Copying: All Risk and No Reward

"Autumn Hues" by Yael Berger of The Joy of Color

In the art world, imitation is rarely seen as the sincerest form of flattery, but instead as violation of intellectual property rights. In a recent AGTeam article, the line between Inspiration and Copying was clearly defined. Yet, artists who are perfectly aware of this line will often still copy. Too often, an artist will convince themselves that they aren't copying and that the style, image, or idea is a generic one and they weren't influenced by someone's work. While the reasons why this hurts the original creator who is being copied are fairly clear, the plain fact is that it hurts you as an artist to copy and sell another's work without permission more than anyone else.

Three of the major drawbacks to copying are:

It's not just an illegal copyright violation, you can permanently damage your reputation as an artist. If people see you to be copying, they may begin to assume that it's because you aren't capable of creative ideas of your own. Even the integrity of your original work can be diminished because people may lose respect for you as an artist.

You don't create an identity of your own when you copy. When potential customers run across your work, they may mistake it for the original artist's and even vice versa. This doesn't help you out at all and can hurt the original artist.

As an Etsy seller, you run the risk of having your shop closed. Etsy reserves the right to close down shops that don't operate within their terms of use and having a claim made against you for copyright violation can be enough reason for them to close you down.

The costs of copying someone far outweigh any benefits that could be gained. Large companies, small businesses, and individuals have all found themselves in hot water for doing it. The best policy is to respect other artist's as you would like them to respect you and not reproduce their work without permission.

Inspiration or Copy: Where is the Line?

If you see someone's work, and you’d like to make an exact duplicate of it for sale, describing and listing it exactly the same way, is that good business instinct, following a popular trend and therefore fair game, or a compliment to the artisan who made the original? Emphatically, no. It is intellectual property theft. That’s right, theft.

The person you are mimicking is a business person as well as a creator. They intend to make a profit from their own designs, as they should. As you should not. After all, if you admired someone’s taste, and broke into their house to steal their stuff, would you expect them to be flattered? Praise your business acumen? I think not!

Being a copycat derives from one of 2 things (and sometimes both):

1) a malicious intention to make a profit with unethical practices

2) entering a marketplace as a seller without having spent the time to develop a body of work of your own

To recap, it is never “inspiration” to look at someone’s work and decide to do one like it, even if you add very minor tweaks.

MerrittHyde and I see the world through a similar lens, and it shows in our work. She recently said that she admired this piece of mine:

Here is Merrit’s current work:

We already have 2 similar elements, the wood body (even though mine is faux bois), and the leaves.  While looking at my piece, she envisioned using her metal leaves as a canopy, similar to mine. This is inspiration. Merritt is mentally progressing something in her own body of work. Her new piece will have elements similar to mine, but it will not be a copy.

Have you had your work copied? How does it feel?

Are you ever tempted to copy a top selling Etsy artisan? What stops you?

Do you make something similar to another artisan? What do you do to avoid copying?

editorial by Lee Wolfe