As I had said before I had been discussing 'Fair Use" with a Bud of mine. Although he and I differ on our opinions about it, he did have a simple question for Dick Adams...
Greetings,
You don't know me, and I don't know you... but we do have a mutual acquaintance, the artist who contacted you recently about some of the avatar images you're making available at your Spooky Avatars page http://dreamquest.to/AV-Spooky-Misc2.htm .
You should know that I support your right to create derivative works using images you find on the internet; the state of copyright in this country has been a source of friendly debate between myself and Mink. For the most part, I subscribe to Lawrence Lessig's point of view in regards to copyright, and think the Creative Commons licensing approach is a good start at changing the way that system works.
I do think it somewhat hypocritical of you to request behavior from your audience that you do not yourself exhibit-- your disclaimer that these are original avatars (I assume by this you mean you created the image files
yourself) is fine, but to follow it with a request for others not to post them to other pages is dubious at best. But that is neither here nor there.
The reason I'm writing to you is to ask why you will not remove the avatar images which you created using artwork by these artist friends of mine. I am not demanding you remove them-- I am simply asking why you will not. As you do not take financial gain from making these avatar images available, I do not see why removing the images identified would harm your site. If you truly appreciated the images enough to use them in your creations, why can you not extend that appreciation to the people who spent hours of their creative efforts making the original artwork you based these avatars on?
They have contacted you and told you they do not want you using their work in this way-- rather than get into an argument over who has the right to do what, could you not just show them you appreciate the effort they put into their creative work by honoring their request?
Using the work of others without gaining prior permission is a reality of the creative process, and copyright legislation needs to be revised to show an understanding of that. But throwing "fair use" back in the face of an artist whose work you supposedly appreciate is juvenile, asinine behavior.
I challenge you to show common courtesy to an artist who has requested it, and not masquerade your own lack of artistic talents in terms of a larger problem of creative control & copyright.
Sincerely,
Tedlick Badkey
Webmaster, Vault of Perversions
(where these original images were hosted with permission once upon a time)