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.PLAGIARISM and ART THEFT::

.Future Trends and The End of CG Art. ?

I recently read that WalMart Stores and their Printing divisions have stopped printing any kind of digital art from a digital file due to a crackdown of the authorities enforcing the Copyright Law. They are alarmed by the hightened rate of Art Scams. Which brings us Artists and Creatives who create Original Art from our own Ideas to an unusual juncture.

Be it For Animation, Games, Movies, Prints, Or other media... what remains constant is that we make art everyday and deserve to have it all protected by copyright and Intellectual property rights Laws. And Of course reserve to make monetary benefit from it... By means of Salaries, contracts, royalties or sales.

Now what all these incidents listed above do, is not too pleasent for any kind of Art that is displayed online.There are demoreel frauds, and art theft By big Companies like in the case of The GI Joe commercial where they cleanly picked a Craig Mullins Painting.

Tomorrow this could turn very ugly.

Big Movie Directors/studios could surf online forums and take Original Ideas created by some smalltime Artist and turn them into multiMillion dollars earning Characters or use in big budget Movies , Games, TV series and other Products. What chance does a single Artist have against Giants Like Sony Pictures, Dreamworks, EA, AOL Time Warner or say any other BIg Organisation ?? How many of us have the Gumption, Guts, Grit, endurance, time and wealth to challenge these Giants in court ?

And what if This Happens on The other Side of the Globe. And How many Of us today know that our works may be selling in some part of the world in some smalltime Gallery or art Shop without our knowledge and possibly after being downloaded from Internet and fudging the signature and watermarks ? How do We Know that what is printed in Books Like Expose is not scanned and resold in some other form.... On a T Shirt, Coffee mug... or a MousePad ?

How many of us who post our 3D works and then the meshes in Online communities realise that some Lame aspiring Graphic / 3D artist on the other end of the world maybe using it as a portfolio piece to get JObs and presenting it as a Pitch for a new Project ? Same Goes for WIP Forums and 2D art with WIP Stages.

Some of the happennings in recent years, 2003 onwards clearly suggest a trend where young immature entry level "artists" tried to gain mileage by being a parasite on other more established artist's works and Goodwill.

A 16 year old schoolboy Named Dale Williams from Adelaide, Australia downloaded hundreds of artworks done by talented and famous 3D CG artists from around the world which they had themselves shared with various Art communities on the internet and displayed in their own Galleries on their websites. Probably he did not realise that Just downloading these Jpeg files, Fudging their watermarks in a Photo editing program and writing "Copyright 2003 Dale Williams" on them and Making a website claiming all these as his own Original creations amounts to Art Theft and Is a puunishable offence as per the Copyright Laws in almost all countries of the world. He was caught and his site pulled down. And Dale Williams became a part of new CG Lingo and CG History.

With the advent of Online Art Communities such as Deviantart, Epilogue, GFXArtist and Art Forums, A new menace is surfacing and will raise its head with more frequency in the future, ... The one of Identity theft. Today Even a 12 year old with basic Knowledge of Internet and computers can go and create an online portfolio/ Gallery of His own artworks. All or free. Its a great way to showcase your work and is probably the most widespread with the widest reach. But with it will come the menace of "Artists" or wannabes Registering at these art Communities under an alias of another artist and putting Deliberately stolen and fudged artworks of other artists... just waiting to be found out and the blame going to the rival artist whose identity and details they stole. Thereby maligning the name of an artist who has no clue about any theft who he/she is being accused of.

Do we have a future where we feel secure creating new and original art and feel proud of our skills and talent by Posting it online on Forums and sites or does the future belong to the Art Thieves who will use the Online forums/Galleries to download , plunder and rape us of our hardwork and make fortunes by creating derivative works , products and Legacies.

How safe are we in The career Paths we have chosen ??
Or Is it time we started working at Mc Donalds to make a living ?