Love Hijacked

A few years ago, I sketched a picture of a mother and child. I called it, “Mother and Child, Layers of Love". In some unexpected ways it is one of the most successful pieces of art I have created.

The mother in the picture, informed me that the picture has been used for commercial purposes. She asked me if I knew of it and if I had permitted it. I was surprised and investigated it and found that it was true. I took the necessary action to see that those who had infringed my copyright realised it and acted on it. Well, the matter is yet to be resolved and I do hope to soon.

When I mentioned this to an artist friend, he pointed out that there was a Facebook page with my picture as the profile picture. I looked it up and, very helpfully, the person who had plagiarised my work had helpfully put his phone number on the picture! I thought that was funny. When I saw his page, I realized that he was using my picture to solicit commissions for art work. That meant that the intent was commercial. I called up the guy and asked him whose picture it was. He calmly told me that it was his! He was perhaps hoping that he was about to get an order for a commissioned work. When I told him that the work was actually mine and he was infringing my copyright, he insisted that he had sketched it from a photograph. Then, I told him that if it was so, he was infringing the copyright of the photographer! I told him that if he does not remove the picture right away, I would ask the photographer to call him and ask him to remove it. If he still did not, we would both take action. All this must have sickened the poor chap and after twenty-four hours, the picture was off. The cover picture of his Facebook page is by an artist I found on the site Deviant Art!!

I looked further as to where else my picture had gone. I came across something that really made me angry. It was used on a blog to promote the celebration of Parents’ Worship Day and bad mouth Valentine's day!! I wrote a comment on the blog claiming my right and asking the blogger to remove the picture. I am not very hopeful of that being done. As of writing this, it has not been done.

I would like to declare here in no uncertain terms that I have nothing to do with the organisation that is behind the half brained controversy about Valentine’s day! I want to have NO part in parent worship, or for that matter, any worship at all! I am fascinated by expressions a mother’s love (human or otherwise) I react to it from the deepest recesses of my being, I do not look at it with rose tinted glasses. I see that that the source of that love lies in the process of evolution driven by the selfish gene. Does that make a it any less beautiful? I do not think so.

I also found my picture being used in glitzy filmy websites along with syrupy glorification of a mother’s love. I find that particularly offensive in a country where the sex ratio is all awry because of female foeticide. Apparently the male of the species deserves the “divine” love more than the female.

What these incidents and many others show is that in India awareness about intellectual property is very low. Perhaps those of us who are aware do not respect it all that much. When the existence of a land mafia is proof enough that we do not respect the normal kind of property, let alone the intellectual variety! I am not saying this as an IP professional that I am. I have come across the attitude of indifference often. Many artist friends, many professionals from different fields think that if it is on the internet, it is free to use.

Once, some artist friends and I were talking about copyright. When I said that one can not make a sketch from a photograph that is protected by copyright and that anything not explicitly declared as under creative commons licence or declared as copyleft we should not use, people around were incredulous! They even argued that it did not matter to the photographer in any way. The conversation was going all over the place when a wise friend intervened. He said something like "It will look different to you if the shoe were to be on the other foot. Just imagine that you photograph something and an artist makes a painting with it as reference and it sells for a million dollars." That is not the best of arguments but it sort of brought the point home.