Artists copy, it is a fact. At art school, or at least when I went to art college to develop your style you would choose an artist, normally a famous one and copy their style. Of course you cannot claim this to be your own, and why would you, it's cheating, plagiarism, in a 'sue' culture it is a chance for someone to make money off an unfortunate person, but as children we copy to learn and develop.
Copying to develop your skills in the art world seems to upset a few people, personally I see it as a credit to my work, fine the copyright is mine but by all means copy it, learn from it and create your own style. I will not be at all offended, infact I would see it as a compliment.
We live in a competitive world and some are better than others and some overtake the well established artists. If you are afraid this might happen to you then you have no place to set up business. Business is fierce, whether it is a big or small company. I can no longer find original work, it has started from somewhere, been copied and developed to suit business needs.
I understand it takes years to develop a style, a business etc but people copy, hence why you see a number of TV shows similar to one another, songs that sound the same, paintings that are not dis-similar to each other.
This competitive world has created a few 'monsters' and now that we have the world wide web, people seem to think that commenting on posts in a manner that should not be posted, is OK, but it is not. Infact you could say it is harassment, bullying, particularly when the other side has apologised, an innocent mistake and will take down the posts but still the comments and harassment continue.
What next? Will schools be told not to copy anyone's work for fear of being sued. Will children no longer be allowed to copy their favourite Disney characters because it is a breach of copyright?
Come on people, get real. As long as that person is not making a profit from your designs, let it be, be happy, thrilled that someone appreciates your work and even found your work in the first place and appreciated it enough to copy it. Yes they should say where it came from where the inspiration came from but sometimes we forget, get interrupted, genuine mistake, did not even realize what they have done or even posted it unintentionally, etc. Peacefully inform the person to take it down and be done with it, don't gather your contacts and get them to harass the person concerned, particularly if they have apologised and insisted they will rectify the problem.
Get over yourself, you are no more special than the rest of us. Appreciate what you have and if someone better comes along either do something about it or fizzle away.
I hate bullying of any form, I see cyber-bullying to be a regular occurrence. I am passionate about never seeing it. However, I did see it and very disappointed by the people (including children) and businesses constantly harassing an apologetic person, (a person, not a business, or at least not yet established or even started selling products of any kind). Oh and should you go on a rant as to why someone should not copy, don't bother it won't be read, it may make you feel better but really it is a waste of your creative time and energy, because who can be bothered to read a ranting post? There are better things to be done.
There is a company that paints people onto Tote bags, I forget the company's name. I then discovered that there is another person also doing exactly the same thing, even to the point where the styles are so similar it is hard to differentiate. What did these two designers do? They accepted each other as competitors but who knows maybe they will join forces and create a much larger business, instead of bad mouthing each other and threatening one another. There is always space for a competitor. Another example would be Hello Kitty, I have a few of these things and what I thought was a Hello Kitty pencil case was actually a very similar design but I bet they did not go to 'war' on FB or Twitter about how one 'copied' or adapted their design. They understand nothing is original, it can be adapted and competition is out there.
The world has gone mad!!!
