As designers, we all work very hard every day at coming up with the best and most creative solutions for our clients. Sometimes, it takes a conscerted effort to get the juices flowing and develop original ideas. We do the research, work on the solutions for the project, and refine them down to the best of our ability to be presented to the client. What happens when a colleague, competitor, or someone else out there accuses you of copying or stealing their work?
WWYD - Situation 4

Here's the scenario. You're working on a freelance project and you go online to find images and ideas to communicate the solution for your client. You're grab some images to use for your concept board or to further study to create your message. You also get some verbiage or quotes from the Web to add to your creative process.
You find one image, in particular, that would fit perfectly for the campaign, but you're not an illustrator and don't know how you would reproduce it effectively. So, you place it in Photoshop or Illustrator and basically redraw it. You may even tweak the original image in order to make it "your own".
You present your final work to the client and he loves it. The job is a complete success and you go away from it with a smile on your face and a pat on your back. Suddenly, out of the blue, you get a phone call from an irate artist accusing you of stealing her artwork and threatens to sue.
You really don't think you've done anything wrong and try to explain that to the artist. She'll have no part of it and hangs up. Suddenly you're worried that you'll be billed, or served, in the next few days. What would you do?

The above scenario may have happened to you. You may "borrow" certain aspects of another artist's work for your own purposes, but change the details and nuances to make it fit in your campaign. What's wrong with that? Is that OK to do? Please post your comments here and share with us your ideas or real-life experiences.

Is this image a copyrighted the one you found fitting for your campaign?

If yes, then you are hot water! You are copyright infringement from the artist without written permission asking her to modify the artist's image (her/his work).

If this image is not copyrighted, then you are entitled to whatever you want, not artist's. Too bad for artist not register her image being copyrighted from the Library of Congress in Washington DC where all original legal copyright take place in its archive with the stamp of seal.

If you are not sure, then HIRE COPYRIGHT ATTORNEY to investigate whether the image is doctored copyright or not for you.

That's it!!!

Good reply to the article, hey where have you been all this yearsssssssssssssssssss? lol

smartsoft:

Good reply to the article, hey where have you been all this yearsssssssssssssssssss? lol

LOL, yearssssssss? Not even end of this year 2008 yet!

Right here I am back from my contract job nearly completely real soon. Sorry for the last 3 months hectic busy on website project.

@smartsoft

I think a lot of developers falls into this category of suable offence, we try our hands of images or artworks that see online but we don't look at the law side of the issue. I also used to be like that, i use to get images online and use for my clients until a client refused me from using any images I cant produce a mail or an authorisation note from the owner to use the image either by mail or by print.

So I had to register with gettyimages and stockimages to "purchase" this images , well I then add such charges to my clients fee.

what i do now is that I make my client undertstand the images are not free and so they have to pick the bills for it. its really not that expensive to buy images and save the trouble of the future. I know getty is expensive but stock is not that expensive , you can get images for less than 1dollar.

Also, you dont always have to go online to get images, atimes the nigeria enviroment will just be good for you to get pictures without paying royalty for it. If you are in the advert industry, its BEST you create your own images/pictures. pay people small money to poss for you and snap that at will.

Finanly I strongly advise, if the project you need image for is going to be online (then pls buy those images , or you settle with http://www.sxc.hu/) but it is local (Nigeria enviroment) print jobs , I beggi, download all the images and USE them at will. before oyinbo man come nigeria come see the image, sue you, e.t.c. , it will take like forever.

yah i'm in the advert indust and this is now becoming an issue maaaaaaaaaan i have models from nigeria that i an use,  beautiful ones  but see if i'm create just a press ad for a client and you tell him the models will be paid for and you tell him/her 100k for a  model what do you think will be his/her response now adays models don't want to settle for less my dear  and not just models it's depends on the kind of project working on  that will determine the kind of picture you will use


Now there is another stock that gives you free access to there images like www.corbis.com when you signup, you have the access to download their images without the watermark on it  a long time ago i got an image from there black african image,  only for me to hear that the image i'm about using is a nigerian girl

As in i was like gusssssssssssssssssssssh what if i use this image now and this baby sues me nko ? another thing i use it because  it was on corbis and i registered and the watermark was removed so i can't be blame for that abi? or wetin the pix con they find for corbis if not for use

dayo ki lo wi pe mo so na ? se nkan ti mo so sho da sha

My brother , I feel you but all the same you just have to keep doing what is right.

Sincerely it a BIG challenge and a lot of people are not aware of the danger behind using peoples images without there express permission.

I understand at time you need to do a quick one for a low budget clients , well maybe for such clients you get the free image stuff but for high paying client just try get images u have paid for with note that you can use the image.

on sites that offer free images, i think you need to read there privacy policy and there disclaimer to know that they are not really responsible for "anything" that happens to you after the download , so my brother you are still on your own.

I have a friend who work with a big ads agency in Nigeria and the guy scout for "model" for them, the guy does not pay big models for his job except if the client say that is who they want, but he looks at people, create a mental picture of the persons look after some makeup and positioning then give an audition to such person after which the person is given a crazy contract and signs off any picture taken within the confide of the contract for live. so you see why they have a high database of images to toy with all the time.

At time they also try to mimic any image they see online, provided they can't get a license of use for such image but would still want to use the concept.

For me , I see the challenge as an oppurtuniti for someone/photographers to build naija online picture city, where pictures can be downloaded at next to nothing price , and if it be you ooo!

Thanks for sharing the corbis link with me, i didnt know of it before now.

thank you.

All the best, and if you enter any yawa for any image, remeber to call yawatide of nairaland.

lol  can we buzz I'm me ? php_guy_uche thats my ID  there something i want us to do together

@ Poster. It is normal thing World Wide. You just have to becareful in using any picture. As for me that usualy design magazine i am so careful in the picture i use even here in Nigeria if you use one of this photographers picture without permission they will sue you and it's a big problem ( They will charge all your life for the picture) . There is one recent rumour that i heared ' Dimond bank went to use one of my photographer guys and the guy charges them millions .

sure ? tell me more about it just like father u-turn he sues MTN for placing his song for download with him knowing about it, and he sues them 100million naira.

Oga oooooooooooo

that ur friend that sues diamond, do you think he was suppose to sue them or the agency in charge! because i know for shuzzle any company that wants a model on their ad or creative works, they gat to pay for model fee.

@ Smartsoft. No be small thing o. I think Diamond pay becos they are the one the uses the picture. About the Father U-turn,I dont think he can collect up to that 100m o. If he use the biggest lawyer he cant get up to that.

It is not only modey picture you have to pay for. There are some environment picture also that are so expensive. I have a photographer tht sell most of is picture 250k.