Hello Steemit community!
I don't know if it happen to you but It's hard for me to see the tiny "line" between breaking a copyright and not, there are so many particular difficult cases... it might be hard to guess when you own a piece of art and when you don't, in other words, when you will face copyright troubles and when you won't. To clarify, an art piece can be can be any kind of: sculpture, drawing, photography, painting, songs and others related to the subject.
I believe it's really important for any kind of artist to know as much as they can about copyright. Personally, I don't like at all to take any credit for others work/effort, we have to respect others so others can respect us, right? In this post I will write some questions with examples where it's extremely difficult to guess if the copyright is being a problem. I would like to give a propper answer to every question but this post is intended to point out how tricky can be anything related to copyright. Anyway if there are any expert on laws, art or any other subjects related I would appreciate if you can/want to help answering this questions through comments section.
Maybe I will make another post with the best understandable information I can gather about copyright wich will include the examples plus all the knowledge shared by you here. The creation of this new post will depend on your interest about this matter.
Well lets get started:
1 Is it legal to use any reference of known characters in any kind of art? am I able to use a character popularity to make comissions related to it and get some benefits?
Example: I'm sure you have seen those drawings on internet in which another artist who doesn't own the rights of any popular character create a drawing of it changing it's usual clothes like using Goku (from Dragon Ball Z anime/manga) but with some christmas clothes to attract attention (followers) and do some art comissions to earn some benefits even when the artist currently drawing the character do not own it's rights. It seems this doesn't "break" the copyright but I don't know exactly where is the limit of using a popular character to earn benefits.
2 May I use a known brand on my drawing, photo, song, sculpture to get more attention without being in any copyright
trouble? If I implement the name of a big company on my story, sketch, draw, paint or another business may I get in trouble?
Example: Using Burger King (a well known food franchise) inside of an anime but with a "variation" of it's name like "Burger Queen". Funny because in the anime you see the same colors Burger King has and many other things related directly to this popular brand. Well this is supposed to be justified when the anime/manga belongs to parody genre but I have seen this kind of thing on other anime genres too. Again I don't know how far you can do this without having copyright issues.
3 Why I can sing a popular song "a capela" (without the musical instruments help) but can't sing the same song "as it is" found on the album?
Example: If you have "Imagine" song of John Lennon singer in your youtube video as your musical background you will have so much trouble with copyright, probably in some hours/days your video will be deleted and you'll be warned of not doing this again but If you sing "Imagine" or make a cover of it then put it on your youtube video as your musical background it's difficult to find any copyright problem.
4 Why I can't develop a game using references from other anime/manga/comic?
Example: You are searching a game to spend some of your spare time then you find a Pokemon browser game called "Pokemon: Pikachu learn to play piano" (this game doesn't exist as far as I know lol, I just created a random one to explain better this point) that seems entertaining, you register on the game and start playing it. After some weeks/months you discover a message on the game main page saying "We will shut down our servers next month, thanks for supporting us" or worst the webpage doesn't work and you take some days to realize it won't come back. In this case Pokemon owners permission is a "must have" if they wanted to earn benefits from the game they had developed...
This case seem similar to the one explained on point 1 but somehow they have different results, maybe if the game is not popular enough the big company which owns the right of the anime/characters used on the game won't bother to involve you in legal problems but that doesn't make it legal anyway.
5 If I take the smile of one character owned by Author "A", the dress of another character owned by Author "B", the fighting stance owned by Author "C" and add some things made by me (haircut, eyes, accesories and other minor details) to make a drawing... it belongs to me or I have to share the copyright?
Example: You want to create a hybrid between Vegeta (Dragon Ball) and Sasuke (Naruto), basically your character mood will be similar to the one Sasuke has, it will have the same haircut and a similar armor Vegeta have. You start drawing this character taking on count you want him to appear in any Judo fighting stance and want him to have some scars on the face, a nice gauntlet on the right hand, and a dragon tatoo on his back. After is finished you create some kind of history explaining why he can use fire element and say too many bad words in one tiny exclamation/sentence. Would you get benefit from this character somehow without being accused of breaking Dragon Ball or Naruto copyright? I don't have a clue about it.
6 If I like "X" musical band too much to create a band with my friends that is too similar in music style, lyrics and maybe
the dressing... Will I have copyright issues?
Example: Evanescence vs We are the fallen... Almost everybody in this world know Evanescence and maybe some of you heared about We are the fallen. Both bands share the same musical genre, We are the fallen had many Evanescence ex-members, the lyrics on We are the fallen songs are too similar to the ones found on Evanescence songs and many other things that will lead you to think both bands are the same thing or We are the Fallen some kind of Evanescence's extension. It's hilarious because if you try to search for any copyright problems you will not find any.
7 If I have a photo from my favourite actor/actress and use photoshop to change it's brightness, create another background or mix it with a photo from a 100% original photo... will I own the result? Can I sell it?
Example: Take a photo you like from Angelina Jolie instagram then use your knowledge to mix this photo with any other images and create something unique and amazing. Will you have any trouble if you try to get benefit from this? I don't know.
8 If I have a company may I use a celebrity image to boost my product?
Example: You are about to open your gym and you want to have as many clients as you can then you have the idea of using Cristiano Ronaldo and Jessica Alba images to boost your marketing/advertising strategy... Well if you are lucky maybe you won't have any issue but if you aren't you will have as many problems as Taco Bell had when they started some years ago an ad campaing using 50 cent image.
Note: I have to clarify my intention with this post is not to criticize something just to point out how tricky it can be to know when you can face a copyright problem.
Hope this post wasn't boring and thanks for reading it. Any advice/help/opinion will be much appreciated it and if you see some kind of error/mistake/missinformation please write a comment that way I can fix it.