Sometimes I like to surf the web, as many do (not even just on work time). Learning new techniques, learning about other artists and styles, sometimes just perusing the many different voices out there, it’s a great experience.

I also get to see so many wonderful artists get their work stolen on a regular basis by jackasses who have no real talent at anything. Other than a talent for larceny I suppose.

by Stealy McStealSteal

I’m not talking about the authors and publishers that post their covers on their website (with proper attribution of course, see my last rant). I’m not even talking about those authors who use parts of art from their books for their website designs. After all, if their books do well, it stands to reason that I might do well too. Promotion is something we expect, and honestly it helps the author, publisher and the artist.

No, what I’m talking about it is a far worse thing. People who find some piece of art on the web and assume that, since it’s on the web, it’s for everyone to use for free and at will. As if the very posting of art on the web suddenly makes it fair game to use that art on anything they want.

Certainly there are levels to this. For starters, there are the people that simply don’t know better.

Which is an idiotic excuse, but let’s just roll with it. These people don’t realize that artists often put their work online to promote their craft, and their love and passion for what they do. They want others to come to their site and view their works, and hopefully, if folks like the work, might commission them for more work. They hope to eventually escape the dungeon-like atmosphere of a day job, to pursue what they love full-time and maybe get some respect.

A little education for those folks might help, so here it is: Just because it’s on the web, doesn’t mean it’s A) free or B) yours to do anything with. The artist owns it, or possibly a publisher, but that’s it. That’s the end of the list. You don’t own it. Feel free to point your friends towards our sites, we love that. But don’t just take our work. Especially without the credit.

Credit leads us to our next level, those who have nothing to do with the artist’s work, but are happy to use our work anyway. These are folks that make their website headers out of our work, or use our work in ads and other promotions for their own work, without asking or even finding out who the artist is. There’s no way there’ll be any mention of the artist either, not that it would really matter. They feel that since it’s on the web, and it’s relevant to what they do, that the artist wouldn’t mind them using it. Say, if they write about zombies, they just grab any zombie art on the web for their headers and ads.

See, in the real world, we call that being a dick.

I assume you won’t mind either if I come over to your crappy little basement room in your mom’s house and grab your X-Box. I mean, I realize, as a thirty-five year-old living at your mom’s, it’s your only outlet (other than trolling and stealing other people’s work). But I need to prove to the neighbors that I’m awesome too, so you won’t mind if I have it at my house.

Of course you’d mind, and that’s the point. You didn’t ask if I’d support your website, and I don’t do the art for free (wait… I feel another rant coming on). Being an illustrator who would rather not see his kids starve to death, I get paid to do the work, and my publishers get the ability to use the art for their own works, for their promotions, whatever we’ve agreed they need to use them for.

You and I didn’t agree to anything. So take my art out of your header, your website, or wherever else you’re using it, and stop being a dick.

Lastly, we have the worst scum of all. Those who are using the artist’s work for their own projects, even going so far as making sure the artist’s name doesn’t appear anywhere near the art.

These are people who will take the art from the site and promote it as their own, or put it on their own self-published books. Or those that copy the work down to the smallest details and claim it as their work with a little color change (look up “plagiarism” in the dictionary; I’ll wait here). There are even the people that take the art and make CD-ROMs of desktop wallpapers to sell to everyone else, and never with any credit or mention of the artist.

Two words for those people: fuck you.

Artists spend years, hell, even decades, to learn how to do what they do. They slave for hours, days and weeks over their work, and in the end they hope to see it used to a proper end. Publishers (and even the public, in the way of prints) pay to use that work, which gets the artist noticed, leads to more artwork, and generally helps the artist survive (monetarily and psychologically) in a rough world.

Then these assholes come along to convince the world that it’s really their work, and make money on what we do while we slave away for the man. They take our work without asking and put in on their CD-ROMs, on their books, even in their galleries as if it’s their work.

Then we can no longer sell our work to our fans as prints. We can no longer get paid commissions from publishers to do work. The art is suddenly everywhere, ready to be purchased by anyone, without a penny going to the artist.

It’s not your work, and it never will be. All you’ve done is steal from someone, no different than if you hopped in their car and drove away with their first born to show your neighbors your new kid.

Artists don’t always let people use their art for websites, and they normally have their reasons. This is our bread and butter, this is how we feed our children and buy games for your X-Box. We may even not be able to allow your use of our work, based on contracts we have with the publisher. Contracts that could be nullified when the publisher sees the work somewhere else, and our kids go hungry again.

We artists love to entertain, to provoke emotion, to move our audiences with our gifts. We don’t love to see that stolen from us, taken by others who have no ability, no tact, and no honor.

To have someone steal our work first hurts our pocketbooks, then it hurts our hearts.

Russell Dickerson has been published as a genre artist since 1999, in the UK, US and Australian genre press. He was honored to be included in the prestigious Spectrum annual (#9), and has worked on projects for the British Fantasy Society, Subterranean Press, Cemetery Dance, and many others. Along with appearing in recent issues of Cemetery Dance Magazine, he also created a number of illustrations for author Brian Keene’s Scratch. Visit his website galleries and blogs at www.darkstormcreative.com.