BEWARE ARTISTS AND ILLUSTRATORS!!  Your work may be here in this nearly 7000 member group and being shared illegally!!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/freeadultcoloringpages/?ref=br_tf  This appears to be a group allowing their members to post copyright-restricted illustrations and coloring pages either grabbed from Internet image searches, Pinterest or scanned in from books.

So -- is the crafting world surprised we're here?  Stampers (especially those who make hand-made cards) have been hooked on coloring for years.  Now the whole world is jumping in -- happily grabbing all the images they can find online for "free".

Please don't anyone think this is a how-to -- it's a PLEASE DON'T!  A business selling artwork takes someone with originality, talent, hard work and ETHICS.  You can not just pick up someone else's creative property, add, squish, flip or erase a few lines and consider it yours.

Here are a few webpages with excellent information and examples about plagiarizing other artists.

Is it okay to make an image using reference photos? Artist BUSTED!! When has an artist infringed? Ethically speaking...

Did you know that the FBI Anti-Piracy Warning (APW) Seal is now approved to be used by any copyright owner -- including stamp artists (of course!) Artwork must meet these three criteria:

1. Your work is "copyrightable" meaning it's an “original work of authorship” -- even if you have not registered your work.

2. Your work is subject to protection under U.S. Criminal Code provisions such as those in Title 18, U.S. Code, Sections 2319, 2319A, and 2319B

3.

A year after Cute as a Button was called out for copying/tracing other people's work . . . still happening . . .

This was a comment earlier today by Kim Gwin on the post previous to this (Thou Shalt Not Steal).

Our problem?  A small HANDFUL of very loud people - all "connected" to each other,  keep trying to shout over Stamp Out's message about copyright violations and thefts.  Their strategy is to spew hate to try to distract the conversation. 

Why?  To distract people from the issue, because it hits too close to home.  This is the same handful of people every time.

We all know how easy it is to be an artist, right? You just find something you like, copy it as best you can (maybe change a couple of details) and there you go. Um no.  WAIT!! Stop right there. Copying even parts of an image is copyright theft.

So . . . yet ANOTHER so called artist is ripping off Saturated Canary illustrator/owner Krista Smith, whose original work you can see in her shop.

Mo had a great idea yesterday... so the artists of Stamp Out decided to have some extra fun with the images from the “Owl the Same….or Not” blog hop. 

For the hop, we demonstrated how following a specific theme is not the same as copying, and now those same artists are showing that looking at someone else’s art and drawing from it is copyright infringement…even if you make some changes to the image and do not trace.

"Owl the Same...or Not"  BLOG Hop

Many of the members of Stamp Out will be participating in a blog hop on Monday and Tuesday, October 14th and 15th, starting at 5:00 am.  The artists will be designing images especially for this hop, using the theme of a small owl and a large owl perched on a fence on a "chilly" day.  It is our hope that we will illustrate to the crafting community how an image can have the same theme, yet show the unique interpretation of the illustrator.