Copyright rules....

[ShopMissElla]

Hi All

I become more and more confused by the grey area that is copyright. It's not something I worry about since my work is all my own.

But one image I do have is a cat dressed as Wonder Woman, someone asked me the other day if that was allowed under copyright law. I researched and researched and it's so blurry as to what is allowed. I see a ton of stuff on Etsy I know is blatant infringement as we all do.

But I also see a lot of legitimate businesses using skits on Wes Anderson Films, Totoro, and many other cult classics that do amazing illustration of their own style but use the characters. So I wondered if this was breaking copyright or not?

It's something I do do too but I just do it for fun on my blog and Facebook pages rather than for commercial sale as I worry about the copyright consequences?

Any thoughts! (sorry for the ramble!)

[WilliamsGiftshop]

It's basically very simple: if someone else designed it, it is not yours to use commercially.
You want to make your own designs (and not try to profit from the exposure of established brands).

http://www.wikihow.com/Avoid-Copyright-Infringement

[ShopMissElla]

Yes indeed but then you have the grey area -

"copyright doesn't prevent you from expressing in your own words ideas and facts found in a book or journal you read"

This is where is seems people use their 'own interpretation', i.e. some fabulous artwork but it is of a character designed by someone else.

So you're asked to think - "is this a creative work on my count, or am I simply drawing from the creativity of someone else? " then you could easily say those people are being creative on their own count but are inspired by this, that or the other.

I totally agree though, if you didn't think of it it's not yours and it's not something I want to do anyway as that would be so unsatisfying for me personally, however it makes me curious that sites such as Etsy is so saturated with it in that case.

[WilliamsGiftshop]

I agree.
It is a big shame that Etsy allows its site to be flooded by factories, resellers and coyright/trademark infringers!

They pretend not to be responsible ('the copyright owners should take action'), but they are. After all, they are making a lot of money out of those fraud sellers' listings and sales. One can only guess that that is why they are happily looking the other way.

[Former_Member]

I know anything Disney related cannot be in your shop - not sure about Wonder Woman, but if you question it than I would refrain from using it - no sense in getting your shop flagged and possibly shut down.

[MountainGoth]

Looks like Wonder Woman has a few year left to go before becoming public domain.

[spacefem]

You're a great artist, why not just feature a superhero cat and call it good? Even a superhero cat with stars is probably okay... just not a superhero cat with a big W across the front. You don't have to totally rip off licensed characters just to appeal to geeks.

[ShopMissElla]

Awww I wasn't trying to rip off anything or appeal to geeks, it was just part of a calendar and the Halloween cat was to be in fancy dress(thought it made a change from the obvious) and she doesn't have any writing or anything but I shall take it off the key words.

I was more curious about the rest of the copyright issues and how come so many people who are legitimate businesses seem to be able to do this as a constant and the main part of their business. They clearly couldn't afford the licence. ( rather than just all those who blatantly rip off and are imports). It wasn't something I was asking about because I wanted to do it, I prefer to create my own characters and always have done.

Thank you for all the input though!

[Former_Member]

An easy way to begin answering the question about the Wonder Woman cat is to contact the people who own the rights to Wonder Woman and ask them if they mind... and I'm sure there are detailed websites on copyright law somewhere.

Having the name in the tags could have certainly caused trouble. I once made a lopsided cube-shaped hacky sack and simply put Minecraft in the tags as an afterthought. The copyright holders had an issue with this and had the item's listing removed.

Eventually, if I start doing hacky sacks again, I will probably contact Minecraft's copyright holders and discuss the situation because I don't even know enough about the game to know if there even is a lopsided purple cube as a part of it. I should have every right to make a crooked purple cube, but I did not realize that tags were involved in copyrights at all.

Be mindful with your tags!

[maydaylabels]

I don't know if the cube itself was an issue as much as advertising it as a minecraft item. (Tags are used to draw searchers into your shop, so if you tag with something that is trademarked or copyrighted, you're infringing on that intellectual property for your own gain).

Etsy says that they cannot unilaterally take down some items that might be infringing because if they did so, they'd be responsible for monitoring the entire site the whole time for infringement, and any that was found would make them liable. So instead they are a safe harbour, or something like that, where they basically say, we're like the highway or like google - we don't involve ourselves, it's up to the people who hold the intellectual property to contact us and tell us when they want something removed.

There are many businesses making $ off of other people's IP on Etsy (and elsewhere) because it is hard, and not necessarily worth the time/effort/$, for the various IP holders to police every shop here.