Copyright law is supposed to spur innovation by guaranteeing your intellectual property cannot be stolen by another and used for the entirety of your life and up to 100 years after. This is the logic was used to compel politicians to make copyright laws that currently govern the usage rights of characters and cultural icons that existed many generations ago up until present day.
copyright
Little or no progress can be made in discerning the true laws in this matter of great importance. A search in google for copyright expiration yields the following results, "The duration of copyright in these works is generally computed the same way as for works created on or after January 1, 1978: life plus 70 years or 95 or 120 years, depending on the nature of authorship. However, all works in this category are guaranteed at least 25 years of statutory protection."
This is confusing to say the least, but one gets the feeling these laws are NOT meant to be understood.
Is there ANYONE here familiar with copyright that knows how find out who currently owns the rights to the image(s) below?
The first one is an edit of the last image here that was published well over a century ago, and is currently being sold on Fab.com
WE ARE CONTINUALLY SUBJECTED TO LAWS AND RULES THAT NOBODY CAN INTEROPERATE.
This original image below should now be in the free use domain if it was published in 1889, or has the company Fab.com purchased these rights renewing the tyrannical limitations of artistic impression?
Does ANYBODY have experience with these laws and know what court cases established these rules?
The connection is often made that copyright laws help spur the creation of content, if they are ever extending how can this be true? The human mind has a limited capacity after all, how many things have been left out of the public sphere since 1978 for fear of fines and imprisonment by artists unknowingly recreating the likeness of a copyrighted character in their original artwork?
How many artists would rather purchase the rights to images 100's of years old to simply alter them for a living instead of creating new art that might be considered a copy?
Did copyright kill the future of the American artist and reduce the quality of art in general?
How do I know If something I draw will be shown to a court by a representative of an "art company" as infringement of their rights?
Is it REALLY my job as an artist to be aware of all things created in the last 120 years or be reduced to producing art like the (sometimes quite literally) mounds of the garbage sitting in contemporary museums around the world?
http://www.modernedition.com/art-articles/string/string-art-history-3.html
An artist saw the "Death" character and thought, "This could be very profitable with modern rebranding!"
This would seem preferable, rather than continue the baneful progress of art history from the swill of human imagination.
Probably done in the 1990's so if it is protected this image will not be allowed to be rebranded for another 110 years!
That is a shame because we could have fun with this skeleton meme as long as the creator has been dead for 120 years.
ORIGINAL publication for sale on ebay.com
QUANTITY/QUALITY 1899
The artist is art's only enemy, I can now grasp the truth of this statement after spending many years framing the most expensive and absurd of artwork flowing into modern museums & private collections, and I am now proud to consider myself an outsider artist.
. #rant over________________________t o o l s ___∞ G O ≈ D O ∞