Reposting and Image Ownership

[Rudolph Quin]

So, recently I came upon an issue and thought it might make an interesting discussion topic.

You know when you google a topic or go through the image search for a particular TV show, anime, or movie and a bunch of screenshots and even gif images come up? Yeah, someone, "made" those. Either they are officially released by the producers of said published and broadcast work, or someone took the time, while watching the show or movie on their computer, to make "screenshots" and gifs of certain parts. Sometimes, they even edit the images once they've captured them in photoshop and other such programs.

I'm not sure if there are any other Tumblr users here but have you noticed that there is this weird culture of "ownership" on screenshots and gifs and edits that people have made? How do you guys feel about this?

I mean, on the one hand, you have someone making two separate gifs of let's say Castiel and Dean Winchester - characters from the tv show Supernatural - and they splice them together in some art program to make the gif look like the two guys are kissing. It's a fluidly moving image that they've now made from two separate things to make it look like the guys were in one scene together. Not something everyone can do or could do very well, you know? Then you've got someone taking a bunch of screenshots of a scene from the show and putting them together, like a comic and the only thing they "add" to it is some joke and punchline in words overlaid on the images - and probably in Comic Sans to boot.

Is there a difference in the effort involved, both creatively and actual time and work, between creating these two things? And then, how do you feel about people declaring ownership over these images and going on witchhunts to get people to take down their work? Those of you who ever use images of actors or anime for your role-plays, character images or avatars and signatures could be in "violation" of this supposed fandom code of ethics by not crediting the original person who made those images(i.e. the person who screenshotted them from the show or movie) or asking permission before just "right clicking". Right?

Personally, I find it ridiculous but I'm experiencing a failure to really pinpoint why I feel that way. I do not consider edited screenshots and words pasted over an image to be "artwork" in need of crediting. Not when it's some Joe Blow behind his computer taking from something he didn't even have any part in making or producing. How do you guys feel about images taken from TV shows and movies like that? Do people have a right to declare ownership for all their hard, creative work when all they did to make it was click buttons and sharpen the colors a little bit?

 

[Morlock]

I don't feel they need crediting either, to me it is no different to the old school pastime of scribbling moustaches and devil horns etc on photos in the newspaper, it might be fun it might have taken some time but it still doesn't make it your artwork or for that matter artwork in general.

I see a correlation between this and sampling in music as well, I often cringe when I hear parts of an old song in a new usually rap song, often the only good thing about this new song is the old sampled parts.

Not sure on Fandom ethics but I'm pretty sure the reason these people credit themselves is because they feel they have just done something rather unique and think people will want to know who they are and click on their websites etc to see more of their work.

I don't consider it artwork either, it is just someone who thought it would be fun to alter a picture or footage to suit their own fantasy most times.

 

[LadyLarunai]

From what I gather within fair use laws, copyright belongs to the original copyright owner unless significant editing of the original work has taken place, this needs to be more than just a new background, text or animation, you pretty much need to not be able to tell the work came from somewhere else when side by side with the original.

With the images on tumblr 99% would be in breach of copyright as they own practically nothing about the image.

On the roleplay note there is never any claim of ownership that I have seen on used images.

 

[Thaedael]

This one struck a chord with me, since it is an age old debate in a similar community. I have been a pixel artist now since I was a young kid, having spent nearly a decade and a half in the hobby. The main issue is how the copyright laws work, and the variance on them within each country, and the ways in which they are defended. In most cases you would have to significantly alter an artwork to claim ownership over it. How much is significant has always been subject to debate (and in north america) subject to how deep your pockets are when defending your intellectual property. I could debate on this for hours, but I can understand where people are coming from. It can take effort to make something complex, even talent etc. etc. I can understand wanting credit instead of ownership. Where my understanding draws thin is on the quality of the work. In the spriting world, if you take a sonic sprite, change it's color, make one small change and say "Original character, do not steal, do not redistribute", then I have less sympathy then when you say, make your own sonic styled sprites in a derivative method. Then I can understand wanting some sort of ownership and wanting to protect the work, and asking for it not to be redistributed. I have done that on projects in the past, and have watermarked things, and people would still decompile my works to steal the sprites. It happens, it's annoying, but it is the digital age.

 

[Ms_Muffintops]

Not to sound like a dick, but it kind of annoys me when people try to claim ownership of a screenshot or basic gifs. If you prettied them up and then someone is reposting it claiming in text or tagged that they made it, that's one thing. But for instance, on my RP blog on Tumblr, I'd use gifs for muses/characters, but sometimes I'd like for the gif to be simple and small, so I'd crop it and/or shorten the length of the gif animation a bit.

Even then, these people do not have rights to it. Best they can do it try to rile up a hatestorm from the Tumblr social justice warriors bandwagon. They're not better than the people 'stealing' their work. They're taking someone elses work, posting the lesser grade content somewhere online, and claiming it as theirs. So what if you take that gif, pull it into photoshop, change it up a bit, and then repost it to the same site calling it something of your own?

I know so many people on Tumblr would be livid if they found out I did this to their gifs. And I guess it might also be elitist of me seeing as my major and work deals with the software that makes these things and really, it's not that big of a deal to me and if I made basic gifs and screen shots I really wouldn't care if other people used them and altered them. I know to some people they're doing some advanced editing work here, but in retrospect, they're not.

 

[Thaedael]

[...]
I know to some people they're doing some [advanced editing work here, but in retrospect, they're not].

Emphasis mine, as per usual.

I am not here to argue away your sentiments, or to argue you out of your viewpoint, since that is childish and never works. However, what I do want to do, is try and draw out from this a question that hasn't really been discussed at this point in this thread. At what point does a piece break away from the intellectual property of one to another?

When a person produces a GIF of a scene, essentially ripping frame by frame (or a set limit of frames depending on the quality of the GIF being made) then, to me, it is still the same. To me it is just the unlicensed reproduction of someone else's intellectual property, and is arguably against the law depending in the manner it is used, especially if you claim ownership over it.

When a person takes such a GIF, and adds text to it, it is technically a derivative piece. Then the lines get further blurred. Traditionally in derivative pieces; if enough of a difference has been made, one could argue that they would need to pay royalties, but would still have direct ownership of the piece in question. This doesn't happen with GIFs, because quite frankly, people will nbever care to pay for them, or defend them to that extent. However the precedence is still there in dealing with IP. So how much of a difference does one need?

What bothers me with your viewpoint, Ms_Muffintops, is this: how can you say it takes advanced editing, but then claim it doesn't but a line later. There are many ways to de-compile, re-imagine, and recompile GIFs, and I will not claim to know them all, or that I know them as well as you (for you stated you had a background in it). However, during my first year in university, before I decided on my current program, I had taken a scene from a movie. For this scene, I had ripped frame by frame an action sequence using a program that came standard on our computers. From this I drew on top of it for a few thousand frames, before recompiling it into one GIF. It is a derivative piece from a movie, but had been completely redrawn into a different work, though it followed the same action.

Which brings me back to the topic at hand. At what point does a work depart from one to another? This is a bit more advanced than what the original poster had probably intended, but as an artist that has dealt with the re-posting of work multiple times, it is one that is under-explored much too often.

At what point does the disregard for the time/effort put in actually begin to change to the respect of an artist's wishes?

This obviously is excluding the super simple, or crappy things that are easily edited.

Edit:
Fixed some spelling and syntactical issues, curse English being hard to type.
Also, as an amendment, here is an example of where the lines begin to blur.

[video=youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M41Lq3oplao&index=3&list=FLCdhHVeuNk49C0AcvzMfp_Q[/video]

 

[Ms_Muffintops]

I'm assuming you misunderstood what I said. I never said I seriously thought it was advanced editing. Making gifs and screenshots are some of the most basic steps when it comes to image editing.

"And I guess it might also be elitist of me seeing as my major and work deals with the software that makes these things and really, it's not that big of a deal to me and if I made basic gifs and screen shots I really wouldn't care if other people used them and altered them. I know to some people they're doing some advanced editing work here, but in retrospect, they're not."

Fact is, one cannot claim ownership or copyright to anything that is very clearly the original material of something they do not have the rights to or permission. If the original creator of an image or video can immediately identify it as their own, and they have copyright or documentation proving that they are the original creator, they can take action against that other person.

Photo manipulation is a great example for this. Most people who manipulate photos will obtain rights or permission to use the image(s) before using it, but if they do not, they need to alter it to the point of being no longer recognizable. This can also go for screenshots and gifs. They are essentially photos.

Example, this one:

Obviously there aren't babies this tiny, so someone took two photos and put them together nicely. This technically counts as photo manipulation and this is where we meet the border of "Can the artist who did this claim ownership or copyright?"

Can this person claim this as their own? Yes, but only if they have legally obtained rights and permission to all images used. Otherwise, not enough has been changed in these images to claim ownership or copyright.

It's protection for those who created the original content. People simply cannot take someone elses work, pretty it up, and call it their own. You can stick a watermark to credit yourself, rile up a hatestorm, and they can beg those who take it, use it, alter it, etc. for credit and respect for the work they did on it, but they cannot legally do anything about it. It. is. NOT. THEIRS.

I'm not saying people should blatantly disrespect the efforts people make to further personalize these images, but at the end of the day, if someone so chooses to disrespect someones work and the work they did and alter it or claim it as theirs, there's not much they can do other than to contact them and hope they credit them or take it down.

I will respect people who have done some work to the image, but I admit, I don't give a crap if they blatantly took an image and did squat to it. So to explain how I'd treat gifs on Tumblr. I'll use some examples:

I'd respect this:

There is plenty of shopping and personalization being done here. Does this mean the person can claim ownership and rights? Nope. All because the gif in the center belongs to BBC and I HIGHLY doubt they have rights to the image.

I'd be 'meh' about:

This person put a word over the gif. Congratulations to them. I'm not impressed, and it's all wasted effort if they think they can claim ownership over this. I'm not going to tip my hat to them, but I won't just go grab it and claim it as my own since they already doodled on the gif.

And I wouldn't give a flying fuck for stuff like this:

This I honestly would not care about doing alterations to. It's very obviously not their video that they have rights or legal ownership to and all they really did was knock out some frames and crop (or resize) it.

 

[Thaedael]

Yes, everything you said is what I feel. Slight misunderstanding on my part on what the intention of the quoted line meant! Glad to see we are on the same page. The ones you are feeling "meh" about are the ones I wouldn't even have to think to laugh at if someone claimed ownership on them. Like I said though, where the lines start to blur is when you get to more complex examples ^^. Taking two pictures and splicing them together, probably not, but then, at what point has enough difference been done? Those are the topics that a lot of people that like to insult content makers tend to ignore, and one that I often find myself grappling with.