it? Too bad. Follow the laws of this and almost every other country in this world and shut the hell up.

Thank you.