This topic has more to do with e621's commision rule then the law.

But I can't help but feel bugged by a policy that both violates rights (in this case owner rights) AND placates to this; regret-forgiveness, Im-not-accountable-for-my-actions/mistakes, me-before-you-because-because culture thats plagueing america right now.

All im saying is, if you commision any piece of work keep every detail recorded.
If i went to Disney right now and offered to pay for a white mickey mouse rip off called nickie then anything i do with nickie mouse is legal.

wut

Elaborate or STFU.

BossMan said:
Elaborate or STFU.

Unnecessary and ironic.

BossMan said:
This topic has more to do with e621's commision rule then the law.

But I can't help but feel bugged by a policy that both violates rights (in this case owner rights) AND placates to this; regret-forgiveness, Im-not-accountable-for-my-actions/mistakes, me-before-you-because-because culture thats plagueing america right now.

All im saying is, if you commision any piece of work keep every detail recorded.
If i went to Disney right now and offered to pay for a white mickey mouse rip off called nickie then anything i do with nickie mouse is legal.

What exactly are you talking about?

I'm so confused. What are you trying to say?

Pretty striaght forward. Guess I should've put one click links for the infirm.

preety fucking stupid

ok thanks for the art I paid u for I'm uploading this shit wherever I want I

I suppose it has been a while since I've seen on of these.

So you state that you're less concerned about the law than you are e621's policy on the matter, however, the policy is based on the law. Commissions are products of the artist, they are merely pre-purchased by the buyer as a stated contract of goods to be delivered. Purchase of the item does not convey rights to the purchaser, that needs to be clearly stated by the artist, and usually that is in form of some certificate.

e621 does empower the artist to have the final say on their products, unless they have instructed otherwise. Don't throw around words like owner's rights and legality, as you are not using them properly.

Furthermore, this is not 4chan. We don't allow people to verbally abuse others. If you wish to continue this sort of behavior, it will end badly for your continued use of this site.

In regards to the Disney thing, no, that wouldn't work either. If they did allow you to buy a rip-off, they can still claim intellectual property. Inverting the colors isn't enough of a distinction to be considered unique.

It's a weird separate posting from a discussion going on in forum #93432 about (roughly) what an OC owner can demand of e621.

Still the starter post makes no sense at all out of context and I can't fathom why he bothered posting it.

Oh... Oooh! OK, I get it now. Your opening post for this thread is very hard to follow. I think you should actually state your point instead of just giving examples and using buzz words. But what's done is done.

Not gonna get too into it since DarkAngel said almost exactly what I would have, but I'll add this as well. Most artists who actually make a living off of their work explicitly state in their terms of service that they own the rights to their work. Its unnecessary, but they're usually kind enough to put it in writing. If youre not comfortabke with this, read an artist's ToS before commissioning. Also, I think its worth mentioning that if a company pays an artist for a piece of art that the company wants to retain creative control over, they actually have to sign a contract with the artist saying this PIOR to the art's creation. But not the other way around. This is the first thing a hired artist has to sign when accepting a job in the game/movie/comic/entertainment industry... Shortly followed by an NDA, lol.

EDFDarkAngel1 said:
I suppose it has been a while since I've seen on of these.

So you state that you're less concerned about the law than you are e621's policy on the matter, however, the policy is based on the law. Commissions are products of the artist, they are merely pre-purchased by the buyer as a stated contract of goods to be delivered. Purchase of the item does not convey rights to the purchaser, that needs to be clearly stated by the artist, and usually that is in form of some certificate.

e621 does empower the artist to have the final say on their products, unless they have instructed otherwise. Don't throw around words like owner's rights and legality, as you are not using them properly.

Furthermore, this is not 4chan. We don't allow people to verbally abuse others. If you wish to continue this sort of behavior, it will end badly for your continued use of this site.

In regards to the Disney thing, no, that wouldn't work either. If they did allow you to buy a rip-off, they can still claim intellectual property. Inverting the colors isn't enough of a distinction to be considered unique.

To elaborate on this more, when you commission something you only purchase a copy of the product, not the rights to the product.
Those rights either need to be bought separately, or the artist needs to give them up later, usually also by throwing money at the artist.

What this means is simple, the character owner may 'own' the characters, but the artist owns the drawing, and retains usually all rights for reproduction off of this specific piece of art. If you commission him and don't buy the rights he can sell that commission further without the commissioner doing anything.
The problems would start if the artist likes the character of the commissioner and then makes more works of that character without the commissioner's consent, and subsequently tries to sell them, that would be infringing on the commissioners rights, if he doesn't want to make money off of them parody laws start working, and it's okay once more.

This is also all the more reason why companies buy the rights off of the artist, so they can freely reproduce the stuff and make money off of it, otherwise thus would be reserved for the artist.

BossMan said:
Elaborate or STFU.

your argument sux, chum, you should just give up now

To commission a work of art is different from buying pre-made art. When you commission an artist you are paying them for the talent you lack in exchange for the money they need to bring your idea to life. The artist can ask for the rights to the work and often will in the fine print/terms of sercive that most people ignore with TL,DR mentality and accept the deal. But wait, there's more! A commissioned work is not payed for untill the commissioner is satisfied with the final product. The commissioner is entitled to reject all works untill satisfied. All rejected work is the intelectual property of the commissioner and can not be used by the artist except in portfolios and non-prophet art displays to showcase thier work with(or without) intent to gain business.

Now Im going to assume/hope all of you already know about pre-made "commissioned" art and will not go into that sense TL,DR has likely struck.

And finally, I will not tolerate, pitty nor suffer fools and trolls. Tokaido did redeem himself/herself by explianing what I failed to get across in the OP. But no one picked up on the warning which is: Commissioned art, buyer beware.

BossMan said:
To commission a work of art is different from buying pre-made art. When you commission an artist you are paying them for the talent you lack in exchange for the money they need to bring your idea to life. The artist can ask for the rights to the work and often will in the fine print/terms of sercive that most people ignore with TL,DR mentality and accept the deal. But wait, there's more! A commissioned work is not payed for untill the commissioner is satisfied with the final product. The commissioner is entitled to reject all works untill satisfied. All rejected work is the intelectual property of the commissioner and can not be used by the artist except in portfolios and non-prophet art displays to showcase thier work with(or without) intent to gain business.

Now Im going to assume/hope all of you already know about pre-made "commissioned" art and will not go into that sense TL,DR has likely struck.

And finally, I will not tolerate, pitty nor suffer fools and trolls. Tokaido did redeem himself/herself by explianing what I failed to get across in the OP. But no one picked up on the warning which is: Commissioned art, buyer beware.

No. The artist does not need to ask for the rights to the work, they automatically have them unless they have signed a legal contract giving up those rights, which seems to never happen unless they work for a company like Disney.

BossMan said:
To commission a work of art is different from buying pre-made art. When you commission an artist you are paying them for the talent you lack in exchange for the money they need to bring your idea to life. The artist can ask for the rights to the work and often will in the fine print/terms of sercive that most people ignore with TL,DR mentality and accept the deal. But wait, there's more! A commissioned work is not payed for untill the commissioner is satisfied with the final product. The commissioner is entitled to reject all works untill satisfied. All rejected work is the intelectual property of the commissioner and can not be used by the artist except in portfolios and non-prophet art displays to showcase thier work with(or without) intent to gain business.

Now Im going to assume/hope all of you already know about pre-made "commissioned" art and will not go into that sense TL,DR has likely struck.

And finally, I will not tolerate, pitty nor suffer fools and trolls. Tokaido did redeem himself/herself by explianing what I failed to get across in the OP. But no one picked up on the warning which is: Commissioned art, buyer beware.

Except you're wrong under the US law.

A commission is not classified as work for hire, thus the rights are not transfered to the commissioner, but stay by the artist unless explicitly waived by the artist.
This is because the artist is considered a freelancer, he will only lose that if you fully hire him as a worker, with all other obligations and benefits that having an employee brings you.

For a slightly bigger explanation see Works made for hire.

Or directly have a stab at the US Copyright Law.

So, once again, you're wrong, please stop being wrong and educate yourself before posting wrong facts.

And if you want to argue against me you better bring sources better than the US Copyright Law.

NotMeNotYou said:
Except you're wrong under the US law.

A commission is not classified as work for hire, thus the rights are not transfered to the commissioner, but stay by the artist unless explicitly waived by the artist.
This is because the artist is considered a freelancer, he will only lose that if you fully hire him as a worker, with all other obligations and benefits that having an employee brings you.

For a slightly bigger explanation see Works made for hire.

Or directly have a stab at the US Copyright Law.

Work made for hire

Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code says:

A “work made for hire” is—

(1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or

(2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities.

In determining whether any work is eligible to be considered a work made for hire under paragraph (2), neither the amendment contained in section 1011(d) of the Intellectual Property and Communications Omnibus Reform Act of 1999, as enacted by section 1000(a)(9) of Public Law 106-113, nor the deletion of the words added by that amendment—

(A) shall be considered or otherwise given any legal significance, or

(B) shall be interpreted to indicate congressional approval or disapproval of, or acquiescence in, any judicial determination,

by the courts or the Copyright Office. Paragraph (2) shall be interpreted as if both section 2(a)(1) of the Work Made for Hire and Copyright Corrections Act of 2000 and section 1011(d) of the Intellectual Property and Communications Omnibus Reform Act of 1999, as enacted by section 1000(a)(9) of Public Law 106-113, were never enacted, and without regard to any inaction or awareness by the Congress at any time of any judicial determinations.26

So, once again, you're wrong, please stop being wrong and educate yourself before posting wrong facts.

And if you want to argue against me you better bring sources better than the US Copyright Law.

So did you read it? Because US code title 17 chapter 2, which your links refered to, says the employer of the artist is the considered the author of the work for all copyright purposes. An artist only maintains copyrights for their work if it was made prior to the purchase and thats as long as they dont sign any document, to include the final check of payment, the contains work for hire or similar phrase to that effect. The artist can try to retain the rights of an original commissioned work but only in a signed contract that has to be sent into the copyright offices. A reciept of payment for the commissioned work is all the buyer needs to gain all copyrights. The only rights the artist maintains is to claim the work as his/hers.

Man,talk about a repost. And it had to be longer then I care to write because otherwise I get passive-agressive comments about my intelect being insuffecient.

And finaly another warning: Commissioned art, artists beware.

BossMan said:
So did you read it? Because US code title 17 chapter 2, which your links refered to, says the employer of the artist is the considered the author of the work for all copyright purposes.

This where you are wrong, you do not hire them, you commission them.

Which is exactly part of what I linked to you, which you apparently did not fully read, it is only part of "work for hire" if it is done within the scope of an employment for a company (which isn't commissioning a freelance artist) or if it is, and I quote, "contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire."

A freelance artist, that does not waive his copyrights does keep all copyrights if you commission them, if you want the right you either need to buy them from him, or have him as a full employee of yours, which does not happen if you commission him.

If you commission someone you do not hire them to create something for you, you pay them for a copy of their work (which they coincidentally created because you threw money at them).

Feel free to read the entirety of the exception when an artist loses his rights here, especially the second part "Other Work-for-Hire" Issues which says "Some (but NOT all) commissioned works will be works made for hire under the following circumstances" which when goes on to list when it happens, which unsurprisingly doesn't say anything about still artwork.

Full time commission artist here, I work for indie game devs who don't hire me as an employee but as a freelancer. I deal with this specific copyright daily, Nimmy is correct :)

NotMeNotYou said:
This where you are wrong, you do not hire them, you commission them.

Which is exactly part of what I linked to you, which you apparently did not fully read, it is only part of "work for hire" if it is done within the scope of an employment for a company (which isn't commissioning a freelance artist) or if it is, and I quote, "contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire."

A freelance artist, that does not waive his copyrights does keep all copyrights if you commission them, if you want the right you either need to buy them from him, or have him as a full employee of yours, which does not happen if you commission him.

If you commission someone you do not hire them to create something for you, you pay them for a copy of their work (which they coincidentally created because you threw money at them).

Feel free to read the entirety of the exception when an artist loses his rights here, especially the second part "Other Work-for-Hire" Issues which says "Some (but NOT all) commissioned works will be works made for hire under the following circumstances" which when goes on to list when it happens, which unsurprisingly doesn't say anything about still artwork.

Really? You must be trying to troll me. You list the same link that simply states commissioned work outside of the nine catagories (which everything on this site falls under in one form or another) is not work for hire. The site you reference is outdated 2013 (new amendment as of Dec4 2014). Not to mention the site you are referring to does not give an example of a catagory that is not of the nine because it doesnt exist. And even if someone creates a new media to create art on/with, they do not own the exclusive rights to be the sole user of that media. And it would be only a matter of time the law updates to include the new catagory with an amendment backlogging the law to alter past exchanges of said media.

BossMan said:
Really? You must be trying to troll me. You list the same link that simply states commissioned work outside of the nine catagories (which everything on this site falls under in one form or another) is not work for hire. The site you reference is outdated 2013 (new amendment as of Dec4 2014). Not to mention the site you are referring to does not give an example of a catagory that is not of the nine because it doesnt exist. And even if someone creates a new media to create art on/with, they do not own the exclusive rights to be the sole user of that media. And it would be only a matter of time the law updates to include the new catagory with an amendment backlogging the law to alter past exchanges of said media.

Hey buddy, you're wrong, quit arguing.

Tokaido said:
Full time commission artist here, I work for indie game devs who don't hire me as an employee but as a freelancer. I deal with this specific copyright daily, Nimmy is correct :)

Do you sign a contract? And if so whats the general jist of if it? No need to disclose the entire document.

BossMan said:
Really? You must be trying to troll me.

It would be really weird for an admin to troll someone like this. Particularly when it involves going through this much effort and citing soures.

Do you have a link to the amendment? I actually haven't been able to find it.

Here's the amendment that was put into affect this month:

http://copyright.gov/legislation/pl113-200.pdf

I haven't read it yet, just found it.

BossMan said:
Really? You must be trying to troll me. You list the same link that simply states commissioned work outside of the nine catagories (which everything on this site falls under in one form or another) is not work for hire. The site you reference is outdated 2013 (new amendment as of Dec4 2014). Not to mention the site you are referring to does not give an example of a catagory that is not of the nine because it doesnt exist. And even if someone creates a new media to create art on/with, they do not own the exclusive rights to be the sole user of that media. And it would be only a matter of time the law updates to include the new catagory with an amendment backlogging the law to alter past exchanges of said media.

I seem to be blind because I can't find any change that was made this December, if you could provide a link that would be great.

As to the other thing, it clearly states that only works in those nine categories become works for hire, and thus hand over copyright of that specific piece to the commissioner, all other commissions belong always to the artist in terms of copyright, and nobody else.
This includes digital media (music, images, sprites), traditional media (a musical composition, a painting) and virtually anything else you could commission (fursuits come to mind).

However, it is important to make distinction here on which parts are actually owned by whom, in term of this page any commissioned image (and only the image) belong to the artist, period.
The characters in said images belong to whoever owns, if you'd be able to prove that in front of a court.

With this said, the artist is allowed to freely replicate that one image he commissioned to create as he sees fit, and ask for money, however, you could go to court and argue that he is making money off of your IP (the characters) which may hold water in court.
The commissioner however is not allowed to make money off of that one commissioned piece, because that image itself belongs to the artist, since he created it, you simply just pay for a copy of that work, as strange as it sounds.

Edit: Didn't see the link Halite posted, going to read it in a bit.

Just did a quick read through, nothing in the amendment about "work made for hire".
It's pretty much just stuff involving TV and cable.

I've made our position on this clear, whether one user agrees with it or not.

Something about the holidays sure brings out the...