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Cyptic, stop using my artwork.
infinitespaces
Member Posts: 43 Arc User
*** MODS PLEASE ESCALATE ***
I recenty found out you are using one of my art pieces as concept art for your game. The forum post in which it is being used is http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=866911&cpage=4 (It is in the background of the final image before comments, titled as 'Concept Art' ).
The background is in fact a digital painting i did back in 2004 entitled 'Beyond Horizons' the original of which can be found here: http://hameed.deviantart.com/art/Beyond-Horizons-6738517 (I believe the crop may have been taken from the wallpaper editition downloadable via description)
As the rights holders of the image and as a professional digital artist of more than a decade with a speciality in space/scifi art I was pretty astonished although somewhat flattered that you chose to use my work, although i fail to understand what made you think you where allowed to do so, since the image is obviously copyrighted and you never approached me for permission.
My rights in the matter are naturally quite clear, the only reason i am here in the forums and not mailing my lawyer in this case is that i have been a lifetime subscriber of the game for some months, and despite its various issues, am a big fan of it.
Please consider this a slap on the wrist, and please warn your design team not to use my work, and to be more careful when choosing concept art for publication.
Yours Sincerely.
Hameed Nawaz.
http://hameed.deviantart.com
I recenty found out you are using one of my art pieces as concept art for your game. The forum post in which it is being used is http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=866911&cpage=4 (It is in the background of the final image before comments, titled as 'Concept Art' ).
The background is in fact a digital painting i did back in 2004 entitled 'Beyond Horizons' the original of which can be found here: http://hameed.deviantart.com/art/Beyond-Horizons-6738517 (I believe the crop may have been taken from the wallpaper editition downloadable via description)
As the rights holders of the image and as a professional digital artist of more than a decade with a speciality in space/scifi art I was pretty astonished although somewhat flattered that you chose to use my work, although i fail to understand what made you think you where allowed to do so, since the image is obviously copyrighted and you never approached me for permission.
My rights in the matter are naturally quite clear, the only reason i am here in the forums and not mailing my lawyer in this case is that i have been a lifetime subscriber of the game for some months, and despite its various issues, am a big fan of it.
Please consider this a slap on the wrist, and please warn your design team not to use my work, and to be more careful when choosing concept art for publication.
Yours Sincerely.
Hameed Nawaz.
http://hameed.deviantart.com
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Post edited by infinitespaces on
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edit. yes looks exactly as downloadable wallpaper.
Pretty nice painting, though.
I'm inclined to agree with infinitespaces
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personaly i think cryptic should use something from hubble. and not some TRIBBLE they found online.
If I look at the small moon under the star in the upper right of the STO pic, I see a similar star in your artwork. However, the 3 bright stars under that in the STO pic are not present in yours. Also, the ring around the star in your pic is not present in the STO pic.
Can you do an overlay that lines up?
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It's really close, but not exactly the same even allowing for zooming, rotating, and cropping.
I'm not saying it wasn't an altered version of the same picture... there are a number of images that seem suspiciously congruent. There are also enough differences to make me wonder.
Probably best to file an infringement claim and let it proceed from there. I'm no copyright lawyer and I'm not a PWE employee. We don't know if Cryptic claims to have produced the artwork internally or if they bought it from somewhere.
If it was a variant of the same image, maybe it was supposed to be used as a background for an internal mockup of the UI design and shouldn't have been posted publicly. That's only speculation on my part, since it's labeled as "Concept Art".
Either way, I'll make sure BranFlakes knows about this thread.
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its clearly a derivative work based on http://imgur.com/YjWu8hl and used to promote a commercial product. Copyright violation lawsuits have been won for less.
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
"How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports."
How much do I have to change in order to claim copyright in someone else's work?
Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent.
If this was meant just for internal concept art. It should have never left the artist's working folder. Its a bad, risky practice
Its also occurred to me that both artists might have used the same source material (a nasa colorized photo for example) and artist bringing the complaint may be in the wrong.
Um, remember; if you base used work is modyfied and varies by more than 10% from the original - you're SoL.
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I guess you didn't read the quote from the US copyright office
Anyway, at this point its a dispute between the two artists with Cryptic being entangled. We really don't have enough information to judge if there was a violation or not, and even if we did it would be academic.
The concept art image in dispute is NOT part of the game, and the starfield was chopped up and rearranged heavily. The parts of your work that are actually unique, aren't in the concept art. The parts they may have used look like random bits of Hubble imagery.
I find it somewhat suspicious that this is the only one of your arts to have the "donotuseplz" button on it....
*looks more* Oh wait... the art you linked ISN'T the best match for the concept art at all.... It's this one: http://hameed.deviantart.com/art/Beyond-Horizons-6738517#/art/Beyond-Horizons-WP-Pack-6764094?_sid=bef1103 Which you have made available for free download.
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In this situation, you cannot make a case based on the first one. Clearly the work was HEAVILY modified, and isn't even the focus of the image.... It's just there for background fluff. If you did win and got awarded damages they'd probably give you a few dollars in "compensation" and that'd be the end of it.
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Oh, I read it, however, case law on the matter will usually win out; and that's been the case for most claims like the OP's over the years. BTW - the 'fair use' clause (which was also mentioned in the post with the other copyright lawinfo) wouldn't even be an issue in this case as it's clearly NOT 'fair use'; as Cryptic was not doing a review of the artwork; or using it for academic purposes. As the OP posits, if they did use it (and that would be for a court to decide in the end should the OP pursue legal action); it was indeed for commercial/promotional purposes once they posted that concept art.
The issue then comes down to 'damages' - and that would be where the 'percentage of change' figures into the legal equation.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
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Hush, you ninny. This is different than some kid posting it to their Tumblr.
Anyway, OP: If you are being ripped off, ask nice. Then get a lawyer to ask nice. If it goes on past that I hope you got deep pockets. Good luck.
This isn't the case, but...
No identifying features from either picture match - the stars do not match, the planets are completely absent from Cryptic's image, and at no point do the nebulae match - the closest matche is the CLO "pillar" - which is against a different color background, broken in a different pattern, surrounded by different features, and illuminated differently in each. Rotating and reflecting Hameed's image can't yield anything resembling that background.
Only the style and the color scheme, both of which are extremely common in artist renderings of astronomical objects, and if either of these things were subject to copyright Hameed's entire collection and that of hundreds of other artists would simply all be violations of Chesley Bonestell's pioneering work in the genre.
I''ve got to agree with Booty Boots that is the same image.
I think you're got it right here. This image was probably put together to "sell" the idea to StanD, or for StanD as part of the pitch to get the funds from PWE. And it's "leaked" onto this blog page. I'm guessing that the level of governance for these blog post is pretty low compared to the that for tier one promotional and in-game material. It shouldn't have happened. Something for them to tighten up on
Thank you. This type of thing has happened to me before, it is likely that the image was never meant for actual publication and purely made as a mock-up for office use.
The image in question is without doubt my work, though somewhat altered to fit that particular purpose.
As i mentioned before i am a fan, and would add that i likely would have granted written permission for its use as i have done in the past, had i been asked.
My complaint here was more to prevent this happening again to me or anyone else for that matter, there is obviously some source of art within the company that needs to be properly verified, my hope was merely to make the management aware of the situation.
Must be They pulled it already.
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Yea it was there, they pulled it.
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from what you posted, I can see the match too. There's a ray coming off the large white star, down and to the viewer's left. As your image flashes between the two, I can see what appears to be the same ray, now largely grayed out, stlll in the same spot pointing between the nacelles. Looks like someone darkened the star but didn't remove everything.
"Nebulae, starfield, and planet textures done in photoshop, planets rendered with max."-from the deviantart page.
How do you think Hameed would have gotten pictures of those planets if this was a photograph, anyways? They clearly are not from this solar system.
As for Cryptic/PWE it is rather likely that they bought the art from someone else who probably altered it and claimed it as their own rather than just stealing it outright. If I were the Op I would be more interested in knowing who they acquired it from rather than warning them against posting my art but that is just me...
It is also my feelings on the matter that if indeed this is the artwork (even if altered) of this person then Cryptic/PWE should at least be kind enough to give the artist credit on what they have already posted but as the OP said that no further legal action was intended that this should perhaps be the end of it for the time being.
Its pretty clearly derivative and Cryptic pulled their artwork based on it
Why they didn't use a Nasa backdrop is beyond me. There are tons of them and in the public domain