This morning I took a peek at Renderosity, my old graphics stomping grounds. Is there a new version of Poser that I can continue to reject? Apparently not.

The first discussion I saw was this discovery of AI.

Almost everyone seemed to be completely gobsmacked by text-to-art AI websites. One of the older guys was more familiar with the situation, and especially familiar with the copyright complications.

One of the youngsters said “Just slap your signature on it, and voila!” The older guy correctly warned that it’s not so simple. If you intend to make real money from art, as in distributing via a real publisher or big media, you need to be extremely precise about copyright laws.

I just spent three weeks editing thousands of HTML files to switch in some images that were finally usable after the new small publisher paid Big Bucks to the earlier big NYC publisher for full usage rights. The big NYC publisher had given us a ‘revert’ contract several years ago, which supposedly granted all rights, but then they decided that not everything was ‘reverted’.

“Contracts” don’t exist.  “Laws” don’t exist.   “Facts” don’t exist.

Status exists.  Power exists.  Wealth exists. Evil exists.

Rich wins, poor dies.

Intrinsic “copyright” will NOT protect you from theft unless you have a larger and fiercer team of lawyers than the thief.

But intrinsic “copyright” MAY prevent ordinary people from using and preserving your art.

If you want to leave a legacy, make sure your work is explicitly UNcopyrighted.