TRACING, BASING, HEAVY INSPIRATION
ROYALTY FREE OR DEMONETIZATION
SOURCE, WORKS CITED, COPYRIGHTED
LEGAL APPEALS, OC DON'T STEAL'S
ART, AI, HBOMBERGUY
ARCHIVE, REVIVE, BUT DON'T PLAGIARIZE
MEDIA INTAKE, PROOF OF STAKE
NO [CONSOLE NAME]? JUST EMULATE
REUSE, REPUROSE, TERMS OF SERVICE
OPEN ROAD, RIGHT CLICK DOWNLOAD
FANFIC, GAY, FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
THE PIRATE BAY, DMCA
DON'T LOOK, DON'T CLICK, DON'T COLORPICK
NO CONTENT FARMS BUT NO CENSORSHIP
PLUNDERPHONICS & PIRACY
EVERYTHING'S FREE BUT NFTs!
audio id: numbers by neil cicierega
art theft, oc theft, plot theft, pose theft, pallete theft. i would know something about theft, now wouldn't i?
kids these days live in intense paranoia of their art being stolen. this makes sense, of course. people are scraping up art and shoving it onto bootleg merch stores, reposting without credit, or pretending it's theirs. unfortunately this has turned everyone into bootlickers for disney corporation. are we really whoring it up for copyright law right now? really? you'd think fanfic fans would be a little less persnickety about their precious intellectual property, but bitching about ai bros takes precedence, i suppose.
this essay will be addressing art theft as a concept and the myriad ways it manifests, or rather, the behaviors that have been placed under it's scornful umbrella. for anyone that has "MY OCS ARE PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT LAW" on their stupid profile warning, this next bit is for you.
if you animate or you are a fan of animators, you know that copyright can strike suddenly and strike hard. videos are muted, taken down, reuploaded with a shitty remix. this isn't even the will of the musician most of the time. in my experience, musicians are thrilled to see their work used in things. but alas, copyright. the entire genres of breakcore, nightcore, vaporwave, and plunderphonics are all at risk of being crushed beneath its fist. people's fangames are being struck down and becoming lost media. official games, too! nintendo will take down emulations of games that aren't officially availible anywhere, endeavoring to destroy art history for no reason but to protect their IP's. fanfic is pretty much always copyright infringement, and i'm actually not entirely sure why it isn't being nuked to oblivion more often.
and if you're trying to make fanwork commercially, you're kinda shit out of luck. you can't sell your fanart on a shirt without trying to fly under the eyes of the platform you host on. i've been there, it's a massive pain. it's your own art, but you have to break the rules to use it (or argue with the platform for months), and then barely even get paid. it's a nightmare!!
copyright sucks ass. it's bad for art, and it's bad for YOUR art. you can't use your favorite song in ANYTHING cos that shit's copyrighted. it makes it harder, not easier to get paid as an indie artist. whatever your opinion may be on ai or art theft or recolors or tracers, copyright is not your savior. it's a wrathful god who you must pray never turns its eyes on you, a piece of horrible jank inflicted on us by capitalism so corporations could squeeze more cash out of their precious branding.
whoever said copyright protects artists lied to you.
alright, losers. let's talk about ai.
i think ai art sucks. the images make me queasy when i see them and they're speeding up search engine degredation. but i don't give a shit about how it's allegedly stealing art. sure, your art being in my inspiration board before i design a character is 'stealing'. don't talk to me about overfitting, i don't care. what it is arguably doing, though, is stealing art jobs. are corporations going to pick the cheaper, shittier option instead of hiring artists? probably.
but, look.
this is the same shit that has been happening for EVER. jobs have been automated out of existence for as long as things could be automated. like, if you'll allow me to go demon hater mode for a second? ARTISTS are just bitching and whining because they never thought it'd happen to THEM!! like OHHHH art jobs are so better and more special than all the other jobs because it has """"""more humanity"""""" in it SURELY we creatives will be the only ones left during the robot takeover!! what's that?!! they automated art?!?! OH WOE IS ME!! THIS IS A UNIQUE ISSUE THAT HAS NEVER HAPPENED TO ANYONE ELSE BEFORE AND ISN'T JUST PART OF A MUCH BIGGER TREND THAT'S EFFECTING THE ENTIRE ECONOMY!!! WE MUST MAKE THE PROGRESS OF TECHNOLOGY FLOW BACKWARDS , but not for anything USEFUL, not for any REAL ARTISTIC REASONS, but only so we can preserve SHITTY, COOKIE-CUTTER CORPORATE ART JOBS run by SWEATSHOP ARTISTS that don't get PAID ENOUGH!!!!!!1!!!!!!!1111
ahem.
there's this entitlement that i've seen around in online artist communities. like, the sort that wanna become a microcelebrity, like me. there are people on tumblr that will get ANGRY at you if you like their art without reblogging it. HOW DARE YOU ENJOY MY ART WITHOUT BOOSTING MY CAREER!! I DESERVE A CAREER!! I, ~snowwwwwymountaiiins~ on tumblr dot com, should have EVERYBODY who even SLIGHTLY ENJOYS MY ART doing FREE MARKETING FOR ME!!! BLAGHHH look, it's not that i don't think artists shouldn't get paid!! it's that i think EVERYONE should get paid!! SORRY, DAD, i know that i am LITERALLY doing oppression olympics right now, but i have a hard time really worrying about the livelihoods of vector graphic designers specifically when homelessness rates are TOO HIGH and CONTINUING to rise! sure, your only skill might be art- (this isn't even true, you're probably also decently tech-savvy in a way your grandma isn't)- but plenty of people don't have any fucking skills, or used to work in a factory before the whole thing got torn out and replaced with robots. these people need a lifeline too!!
AND THAT'S WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you should support universal basic income as a political policy instead of trying to cancel culture the concept of machine learning out of existence. this whole thing just comes across as extremely bitchy and pathetic.
keep putting Glaze on your art to poison the ai database or whatever though that shit is funny as hell
let me tell you a story.
i grew up on this kids' website called Scratch. it was for coding, but a fledgeling animation community cropped up there. the terms of service of Scratch make it VERY clear that anything submitted could be reused by other users- Scratch projects are open-source, basically. there was this very funny phenomenon where people would just recolor people's entire animations to be about their own ocs instead? and an entire campaign came out called STOP RECOLORS!!!! and everyone was posting anti-recolor propoganda and life hacks to make recoloring really inconvenient.
as someone who'd made recolors before (and deleted them out of shame) i just kind of stayed quiet about this topic. but, y'know, it was the culture i grew up in.
one day, i was notified that someone was using my art in a project. not using the built-in remix functionality, just kinda, nabbed the drawing and put it in their thing, uncredited. and oh boy i was not happy about that. i marched on over to leave an angry comment, at which point this poor kid apologized profusely and, in an attempt to appease me, sold out one of their other friends who'd also used my art. so i went to chew THEM out too, and they snapped back with "at least i'm not the crazy person crawling through the website looking for people that used their stinkin' art!!!!!!!"
that stuck with me. art theives of all stripes- recolors, tracers, style replicators, what have you- a lot of them are kids. kids trying to figure out how to make beautiful things, but they don't know how to on their own. and my ego, whatever part of me gets offended when my art is used, isn't worth wasting time harassing random children. i have better things to do, and being stolen from is not a big deal.
i must emphasize this. Theft is not a big deal.
of course, things change a bit when it comes to the grownups, the conmen and impersonators. but ... well.. only a bit. for those that are actually making money- like, if you're running a merch store? i'm not about to blame you for reporting the peddlers that copy your shirts. it's what i'd do if i were you. but don't get it twisted- that's not a moral act. you aren't really asserting your rights or anything. no, you're just shooting down the competition, because you need money. i really can't bring myself to condemn those that survive on deceit. like, in THIS economy? i don't care that you're the one who did the work because i'm disabled and i don't think people should need to work to live. both of you are screwing each other over to survive, and that's all it really comes down to. like it's not wrong to defend your work or anything but it's not really heroic either, is what i'm saying. this is all way less of a big deal than people make it out to be.
we all know the internet's full of theives. in my opinion, that's just something you have to accept before you enter this place. i am unbothered by this because people stealing my shit doesn't prevent me from making art or connecting with others in the little circle i live in. it isn't really stealing, not in the way burgulary is. ideas aren't scarce. if someone reuploads my oc to their page, i still have that oc, and i can still use them. i can continue to draw, i can continue to thrive, i can continue doing everything that actually matters.
everything is ok. everything's fine. we don't need to make enemies.
SO IMAGINE MY HORROR when the art community started coming out with abominable new discourses like "POSE THEFT" and "COLOR PALLET THEFT" (?????????)
THIS COMMUNITY IS FUCKING INSANE, AND I MEAN THAT. people are slapping BIG-ASS, TILED WATERMARKS on EVERYTHING THEY MAKE!! i once saw on someone's profile "Don't download my art even if you're drawing my oc!! Most programs have an ability to copy and paste ref images into it" OKAY BUT MINE DOESNT?!?! GIRL?!?! don't even get me started on "don't get inspired by my art". "DON'T GET INSPIRED BY MY ART"????? BITCHHHHHHHH WHY ARE YOU DRAWING?!?!? WHAT'S THE POINT OF POSTING YOUR ART ONLINE IF NOT TO INSPIRE AND CONNECT WITH OTHERS??! COMMUNAL SHARING OF IDEAS, ANYONE??? NO????? OKAYYYYYYYY
i swear to god, we are in some sort of dark ages hell dimension when it comes to art. everyone's trying to find a UNIQUE STYLE, one that is different from literally everyone else's because your art looking like someone else's is a fucking sin now, i guess!! everyone's putting themselves in little boxes, limiting themselves and limiting others. THIS is what MY work looks like, THAT'S what YOUR work looks like, and NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!!! i'm gating off this little plot of land in the infinite plane of ideas, and it will FOREVER be MINE and MINE ALONE!!
THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID!! I FEEL LIKE I'M GOING CRAZY!!!!!!!
it's SUBURBANIZATION! picket-fenced plots of private property predicated on pettiness and paranoia! only fear and hate for thy neighbor! discourse videos for days!! she's copying my colors, they're copying my composition, HE'S copying my video editor plugin!!! if your design is too close to mine, i'll rain hell upon you! like, if you'd forgive me for stating the fucking obvious: NOTHING IS ORIGINAL! everything is inspired by other things! why is this a thing anyone needs to be taught?! art is forever in dialogue with the art of the past, that's half the point!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!! look. okay . forgive my spiel, but let's be real, your art's not even good enough to steal! your precious creations are derivative too! bitch, why the fuck would i steal from you?? your designs are boring and your lines are stiff, you think nft bros will be minting YOUR shit?!?
aauauauaaahhhhghghhhg.
guh.
sorry. where was i again?
oh right!!
i steal ocs from comics and games!
know the source, and you'll spot it a mile away!
personality, plot, bits of their designs!
i love to steal! i steal shit all the time!
i steal from friends and they steal from me!
lore, plot, character quirks? it's all free!
don't even have to ask! do whatever you want!!
what are you, a cop? get on my level, you cunt!
ok but for real most characters just kind of fall under a number of archetypes. like, you've got the cocky flambuoyant one and the edgy smart boy and the unassuming one who is just a little too relaxed about the situation. that's how Shakespheare wrote. at the time there was just a buncha archetypes and playwrights would recombine them in their own ways. every plot i make is an amalgamation of shit that i liked, and so i stole it. everyone does this! it's like cooking a meal! a little bit of this, a little bit of that. a dash of Paper Mario and a heaping helping of Homestuck!
y'all worry too much about your stuff being similar to other stuff. like, who cares. even if your character is literally a carbon copy of someone else's (impressive if true, really) they're in a different context. interacting with other characters you stole from other shit in other situations. if you're passionate about what you're making, the originality doesn't matter. your own artistic touch will still shine through, even if it's an invisible thing to you.
anywya ive had fellow homestuck fans spot my extremely obvious clones of characters and i don't care at all! just take shit! you can take shit whenever you want!! it's fun!!
i probably don't need to reiterate much, but, don't let the shitty internet conmen stop you from doing what you want to do, from posting your art and connecting with others. because, if we established a post scarcity utopia, art theft would stop mattering. nobody would need to get famous. we could all just chill in our circles sharing our stories with our handful of buddies. really, nobody needs any more than that.
except money
anyway have fun and steal whatever you want!! peace, motherfuckers!
- brak 4-21-25