{"id":1727,"date":"2010-10-12T10:10:07","date_gmt":"2010-10-12T14:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1727"},"modified":"2010-10-12T10:10:07","modified_gmt":"2010-10-12T14:10:07","slug":"copyright-and-fractal-art-crimes-of-the-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1727","title":{"rendered":"Copyright and Fractal Art: Crimes of the Century"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my previous post, <a href=\"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1711\">Copyright and Fractal Art:\u00a0 What the law really says<\/a>,\u00a0 I quoted from the US Copyright Office what their definitions of copyright privileges and fair use exemptions were.\u00a0 Fair use is something that is always a matter of argument and degree, but some scenarios make for extremely simple arguments <em>&#8211;against fair use.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The examples I am going to mention, fortunately, have all disappeared.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t link to them or post screen shots because they&#8217;ve either gone offline or literally, changed their address.\u00a0 A few are still online but I don&#8217;t want to link to them because it&#8217;s not really necessary and besides, they are real examples of copyright infringement.\u00a0 As a result, the contents of this posting will have to take on a rather anecdotal style.\u00a0 The actual facts of the infringement aren&#8217;t that important anyway as they merely serve as examples of realistic, online situations involving copyright in the fractal art world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Case of the Cell Phone Wallpaper Salesman<\/strong><br \/>\nIf you&#8217;ve hung out on Deviant Art for any length of time you will have heard about this one and maybe know more about it than I do.\u00a0 A well known fractal artist discovered some of his fractal images on a website being sold as part of a collection of\u00a0 images to be used as wallpaper for cellphones.\u00a0 He noticed the work of other fractal artists and posted his discovery which is how I came to know about it.<\/p>\n<p>Is is fair use?\u00a0 Of course not, but let&#8217;s go through the four factors that the US Copyright Office gives for determining fair use and is the format which Columbia University&#8217;s analysis of (attempted) <a href=\"http:\/\/copyright.columbia.edu\/copyright\/fair-use\/case-summaries\/\">fair use examples<\/a> also follows.\u00a0 The four factors are: Purpose; Nature; Amount; and Effect.\u00a0 (<em>For an official explanation of the four factors, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.copyright.gov\/title17\/92chap1.html#107\">107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use<\/a> from the US Copyright Office website.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Purpose: to make money selling the artist&#8217;s work.\u00a0 This weighs heavily against fair use because the purpose is purely commercial as opposed to educational, informative or commentary and review.<\/li>\n<li>Nature: the copyrighted works were creative in nature and taken from a site where they were also available for sale, although not as cell phone wallpaper.\u00a0 Factual works, like photos of natural scenery or say, illustrations of mathematical formulas, are more likely to be fairly used because they have obvious educational and informational applications.\u00a0 Works that are entirely the product of a person&#8217;s creative expression need a stronger argument to be fairly used.<\/li>\n<li>Amount: although there would have been some reduction in resolution and resulting image quality to display it on the cell phone screen, the images as sold for download were identical to the originals taken from the author&#8217;s website.<\/li>\n<li>Effect: the copyright holder&#8217;s original images are used partly to solicit sales for high resolution prints and are already available for anyone to use as a cell phone wallpaper if they have the technical knowledge.\u00a0 Lack of attribution for the artist however, would prevent people from buying high resolution prints and frustrate one of the artist&#8217;s purposes for freely posting the images.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is there anyone who would not say that this is a clear case of copyright infringement?\u00a0 I think the main factor is that the use is purely commercial and has absolutely no criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching , scholarship, or research aspect at all.\u00a0 There doesn&#8217;t appear to be any commercial harm to the work though if you really look at it, and, in fact, the infringer is only offering a use for the original images that is already available without restriction, although that use (saving the image to your cell phone as a wallpaper) would also be copyright infringement as well, strictly speaking.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Case of the World&#8217;s Greatest Artist<\/strong><br \/>\nThis one is actually pretty recent, but from what I&#8217;ve heard it&#8217;s something that&#8217;s been cropping up every so often for quite some time.\u00a0 A new user appears on Deviant Art or Renderosity and is suddenly in possession of a &#8220;personal&#8221; gallery of what is nothing more than the greatest hits of Deviant Art&#8217;s fractal art section.\u00a0 A few prowling Deviant Artists soon discover the gallery, are immediately outraged, break the safety glass and pull the nearby Copyright Alarm.\u00a0 The moderators have day jobs, however, and they also have to go through a lengthy checklist before removing the offending user&#8217;s account, but before all that they need to check it out because there&#8217;s some disbelief in their own minds because <em>&#8220;why on earth would anyone do that?&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Purpose: Social prank.\u00a0 (Apparently) non-commercial.<\/li>\n<li>Nature:\u00a0 The copyrighted works are creative artwork.<\/li>\n<li>Amount:\u00a0 Entire images at the same resolution (image size) as the originals &#8211;identical copies of digital files.<\/li>\n<li>Effect:\u00a0 Artists would not have profited from any sales of images bought through this bogus gallery and possibly suffered some damage to their reputation from buyers who might have received low quality prints (the bogus artist would not posses the necessary high resolution files to make proper prints).\u00a0 Furthermore, the true authorship of an artwork is confused when it&#8217;s displayed without the artist&#8217;s name and especially in this case, when it&#8217;s displayed with <em>another<\/em> artist&#8217;s name.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Artists have a legal right to attribution even if they sell their copyrights to an image (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.copyright.gov\/title17\/92chap1.html#106a\">106a<\/a>).\u00a0 It&#8217;s easy to laugh this one off because it&#8217;s pretty hard to put up a bogus gallery on a place like Deviant Art without a huge and immediate public outcry (or do anything else).\u00a0 But the possibility really does exist of selling prints and therefore the commercial exploitation of the copyrighted works and their potential customers also exists which could result in damage to the real artists&#8217; online reputations.<\/p>\n<p>Most examples of this sort of thing are just pranks, but in a similar way, today&#8217;s real-life threat of computer viruses started off years ago also primarily as pranks; the criminal potential of bogus galleries is something that could give this type of copyright infringement a much more serious outcome if the artwork has significant commercial value.\u00a0 Printing your name on your images is perhaps something artists ought to consider if they see their work as having commercial value and they engage in business on the internet.\u00a0 Just like having a burglar alarm sticker on the front door of your home, it might just be enough of an annoyance to dissuade anyone who has criminal intentions.<\/p>\n<p>In case you&#8217;re still wondering, I think it&#8217;s safe to say this is a case of copyright infringement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Case of the Really Bad Musical Slide Show<\/strong><br \/>\nAn adoring fan has visited your fractal gallery.\u00a0 He just loves your stuff.\u00a0 He loves music too.\u00a0 He plays cultural match-maker and weds your wonderful fractals to Mozart.\u00a0 He then uploads the resulting video to YouTube.\u00a0 He&#8217;s got your name in the video so people know you made the artwork, but there&#8217;s no link to your site or anything else that might direct fresh fans to the original source.\u00a0 Somehow or other you find out, but not before some time has elapsed.\u00a0 You email the fan because he&#8217;s got a contact address posted&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Purpose: To (attempt) to create a beautiful thing just for fun and without commercial intentions.<\/li>\n<li>Nature: The images used are creative works.<\/li>\n<li>Amount:\u00a0 He used the whole image, and several of them are ones considered to be your best but they&#8217;re so small and YouTube&#8217;s compression has smudged them so much they&#8217;re hardly a substitute for the originals and would probably send interested viewers to your site if there was a link.\u00a0 The main feature of the video is your work, the music (albeit Mozart) is commonplace and merely a background.<\/li>\n<li>Effect: Not likely to have much effect on the commercial sales of your artwork although, possibly, some interested viewers might google your name and find your website while others write you off entirely as the <em>&#8220;Painter of Sludge\u2122&#8221;<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is not fair use because the purpose is merely to exploit the aesthetics of the artwork.\u00a0 The use is not &#8220;transformative&#8221; as it doesn&#8217;t use the artwork in a way which is different, and therefore, non-competing, with the the original.\u00a0 You can&#8217;t simply take copyrighted work and display it because you&#8217;ve got a &#8220;great&#8221; way of doing it.\u00a0 For that you need to either own the copyright or get permission.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, the work is displayed as a poor quality reproduction, although perhaps not intentionally (YouTube&#8217;s compression can really produce bad results sometimes), and this can present a poor impression of the artist&#8217;s work and subsequent reputation which is also a violation of copyright law (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.copyright.gov\/title17\/92chap1.html#106a\">106a<\/a> again).\u00a0 Fans like this aren&#8217;t doing you any favors.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Case of the Caring, Sharing Customer<\/strong><br \/>\nI don&#8217;t know if this has ever happened, but I suggest it, hypothetically, because it could well become &#8220;the end of the world as we know it&#8221; with respect to copyright and make all the other crimes look like petty annoyances.<\/p>\n<p>You put together a really nice DVD of high resolution artwork (but not print grade) and even spend a little money to give it some professional features.\u00a0 One of your customers buys a copy, transfers the entire disk to his hard drive and then uploads it to Pirate Bay because they think it&#8217;s great and want to share it <em>&#8211;with the whole world<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>People who consider your $20 price tag to be <em>&#8220;ridiculous&#8221;<\/em> and who are accustomed to ripping off big, money-stuffed media companies while they sleep, download your DVD and highly recommend it <em>&#8211;on Pirate Bay&#8211;<\/em> not at your online store.\u00a0 After a year or two, sales have never really taken off for your nice DVD project although you&#8217;re always selling a few, but it&#8217;s just your first and you&#8217;re half way through making the second one which you know will be much more impressive.\u00a0 But the business angle doesn&#8217;t look so clear anymore because online &#8220;file sharing&#8221; has a better price tag and faster delivery and how can you possibly compete with that?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Purpose: To make it possible for people to get your DVD for free.<\/li>\n<li>Nature:\u00a0 The works are creative.<\/li>\n<li>Amount:\u00a0 An exact duplicate of the entire work.<\/li>\n<li>Effect:\u00a0 It makes buying the original from the copyright holder unnecessary and thus potentially destroys the commercial value of the original.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I just put those four factors up for the sake of consistency.\u00a0 This one loses the fair use test for every single factor but that&#8217;s not surprising because the sole motive for this kind of activity is to sidestep copyright altogether so consumers <em>don&#8217;t have to pay<\/em> the copyright holder for a copy.\u00a0 That&#8217;s precisely the sort of thing copyright was made to oppose.\u00a0 The only redeeming quality here is that the pirates aren&#8217;t trying to sell the &#8220;shared&#8221; files.\u00a0 But then, even if they did, I guess someone would post them somewhere else and destroy <em>their<\/em> (illegal) business.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.richardskingdom.net\/file-sharing-is-not-a-crime\">File sharing is a crime<\/a>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a complete renunciation of copyright law.\u00a0 Some people get philosophical about it and play up the pleasant feeling associated with &#8220;sharing&#8221; and it&#8217;s kumbaya qualities, but what they&#8217;re really saying is they don&#8217;t believe in the legitimacy of copyright at all.\u00a0 It&#8217;s obvious how copyright law views such things:\u00a0 the two are arch-enemies.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not so obvious however, which one will win in the long run.<\/p>\n<p>Well, there&#8217;s the fractal art copyright crimes of the century.\u00a0 The way things go on the internet though, the next decade could be a whole new century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my previous post, Copyright and Fractal Art:\u00a0 What the law really says,\u00a0 I quoted from the US Copyright Office what their definitions of copyright privileges and fair use exemptions were.\u00a0 Fair use is something that is always a matter of argument and degree, but some scenarios make for extremely simple arguments &#8211;against fair use. &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1727\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1711,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1711","url_meta":{"origin":1727,"position":0},"title":"Copyright and Fractal Art: What the Law really says","author":"Tim","date":"5 October, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright: the word that launched a thousand fairy tales! Let's see what the US Copyright Office says about copyright: \u00a7 102. Subject matter of copyright: In general28 (a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1711#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1897,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1897","url_meta":{"origin":1727,"position":1},"title":"Why Image files are very different than Parameter files: Derivative Works!","author":"Tim","date":"16 November, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A UPR is probably something that can be copyrighted because it's really no different than a computer script. And computer software can be copyrighted... so is that the end of it? But what if someone changes something in your parameter file just a little bit? What if I take a\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 4 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 4 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1897#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/param3-11.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":430,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=430","url_meta":{"origin":1727,"position":2},"title":"Welcome to OrbitTrap.ca!","author":"Tim","date":"2 November, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"OrbitTrap.ca is our new address. Update your bookmarks and check out the new site! Actually, it's all older stuff transferred from our archives over at the old, Blogger site. Why did we move Orbit Trap to this site? Well, like any online publishing venture, we've changed and grown over the\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=430#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1880,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1880","url_meta":{"origin":1727,"position":3},"title":"Is it too late to patent your fractals?","author":"Tim","date":"12 November, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"In a previous post, Can you really copyright an Ultra Fractal parameter file?, I questioned the validity of copyright protection for parameter files.\u00a0 I based this on my observation that what parameter files do is categorically different from what\u00a0 image files do and more in keeping with the types of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 14 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 14 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1880#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/patent2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1732,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1732","url_meta":{"origin":1727,"position":4},"title":"Copyright and Fractal Art:  If a tree falls in the woods&#8230;","author":"Tim","date":"19 October, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If a tree falls in the woods... ...and no one hears it, does it really make a sound? If a tree falls in the woods and it doesn't cost anything, does it really make a sound? If someone violates your copyright and it doesn't cost you anything, should you be\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=1732#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/amazon-associates.png?fit=699%2C467&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/amazon-associates.png?fit=699%2C467&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/amazon-associates.png?fit=699%2C467&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2486,"url":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/?p=2486","url_meta":{"origin":1727,"position":5},"title":"Parameter File Sharing For Dummies","author":"Tim","date":"4 February, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. biblegateway.com The most recent \"discussion\" about parameter file sharing on the Ultra Fractal Mailing List has reminded me how\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/orbittrap.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/param1.jpg?fit=500%2C264&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1727"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orbittrap.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}