How to protect your intellectual property

[N. Severine]

COULD GALLERY OWNERS STEAL YOUR WORK??
PROTECT YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY!

Recently, the topic came up in Artworld Market's blog, SLART, that some shady practices might be going on in the art gallery circuit.
(Read the original post and the follow-up discussion at slartblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/artist-gallery-contract-and.html )

It has been rumored that some gallery owners request that artists hand over FULL-PERMISSIONS art to them in order to display it at their galleries. (Full-Permissions, a.k.a. Full-Perms, means that the settings on the object allow the new owner to modify the object, make infinite copies of it, and transfer it to anyone they want, even if they are not the original creator.) If that's true, then those gallery owners would be able to sell as many copies of the artist's work, without restrictions, even if it was against the artist's wishes.

I don't know if there is any truth to this practice or not -- and I would hope that most gallery owners are fair and honest -- unfortunately, however, there will ALWAYS be dishonest people out there who will try to exploit others.

Please THINK before doing business with someone.

DON'T HAND OVER FULL-PERMISSIONS COPIES OF ANYTHING YOU MAKE -- if you do, you put yourself at risk for being exploited. Whether it's Artwork, a house you built, a script you wrote, or a texture you created, if you set the permissions to Modify, Copy, and Transfer, the person you give it to will have free reign to make changes to it and give it away/sell it to as many people as he or she wants.

Best practices -- set the permissions to either No Copy OR No Transfer.

If a Gallery Owner demands that your work be full-permissions, DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH THEM. They will be able to sell infinite copies of your work regardless of your wishes, and you won't see a dime of that income -- they will have ripped you off with YOUR assistance.




I will post more on this topic soon.

[albertosalomon]

Just to reply to "I don't know if there is any truth to this practice or not I can personally confirm that as soon as I joined SL that request was made to me, and I accepted due to my inexperience. I still have to see a penny (or a L$) from Mr. TP, but I stopped accepting that condition ...

[poesur]

I think the intellectual property at SL must be similar at Internet's world, as wide comprehension of the place of art in global society. The art message must be not expensive for people, and it way of self reproduce by author must be it normal way to arrive to the infinite number of virtual visitors we can have in Internet.
As more copies we sell or broadcast, many presence of art will be in the world, and this will reduce the posibility of dishonest practices. It is necessary to reduce the prices of pictures, is not convenient put the art copies more than 100 L$. We are artists, our work always must be for service to the culture, not to bussiness. Regards, Poesur Decosta