Asking Permission and Being Careful...

Phases of Life
Acrylic five 12 x 4
staple-less gallery wrapped canvas

You have seen this before, that is true, but it kind of fits with what I wanted to talk about today.

Do you remember when you were in school and the teacher would say to keep your eyes on your paper and do your own work? Then when you were in high school you were told you had to not copy because it was plagiarizing and that was illegal? In college, I had to write a pledge on every paper and exam I turned in. If there was any problem, then you had to appear before a court to resolve it. As an adult, writers get sued all the time for plagiarism of ideas and to have copyright laws upheld. So what is my point?

Recently I have been advised some of my blog work has been used by other people, and they have not asked permission to do so. Now I do have a copyright message on here for all artists who's work appears here. The thing is not only have I had an issue, but I have heard from some other blogging/artist friends who have a similar issue. I have a big problem with anyone who will blatantly copy/paste my blog posts. I have a much bigger problem when they take advantage of artists who share on this blog. If you are a person who has a propensity to go this route, I am checking each day for anything which comes up... If you would like permission to use something, ask, I am not that mean! Here is the question I have to the few of you who do this, do you want to be a victim of a thief, too? If you are blatant about taking whole posts or if you choose to copy an image of an painting without the writer/artist's permission, you are performing an illegal act! Now is the time to think twice, be respectful. Whatever you do give clear and thoughtful appreciation to the source when you post it, but try to obtain permission if you can.

For those of you who need to protect yourself, if it is important to you, I advise you to do some web searches to see what comes up. One thing which seems to be going around right now is another kind of scheme all together. I was alerted by a new site which is aiding artists in selling their art (so many seem to be doing that these days). This site is called Zibbet. They give some good advice for protecting yourself from those who will take advantage of artists. Visit them here to see what they had to say.

These are kind of crazy things and I never thought I would be writing a post like this, but here you have it. How do you feel about work being used without your permission? Do you think I am way off base?

Have a Good Day, despite my rant here.