Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. - Mark Twain
Hello everyone! It is yours truly SarcasmNymph back for another Tuesday Tips. Today's topic was suggested by LualaDy, and it is an essential topic considering how much confusion there is surrounding Copyright and Licensing in artist communities and the subsequent paranoia. After all, we as artists, are quite familiar with plagiarists and thieves. So I am here to clear some of that confusion up and share things I've learned on the way. Before we begin, a little disclaimer (appropriate I know
): this is not, by all means, an all-encompassing guide, just some information I have learned along the way. For more comprehensive information, please look at the links at the end of this journal or the official DeviantArt Policy.DeviantArt Licensing:
When you submit something on DeviantArt, you can pick two options: Default License or Creative Commons.
The second type of license you can pick is the Creative Commons License. As you can see, DeviantArt gives you multiple ways of using the Creative Commons license. The default version is the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license. It means that anyone is free to share your work as long as it is non-commercial, without any modifications, and attribute you for the artwork.
If you are feeling more generous, you can make your work available for commercial use and/or allow modifications of your work. If you allow adjustments to your work, you can either allow any changes to happen freely, or you can restrict changes to only those who use the same Creative Commons license (Share Alike option).
Despite the option you choose, DeviantArt doesn't hold rights to your work. It only holds the right to publish your work on their site and for DeviantArt use, like a promotion for DeviantArt itself. DeviantArt can't sell it to a third party unless they change their Terms of Conditions as of 2017.
Using References:
Ok, now that we understand how your submission licensing works, let's talk about using other people's work. Now, let's assume that you want to use this piece as a reference for your next masterpiece:
The following image uses the most liberal version of the license available. It means that you can use it to modify and sell work created from this piece, and you don't even need to use the same license. So that means that if I take this image and trace the house, paint it my way, and then publish it without acknowledging the author I'm in the right? Wrong! Unless you know for sure that the artwork is in Public Domain, the rule of thumb is to attribute the original artist, even if you have the right to use the work.
Ok, but what if I use this image to look at that one tree in the corner, then try to draw that tree in a completely different setting while also changing the tree using other references similarly? Well, this is when things get murky. For the most part, if you are using an image just to figure out how things look in real life, you are free to go. Sometimes when we can't make it to the store, we can look up images of apples to see how apples are supposed to look. Copyright doesn't protect ideas, just individual works. To check if you are copying the work or using it only as an inspiration, check for the following:
- Can you not change your work significantly to meet your needs without relying on more references?
- Are you taking pieces of the reference work directly (including tracing a part of the picture on your drawing)?
- Will your artwork change drasitcally if you switch out the reference material?
If you say no to all of the above, congratulations, you are most likely not copying or modifying someone else's work. However, the line between copying and inspiration is murky, so when in doubt, avoid using other people's artworks as references. If you absolutely must, make sure you check the license on the reference material, ask the artist, and also acknowledge the original artist.
Conclusion:
Copyrighting your work and making sure you abide by others' copyright laws can be a lot of work and confusing at times. But for the sake of everyone, including your own hard work, it is crucial to abide by as much as possible and respect others' right to do so. Plagiarism is a real problem for artists, and a lot of it comes from just pure confusion or lack of understanding of how to protect your and others' work. I hope today's Tuesday Tips helped you a little.
Links For More Information:
- DeviantArt Policy
- Copyright and Artists
- Creative Commons
- Public Domain
- Working with Reference Material
- Stock Resources on DA
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