How to Infringement

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Title:	How to Infringement
Creator:	Donna Barr
Date(s):	March 1994
Medium:	print
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How to Infringement is a 1994 satirical essay by Donna Barr printed in Artistic Endeavors #17.

It poked fun at fans, copyright, fanart, and fan entitlement.

Related Essays

• How to Fantasy (1993)
• How to Infringement (1994)

Excerpts

At last, you're an artist. After long years or eyestrain headaches and chemical-ingestion poisoning, you're finally an artist. You can pour your heart out onto any two-dimensional surface, and it won't look like you used a steak-knife to do it. But nobody's buying your work. Not even when you slavishly meet the most obvious demands of the market, and paint unicorns in pastels, or dinosaurs in a bloody rage.

Be not faint of heart. There is a way to quickly gain a market, and it involves absolutely none of that tedious developmental work that can eat up so much of your precious time and materials. Simply find out what is popular, and copy it. For example—do you like Mickey Mouse? Isn't he easy to draw? Of course he is. And his fans don't mind if there is no copyright bug on the artwork they buy. They just know that all we artists are good lotus-eating buddies, and are supping from a great free-running river of ideas and images, there for the sharing.

We would be, of course, if there weren't for individuals and corporations that already owned those images, and had registered them with the U.S. Offices of Trademarks and Copyrights.

Isn't it just awful, the way those Disney people hog their rights? You can't even use a little innocent Mickey Mouse face on a flyer or in a window to boost sales on your own

products, without having their Image Police roar in and threaten you with a lawsuit. Who do they think they are? Just because their company has been laboring for seventy-five years to develop and market a product - struggling through strikes and walkouts and near bankruptcy doesn't give them the right to run over the little guys. What does it hurt them if you paint their Dalmatians on a few T-shirts to sell at a waterfront fair? They should have a heart. Your mother always let you get away with little white lies - why shouldn't Disney? And why should he care? He's dead, isn't he?

No, you just go right ahead and use Mickey's or Donald's recognizable face on anything you do. If you're doing a comic-strip, make the mouse a regular character, recognizable right down to the sugar-cookie buttons on his shorts. Convince yourself that what you are doing is a "parody". The Supreme Court has said you can do that, hasn't it? If you draw the mouse badly enough, you can certainly claim it's not an accurate image, and that you didn't mean to rip off anybody's profits. That way, when the Image Gestapo hauls your butt into court, you can whine about Artist Freedom and Legal Precedents, and get off with nothing but an increase in publicity. Right?

NOT.

And you Star Trek fans—when it comes to infringement, you're in gravy. Everybody knows that dear, dead Gene Roddenberry would just be tickled turquoise if you did him the honor of making a very neat acrylic copy of Lenard Nimoy's "Vulkanized bust - on black velvet - and proudly put it up for sale at any of a myriad of Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions. Why, he'd be even more delighted if you made prints of your creation, and sold it to every happy little Trekkie who drifted past that piece of shaky pegboard whereon your masterpiece hangs waiting. All you Star Trek people are buddies, aren't you? And just remember - in the Sci/Fi/Fan business, a buddy is anybody you can talk into working for free. A true friend would never ask to be paid for working on something YOU'RE fascinated by, would they? Love and the world loves with you - if you're a Trekkie, everybody else must be one, too.

It is no use to explain to them that the copyright laws protect ALL artists including beginners. It is no use to ask them how they would feel if having finally coaxed and originally-conceived image to turn over a profit, they discovered another artist using their work. They can't even imagine producing anything original. It is beyond anything in their experience. To them, the world comes ready-made through video images, and they never question who might be producing that world. It's all made on computers isn't it? And if they have a computer, they can share anything that blips across the screen. Of course nobody owns it. Computers are God, and God gives away everything for free.

Do yourself a favor. Don't copy anybody's work - and if somebody asks you to, don't try to explain why you won't. Tell them you're busy. That's all - that's enough. Anything else will start a fight - and do you realy want to fight with a fan? It's like wrestling with a dead octopus; every time you think you've got a hold of one of those tentacles, the rotten thing comes off in your hand. And when you finally do surface, you stink like the carcass.

Fan Comments

Infringement.

A fine line indeed to walk.

Donna Barr's comments are very important ones that I certainly had drilled into me in art school and they are comments worth repeating at every artist panel at every con.

The one thing I didn't get from Donna Barr's article was an idea of where she sees that line of tolerance being. Is it all right for Lucy Synk to do portraits but not all right if she plans on an unlimited print run. Is it okay for myself to do a cartoon of Kirk and company dancing about or is that parody? Is it okay at the amateur level, but not the professional? Or should the line of tolerance come from other artists? Should art shows define what is infringement and censor those pieces that cross the line? There could be some mighty sparse art shows if that's the case.

This is avery uneasy topic to deal with. I would despise anyone ripping off my work, but I habitually do spoofs of licensed characters. And unless Barney comes knocking on my door with a court injunction, I'll probably continue. I guess I'm laboring under the illusion that I'm too small to be noticed. I do try and censor myself by not making prints of such pieces and by willfully acknowledging sources. Hopefully, that will be enough common sense to keep me out of trouble. We'll see.

I understand the slightly interpretive law of the United States has said that sparse parody is fine, as long as it doesn't become a long term thing. Cerebus's WolverRoach fell under infringement after he appeared too many times in the comic.

As far as I know, actor's faces are not the complete property of their one hit show. Heck, Harrison Ford would be in Big Trouble.... But I don't know about the fan art with uniforms and titles that fall under one show or another. I know that several of the Big Name Media shows have basically been given permission by their producers to go ahead and enjoy (although, this would probably stop at a certain unnamed monetary value).

It is easy to say, 'we're just fans, doing the work for other fans'. The laws are vague. Prosecution is only rumored reality. Does anyone out there know the real poop on Media stuff?

The Paramount crackdown (such as it is)... thus far they seem to be limiting their tours to the Creation Star Trek Cons. My husband asked the license representative what the deal was in regards to selling limited edition prints of Star Trek's characters. He was told she would look into it. A lew weeks later we got a legal and wordy nastygram informing us that NO unlicensed art was legal to sell and il we did sell any the consequences we would face. I do know of a couple of artists who have actually gotten cease and desist from Paramount legal and one artist who got a long letter full of ridiculous demands in addition to a request to cease and desist. While I can certainly understand Paramount's desire to protect their properly. I think a little finesse might be in order.

We talked to Lucy Snyk at Media West, and she's received no word from Paramount (and would like to keep it that way). We say this to squelch rumors contrary to the facts.

Jean Kluge, however, has heard from Paramount. They told her to sign a lengthy wordy, leagaleez document that confessed to selling not only named print runs, but "other previous work" as well. Such a document is not well enough defined (as long as we're talking leagaleez), so she isn't signing. Who knows where such a thing could lead.

I'm reminded of the term "Disney Police". Everyone soys how mean the Disney people are when their lawyers have to intervene. The problem is when they hear about something, their lawyers MUST do something - just to protect the product. Their probably just as unhappy to let loose the expensive lawyers on their fans.

As I figure it - a few pictures of media work is fan work, and might fall under parody. Once you start doing a lot, and making good money on such - then you need to worry if you are straddling the line between fan work, and infringement.