Messages sent to artists wanting them to work for free

Doctors and veterinarians too.

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NO, but if you posted a pic of your DVD case with the actors and directors name and title blacked out and posted, “Fuck you guys. It’s my DVD, I paid for it. If someone said, ‘This is a good movie, what is it called? Who are the actors?’ I would say I don’t remember. If you want credit so badly, then I should get a future cut of your profits for my advertising.” then you might be - or at the very you would appear bizarre.

Seriously, when ever I look to get a piece of art it is because so and so drew it. I very rarely pick up art from an unknown artist, but I would never commission work from someone I don’t know. Why you would pay someone you don’t love and respect and NOT want to tell everyone - “OMG LOOK AT THIS SO AND SO DREW IT!”, I have no idea.

My meager collection:

Kevin Eastman

Top Row is Howard Chaykin, Tim Bradstreet, Tim Bradstreet, and Dave Dorman.

One of my kids Sketches from Dana Simpson

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I thought people could donate expertise/work to charity as a tax deductible?

I know of a local soap maker who does that with the men’s shelter in town…

That makes me think of, say, McSweeney’s which doesn’t pay but can legitimately claim to offer exposure to an aspiring writer. It can be a gateway. And an important distinction there is they’re taking unsolicited work. If someone is asking for a particular tune that’s why they’d damn well better be prepared to pay the piper.

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You can only donate so much time, product, and energy, though.

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They can, but it needs to be their choice. I have done work where I then donated my fee, but it was my choice. I don’t walk in the door and have them say “but you get a tax deduction, what’s the problem?”

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I play one of those silly “match-3” games on Facebook. It’s relaxing. And for some reason, there’s a live chat attached to this game. Most of my fellow players are grandparents, from the conversations. And to a (wo)man, they loudly deride the idea that they would ever spend “real money” on the game.

They also like to incessantly complain about the length of time it takes for the developers to add new levels to it. With absolutely no awareness that those two things might be related.

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In the United States, we have the Visual Artists Rights Act which prevents owners of (some) works of art from destroying or defacing them and gives artists the right to claim ownership of their work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act

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Actually, a form of Moral Rights is recognized in the US under the copyright act (although more restricted than many other countries). Almost all commercial artwork will have a contract waiving moral rights - which is why you don’t see attribution on those types of artwork. There is often - especially with established artists or well known designers - a hefty fee associated with waiver of moral rights. It is not only a dick move, but illegal in many places to remove attribution that is on the artwork unless you’ve had the artist contract to waive moral rights. So… yes. That person was unreasonable for removing a signature unless he had a contract that allowed him to do so.



Here in Canada the case of Michael Snow is instructive. Snow produced an installed sculpture of dozens of Canada geese that were hung from the ceiling of the Eaton Centre (a mall in Toronto). When the Eaton Centre put red bows on the geese’s necks for Xmas, Snow sued and won on the basis that his moral rights had been infringed. https://h2o.law.harvard.edu/cases/2708

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People LOVE complaining about free ice cream. I think it’s our national pastime.

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http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2011/11/23/a-tribute-to-attribution/

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Am I still allowed to make fun of the ridiculous items offered in the Boing Boing Store?

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There are legitimate concerns about the effects of “yeah, you can pretty much only enter this industry if you can afford to live in New York and work for free for a few years”; but in our hopefully-not-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds there are industries where that is largely true.

It’s just that those outfits aren’t posting grammatically challenged demands on random corners of the internet.

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I know in Illinois at least you cannot write off Professional Services (architect/engineer) as a tax deduction.

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Meh. Sometimes I don’t want to talk about creative works that I own/use/wear/drive. Is it unreasonable for me to refuse to engage in conversations about my outfit? Is that meaningfully different from a painting on my wall, the stickers on my laptop or my tribal pattern tattoo? Where’s the line?

At the hilarious other end of this spectrum is Elaine’s boyfriend who didn’t want anybody else to have a pair of his glasses.

[quote=“fuzzyfungus, post:11, topic:84477, full:true”]
The line “You can’t expect to get paid for everything you do, sometimes you just have to do your job.” is a true masterpiece of conceptual confusion.

And what, pray tell, do you think a ‘job’ is?[/quote]

More importantly, how much are they getting paid for doing their part of this job? Surely if you can do it for the exposure they can do it for the exposure too, right?

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I don’t know where you’ve been lurking on the internet, but taking a glance at my DeviantArt and tumblr follows, all the pros sign their work. Students and other amateurs tend not to, but they are doing it for practice and fun and fanac, and they usually have other sources of income. But amateurs become pros, or at least learn pro habits.

As to photos with watermarks, mentioned elsewhere, generally a photographer won’t put them on work for hire (though they may well stick their name and contact details on the back). Anything that goes on the web, though, especially if they do stock photography, for sure:

You want the photo without the watermark (and in a useful resolution) then you pay the company.

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Was that outfit custom-made for you by an artist whose business is providing custom work? Then, yeah, removing any connection from the outfit to the artist and refusing to tell anyone whose work it was is not precisely reasonable. It’s also a good way to ensure that no one else will do the same work for you.

A lot of art can’t be advertised like a mass-produced object would, as a lot of its value lies in it being either custom-made or made in very small quantities. Those are usually the kinds of art that would have a signature on it, since the primary way for the creator to be advertised is through other people seeing examples of their art that other people have liked.

And, usually, if you really don’t want to point people back to the creator, it’s possible to do so… for a price.

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You can’t claim a tax deduction for the value of any services you donate. If a CPA helps their local homeless shelter by spending 10 hours reviewing their financial records, the CPA cannot claim a deduction for the value of those 10 hours.

I made the Steampunk Banana

I like it!

Drawings, fine art, they get a signature.

Yes, I expect this. But the jerk-speak in the image referred to “backlinks” or somesuch, which suggests to me we’re not talking about paper/canvas/bronze, but an digital image displayed on a website or in a program.

I have doubts that it’s a “come check out the gallery of digital images I’ve commissioned” sort of thing. Would someone commission digital works solely to house them in a digital gallery? Maybe.

It seems more likely to me that we’re talking about artwork for a website which has some other purpose (advertising a product or business, for example), where I’m less accustomed to seeing signatures of the hired gun responsible for the artwork.

Maybe I’m just blind to it. When I use photos I’ve found online in my own projects (blog posts and such), I always get permission and link back. But those aren’t works I paid for, just cases where I found something I liked, and asked nicely.