Art Theft is IP Theft too

[Sasun Steinbeck]

Many of the art gallery owners I know have brought another type of IP theft to my attention over the years - art theft. This is taking copyrighted art images, uploading them to SL, pasting them on a prim, and selling them for profit.

This kind of activity puts a black eye on the art scene in SL. When artists come into SL and see galleries selling hundreds and hundreds of clearly copyrighted images for profit, they just have to wonder what kind of place this is where this kind of thing is allowed to go on.

Even worse, it leads people to believe that either it's ok, or they can easily get away with selling stolen goods as well. If selling stolen art is ok, why not stolen hair or skins? This is a terrible thing for new residents to see.

Thankfully it's not a rampant problem - only a tiny percentage of the galleries I have ever seen are selling copyrighted images. Still, the ideal situation is NO IP THEFT, there should be a ZERO TOLERANCE policy in place regardless of what kind of IP theft is going on. If IP theft of skins is wrong, then art theft is JUST as wrong.

What can you do? BE CAREFUL about buying art that you've seen before or recognize as stolen. You may love that $50L MC Escher print at some shop you stumble into, but DON'T BUY IT - IT'S STOLEN. Ask the owner if they have permission to sell that art. They get away with this because no one cares - no one asks them if it is stolen work or not. Many of them will lie and say it's theirs, I've even seen galleries putting a "certificate of authenticity" in their art to fool the buyer or make it appear that they are somehow a legitimate reseller of that artist's art. Buyer beware!

Besides, there's so much great art being done by SL residents, who needs yet another copy of something everyone's already seen before? Support your local content creators and buy their art!

For years I have been investigating and confronting any blatant art thief that I've found. You have to be careful since the vast majority of art you see is actually uploaded by the creator so it's perfectly fine, and people do make mistakes or are just ignorant of copyright law. Just because you find it on Google doesn't mean it's public domain!!

There are very few "big name" popular artists in SL, so anything recognizeable is immediately suspicious. Even then, the seller may have rights to sell it. There are companies that sell licenses to their catalog of images that you can do anything you want with, including reselling it. Also many old masterpieces are now public domain, so it's not easy to figure out what's stolen and what's not.

The big problem is that the copyright holders in every case I've ever reported to them doesn't bother to even reply. So the theft goes on under our noses and LL takes absolutely no steps to stop the theft unless the copyright holder files a DMCA. And so the theft perpetuates. Confronting the thief doesn't always work. I've been threatened with legal action and RL identity exposure by one thief if I contacted the IP holder about his theft! Probably an empty threat, but I'm not going to put myself on the line like this if LL doesn't care one bit about whether it's going on under their noses as long as no one complains.

[Eliza Wierwight]

I'm with you 100% on this topic Sasun. How many 'galleries' I've ported into in SL, just to pull back as wall after wall of lifted art rezzes in front of my eyes. I do believe in the majority of cases from the consumer end they are unaware. The vendors of art acquired without ethics that I've spoken to generally don't seem to care. . Think I see my part in advocating better practice via education. I myself went through a huge transitional learning curve on ethical use of any 'texture' from naive noob thanks to the patience of artists and builders I respect setting great examples. I've gone the full Monty now . Even working on consults on other people's builds, if I pull something out of my texture hat that I haven't personally crafted myself, I refuse to do the buddy thing and pass a texture over but insist that they purchase the original from the legitimate source. Thankfully that's never a conflict. Artists & Artist/creators of any genuine standing I've found to be equally vigilant. This topic is one that hits the League of Muses over and over and we've been extremely lucky to have some experienced long term Second Life citizens of some renown constantly influencing in a positive way what is and what is -not- acceptable practice.

Makes you wonder if they ever know the real pleasure, of crafting your own expressions of artistry or the satisfaction of producing content where every single component is of your own hand. Few creative expressions in Second Life surpass that for me.

[Qwis Greenwood]

This definitely falls into the realm of education / awareness. I'd like to see a blog post or PSA about it.

[Sasun Steinbeck]

You can read about my copyright adventures here, here, and here to get an idea of some of the crazy attitudes. Sometimes it's just not an education thing, but they just don't believe that selling items illegally isn't "wrong". Even if they understand that it's illegal, as the two people in the cases above obviously realize.

[Saffia Widdershins]

I'd like to see a blog post on the main Step UP! blog aabout this - Sasun - would you be willing to do something there?

[Elrik Merlin]

There's also the question of in-world vendors selling "non-fine-art" items that are representations of real-world copyrights, such as movie and comic characters.

One could argue that the majority of these copyrights are held by enormous corporations that (unlike the average RL fine-artist) can quite happily look after themselves. One could further argue that some such large corporations at least turn a blind eye, or regard the in-world representations as "tributes" that promote interest in their brands. However, some definitely don't like it and will take action.

In some cases, it might be hard to claim that a near-named "lookalike" was a "tribute" promoting a RL brand. It's much more likely that the owners would pounce on the lookalike if they knew it was out there.

With this in mind, what's our attitude as a campaign to in-world infringements of this kind of RL copyright? Should we leave it to the corporations to look after their rights and not say anything? Should we denounce the practice? What if the in-world vendor is a Step-UP! supporter?