Copy Cat by Mitchell & Dent via BloesemWe’re taught in school not to steal; it’s one of the foundations that a society needs in order for it to survive. Without this basic fundamental, much of commerce, business, or even friendships - and most all forms of human interactions - wouldn’t be possible. Not being able to trust others from stealing our own possessions would cause most person to person contact to be strained. Society has built in safeguards for all of us; much of common law is built around the premise that others should not steal from us, and yet it still happens.
In our online world, we’ve seen our share. Of stealing, that is. (Yes, let’s call it plainly). Ideas, topics, out and out plagarism; we’ve seen all the above things stolen from us and others in the online community. You might find my tone pointed; so be it. I’m tired of others who freely take from the hard work and dedication of others and ride on the coattails of their successes.
Others have expounded a view that the copycatting creates an environment that fosters further creativity. Perhaps, but perhaps creativity might be better served if the copycatters were to focus their energies on creating NEW ideas, rather than stealing others’ ideas. I think competition is good, but I don’t think blatantly stealing from others is good.
A case in point; we’ve worked hard to provide a great platform to allow the exposure of truly great artists in our monthly online market. We have had the participation of many great artists, and we’ve truly been honored by their involvement. Many of the artists have communicated that it’s worked really well for them, and we’re proud of our years of hard work that we invested into the market that created that success. BUT, we’ve had copycatters. Not only that, but we’ve had artists that we’ve hosted on our site, that – after seeing how our artist interface worked – went out and directly stole our EXACT business model. Some went so far as to actually use the exact same categories that we created. Do I call this healthy competition? No, I call it stealing.
I think one of the most valuable things that I can say here is the online world is small, very small. It doesn't matter where you are. If you're copying someone's work and you're online, eventually it'll be found, so I wouldn't recommend it. It's not nice and it's not cool. It doesn't matter where you are. I once had a friend request on Facebook from someone in Mexico. I went to her page to check her out and found an ad for her work, where she was using someone's photo who happened to be participating in our market. Copying comes in many forms. Maybe it's an idea, or perhaps they are using a portion of your work mixed into theirs. It's so varied. And I guess what one has to do is decide how important it is to fix.
What to do about it? I've seen success with just contacting the party. So I know it can be easily done by approaching the person to end it from happening again. If that doesn't work, and if you feel it's worth it, your best bet is to contact legal advice. The most important thing of course (and I'm sure I don't have to tell many of you) is to copyright your work first if you make things; but for those of you who are new to this; Design Sponge has a post on Copyright 101 for Designers that explains it well here.
Another good read is this Good to Know Zine on Plagiarism from Pikaland. Not only are there some samples of what other artists have experienced, but an article is included in it originally posted on Book By Its Cover blog entitled, Your Copyright Questions Answered written by copyright lawyer Amy J. Everhart.
If it's an idea, a business model or a blog post. What are our options? That is a little more grey. Some things are more obvious of course. But a lot of times it's pretty easy to figure out what to do next. For legal advice a few sources I've found online are here:
Canada - Canadian Intellectual Property Office - Copyrights
U.S. - U.S.Copyright Office
Australia - Australian Government - Copyright
UK - Design and Artist's Copyright Society
Have you been copied? What have you done about it. What happened. Lets open it up in the comments section; we welcome your thoughts, opinions.
Earl and Jan
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