Art theft by GameSpy

A licensed piece of public property is different then a private work of art, mr. know it all. Characters from famous, or well reknown - or even not well known - pieces of art that have been SOLD as such in a manga, magazine, comic, game, story, book, movie, series, tv, or film, are free to use by and for the public, as they not only promote the product and company, but increase their sales and their PR.

Actually, this statement is not true. If anything, published and licensed works of art (book covers, game boxes, TV/movies, game screen shots, etc ) are even MORE off limits than private works! Those images are copyrighted to the companies who published them. Technically speaking, all fan art is a violation of the original artists and the licensed publishers copyrights.

This truth was more than likely the catalyst for GameSpys' Avatars Inc site actually being pulled since they were in fact using licensed characters (from the likes of WotC, Disney, Square, Fox, MGM, etc) without permission from the respective studios who's works were swiped. The individual artists really couldn't afford to do anything more than complain, but those major companies have both the right and power to sue.

So even as artists (espcially as artists!), we should be mindful of where our own art is coming from. I personally won't do fan art anymore and i never use any other artists work without permission. In fact, my husband and i recently began a webpage for our FFXI linkshell and i wouldn't even let him use screenshots that we took from beta on our webpage until we got permission first.


Anyway, in response to this:

Only time you should get worked up is if the artist tells gamespy to remove it but they refuse to, thats a WHOLE different story.

It's only fair to point out that the artists DID ask them to remove the images, but Avatars Inc told the artists they had to hunt throught their 11,000+ avatars themselves to find whatever pieces needed to be removed and then gave no indication that they would not continue to "find" art on the internet (which meant the even after the works were removed, there were no guarantees that it wouldn't be put back up later). That, coupled with the rather apathetic (and at times even hateful) attitude they gave the artists who complained made the whole matter far worse than it ever needed to be.