where'd it go???

[John]

twindragonsmum wrote:

So do words fall into the category of “trade dress”? Did I violate Windstone’s copyright when I wrote “Poad™ Ode” for Ski’s pink wedding Poad™? I don’t know… Was it inspired by Melody’s work? Most definately! Did I ask permission of Windstone to use their concept in my work? No, I didn’t. I didn’t even stop and think that I might need to; I just wrote it…

Don’t know if any of this makes sense – I hope I didn’t make it more confusing 😳

twindragonsmum

No, not words. Words would be Copyright or Trademark. I just now posted a reply in the other thread, Koshii Art, that provides a link to Wikipedia and goes on to relate a Windstone story and what I feel it adds up to.

[Jennifer]

twindragonsmum wrote:

So do words fall into the category of “trade dress”? Did I violate Windstone’s copyright when I wrote “Poad™™ Ode” for Ski’s pink wedding Poad™™? I don’t know… Was it inspired by Melody’s work? Most definately! Did I ask permission of Windstone to use their concept in my work? No, I didn’t. I didn’t even stop and think that I might need to; I just wrote it…

Don’t know if any of this makes sense – I hope I didn’t make it more confusing 😳

twindragonsmum

As John said, words do not. Words are more of a Trademark issue. Poad and Reptangle and Flion™ for example, are words that Windstone has trademarked (hence the little ™) “A trademark is a type of intellectual property, and typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements.” You can use these words all you want until you are using them to describe a product other than the original and are trying to sell it. That might sound confusing, so here is an example.

If you made a new kind of cola soft drink in your basement, and called it Pepsi and tried to market it, you would be in violation of Pepsi’s trademark on their name. You can say Pepsi all you want… but it’s not until you use it in a way that you are marketing it or publishing it.

If you made a new type of cola in your basement and did NOT call it Pepsi, but decorated the containers to look like this:

And tried to market/sell it… then you are in violation of Pepsi’s Trade Dress… which protects the look and style of their packaging. If you handed someone a bottle of cola drink with the above packaging on it, even though it doesn’t say “Pepsi” anywhere on it, it could easily be confused for Pepsi (except perhaps in flavor). Since Pepsi uses their specific colors and logo to market their work and associate it with their product, they can protect their logo and overall look form other companies.

Does this help a bit?

Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.com

[twindragonsmum]

Yes, thank you, that does help!

twindragonsmum 😀

tdm

[BipolarBear]

drag0nfeathers wrote:

Windstone isn’t a company any artist wants to have on their bad side. They have made it perfectly clear they rule the roost for fantasy figurines and further more paint styles/tecniques/terminology/ and other areas of what I have no idea existed in copyright law. It has almost damaged my faith in the company seeing all these upset and struggling artist getting pulled down like this. It’s just kind of sad… We’re all a big reason Windstone has boomed like it has and it’s a rotten way to show appreciation. If the artists can’t sell their art, they can’t buy Windstones. I know it shouldn’t bother me, and they are just trying to protect their rights, but honestly, I don’t EVER see Windstone being a company that has anything to fear as far some other artist putting them out of business.

Well I’m not answering officially or anything as I do not have that power. But here’s the way I see it. Individual artists making private sales to other forum members is fine and should be encouraged. So should display of art made by users for critiquing or just showing off. Where the problem comes in is when people start using the forum for commercial purposes such as advertising and selling their own product line. It would be like if I went into Wal-Mart and started up a Target in their bathroom or anywhere else in their store without permission. I would get thrown out and probably arrested. The forum is owned and operated by a company the same as the bathroom is by wal-mart so the same rules should apply in my opinion.

As to strictness with artists, something I admittedly know little about. I do know that there are unscrupulous individuals who have created shoddy reproductions of our work in the past. Besides the concern of them stealing our sales, they were damaging our reputation for high quality. People saw the fake Windstone items and thought Windstone makes cheap resin figures mass produced in China. Confusion can be very dangerous to collectibles.

Again these are just my opinions, I’m not in charge of anything on here.

I would help but I am just to tired to get out of bed today~
Engaged to a Weasel

[Starbreeze]

I think your Walmart/Target analogy gets to the heart of the matter. Windstone needs to formulate rules regarding appropriate use of the forum, post them where they are clearly visible and not obscured by half a dozen other sticked topics and enforce them. It would also help if a clear explanation of what is and is not infringement of any type, was posted as well. It’s a shame this wasn’t done on day one, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now. I don’t think anyone meant to upset Windstone. That’s not why we’re here. We’re here to celebrate everything Windstone. We need to get back to doing that. That’s what this forum is all about.

[keeproftheflocks]

John wrote:

But is it right for someone to advertise their paint your own sculpture business on the windstone forum? These pieces are for sale on a comercial website with the intention of them being mass produced.

First of all, I only posted the snakes here because i wanted some feedback from fellow artists regarding the pricing and whatnot. I don’t have any one here or on my website like that who I can run things by. I mean, my family said $5 was a fair price for them. That doesn’t even cover the costs of the gypsum and eyeballs!

And as I’ve mentioned before, and I’m glad to see that it is being discussed and (assumingly) posted in the near future; NO WHERE has it said anything about this sort of posting being against policy or rules or anything.

Secondly, I’m making these in my kitchen, with one mold, at about the rate of one per day. Mass produced? Hardly. Produced, yes.

[Maria]

$5 being a fair price? That’s a joke. Some people have no concept of how much work goes into real art.

[David]

starbreeze wrote:

I think your Walmart/Target analogy gets to the heart of the matter. Windstone needs to formulate rules regarding appropriate use of the forum…. It would also help if a clear explanation of what is and is not infringement of any type, was posted as well. It’s a shame this wasn’t done on day one, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now.

It’s easy to see how a situation can get out of hand, without having anticipated it and thereby put an injunction in place from the beginning.

I run a game shop, where, along with other things, I buy and sell cards for collectible card games. I encourage customers to hang out in the store to play games and trade those cards amongst themselves, or with me. It’s my business; I pay the rent, so I am the one who sells stuff in the store. Also, I am the one responsible for collecting sales tax on any transaction done on the premises.

So people trade cards back and forth and that’s all good. But then a deal goes down where money changes hands. Do I kick the traders out? Do I charge a corkage fee? Do I rant and rave? Or do I turn a blind eye?

To start with, I turn a blind eye. The money changing hands is small. The chances are good that the although the buyer probably wasn’t going to spend the money with me, the recipient of that money may well do so. This seems good. All’s well.

But then one day someone comes in with a box of cards he’s trying to sell to raise money for a new transmission for his car, and instead of trying to sell the cards to me (or after failing to sell them to me) he then approaches my customers to try to sell to them.

At that point I have to step in and do something, because this is my business place, and (at least while they are in here) the money in these peoples’ pockets is potentially part of my next month’s rent payment. Even if the person with the cards just comes into my store to hand out price lists, with the actual transaction taking place at the local coffee shop, I have to defend myself against what is essentially a direct competitor using my establishment to sell his wares.

But it’s hard to explain the reasoning behind this to people who are accustomed to treating my shop as a meeting place: if I allow and even encourage trading between my customers, why should I be so down on them for making other transactions?

I see Windstone Editions as being in the same place I was a few years ago, when I had to have words with a couple of customers in my store. I didn’t like having to say “Look, I don’t mind trades, and I don’t mind you selling an occasional item, but when you are actively soliciting my customers to buy your stuff, in my shop, that’s crossing the line”, partly because I don’t like telling people off, but also because this meant I had to actually draw the line that I could accuse them of having crossed.

Of course, being just an independent retailer, buying and selling stuff that I don’t own the property rights to, I can make rules up on the fly to meet immediate circumstances and not have to worry too much about posting those rules or enforcing them or having anyone even notice that the rules change from day to day. This is good, because if I had to post up a rule every time I issued a “Please don’t do that!” notice to a customer, I’d have the walls covered in rules and not want to work here.

But Windstone Editions doesn’t have that luxury: if they make a rule they pretty much have to post it and apply it equally to everyone.

[keeproftheflocks]

Greater Basilisk wrote:

$5 being a fair price? That’s a joke. Some people have no concept of how much work goes into real art.

I know. I once had an old lady (she was probably 70) tell me that these little stuffed dragons I make are worth at least $2.50. lol. These things take me about 20 hours of sewing/stuffing/finishing a piece! 🙄

[Maria]

😮 I mean, if a current-generation kid who’s used to nothing but cheap far eastern junk said that one could kinda understand, but someone in their seventies ought to recognize something handmade. Unless she meant 1940’s dollars…

[Stephanie]

😮 WOW!

[sunhawk]

If I may join this debate late, I hope that’s okay because I agree with the sentiment that it’s better to talk about these issues than try to guess or ignore them or whatnot…

I have to say that I’ve never felt scared to post anything of my art; either I felt confident I wasn’t crossing any lines or I knew the mods here are pretty cool and if they had to delete my thread, they wouldn’t do it in a bad way. I’ve been on forums where mods deleted whatever they didn’t like, no explanations. I’ve been on forums had that ridiculous ambiguous rules like “positive posts only!” and compared to those, I think this forum does a pretty good job trying to police some complex situations. And if my thread gets editted or deleted, no big deal, I would try to make sure I understood what I did wrong and go from there. I’ve always felt from the start that it was a really nice extra that the people at Windstone gave us a forum to post our own art, perhaps that seems kissass, but I honestly could understand them not wanting “the competition” to post, not that most of us ARE in that category but more about it being easier to enforce all or nothing kinds of policies: all art including other sculpture artists and even other casting companies or no art. They’ve taken a more complicated middle path and I admire the staff’s dedication to trying to find a win-win situation.

That said, I understand it’s upsetting to notice your thread is gone or get PM’s from moderators telling you not to do something, it’s just human nature, mostly due to feeling embarrassed to have done something wrong and “everyone” saw it or feeling hard done by because you don’t agree you did something wrong. And I believe in assuming people post in good faith, that if they post things that are maybe not kosher, it was done out of misunderstanding or by accident. It’s rough to think you have a grasp on the rules and then get a little jolt.

And it’s interesting how people’s attitudes can be relative towards their fellow artists depending on their perceived success. Some people’s comments here seemed to indicate there is a point where an artist is successful enough that they need to be treated differently than the rest of us, and that’s not anything new really, if I think about the point of this forum and that yes Melody is constantly treated differently, usually in a positive way because we all love her art! 🙂 But having had a few friends who are undeniably more successful selling their art, the interesting part comes from those who have an attitude that being successful makes those artists better able to coping with difficulties or that they have less difficulties. From what I can see, even a big “faceless” company like Disney has their own share of headaches, and usually they are Disney-sized headaches to correspond with the size of the company and what they do and how many people they work with. Again, I understand being on the other side of a “successful artist” feeling like I’ll never get a break, I’ll never get to their place, why are people so hard on me just trying to get my art out there, etc. I have spent the years since I graduated from art school trying to find that line between self-promotion and spamming and sometimes I screw it up royally. They never taught me how to market myself, especially online! But the best I can do is try things out, see what response they get, and then think how I can do better the next time. As scary as it might be to be told not to post certain arts here or post a certain way or certain amount, it’s still informative! And we get a chance to get the honest opinions of a lot of artists, not just Melody and John and Nam, but each other! I think this sort of discussion is priceless 🙂

[Duld]

well, as so many others I think that this discussion is very much needed, and each perspective makes sense, so I think that we all agree on putting up a RULE thread accessible to all a.s.a.p., to prevent future embarrassment for members, making it clear where the boundries are, a locked thread no comments on the thread, but allowed below, keeping it simple,

personally, I need clear rules that tell me what not to do, no fuzzie misleading stuff, cause that is a way for those who interpert rules their own way, both companys who make the rules, and the rulebreakers, (or just people like me who don’t fully understand fuzzie rules)

so my conclution is, I do understand Windstone for being afraid of their survival, (but in this case, isn’t it like an elephant being afraid of a little white mouse? or am I misunderstanding something??)
and I understand the artists who feel beaten by their Sensei

tough thread, hope it clears soon enough

[David]

sunhawk wrote:

If I may join this debate late…

That was a long post, and I had to exercise great restraint in not quoting the entire thing, chopped up into fragments, each with “What you said!” appended by way of emphatic affirmation.

When we opened Astral Castle, one of the advertising schemes we came up with was to go around the mall parking lots and put flyers under the windshield wipers of the cars.

We were charmingly ignorant. Not only did we get repeatedly shooed off by the mall police, but later, on finding myself the victim of windshield wiper advertising, I realised just how irritating it is to get settled in your vehicle and then notice a flyer blocking your view. I’d never do that again, but I don’t regret doing it then because we did get people coming in to use their first-purchase coupon.

As you say, when you are starting out in a venture, you may do things that prove embarrassing, but probably no-one else remembers it as acutely as you do, so you may as well let it go. Which, by the twisting of logic, means you SHOULD be willing to try things even if you may later look back and think “How naive I was! How could I have done that?” Naivete can be a great strength in the arts.

Back in my late teens I had the urge to tell the world I existed, so I wrote and published a fanzine. I knew what fanzines were about, because I’d read a few – they were about science fiction and were rather boring compared to actually reading science fiction itself – but I used the vehicle to write instead about myself; what it was like being me. Then I mailed copies to everyone whose addresses I could glean from the amateur science fiction publications I could find. This was about a hundred people.

I’m sure most of the copies of my fanzine ended up in the trash, and I certainly got a few replies exclaiming the 1970s equivalent of “WTF?” but I also got a few people saying “Wow, send me the next issue!” and a couple of decent reviews from other people who, unbeknown to me at the time, also did fanzines that were more about themselves than about SF. A few years later I won “Best Fan Writer” and “Best Fanzine” awards at the British SF Association’s annual convention, and I’d still not written anything specifically about science fiction, because writing about science fiction bored me and anyway was too much like hard work.

If you are to be successful at anything it’s probably a good idea to err on the side of excessive self-promotion, take risks, and not worry too much if you occasionally find yourself breaking some unwritten rules. If you get told “Oh, you went too far, there,” then you perhaps back off and try something else somewhere else. Most people won’t hold it against you for being a bit over zealous.

[sunhawk]

BRoS wrote:

well, as so many others I think that this discussion is very much needed, and each perspective makes sense, so I think that we all agree on putting up a RULE thread accessible to all a.s.a.p., to prevent future embarrassment for members, making it clear where the boundries are, a locked thread no comments on the thread, but allowed below, keeping it simple,

personally, I need clear rules that tell me what not to do, no fuzzie misleading stuff, cause that is a way for those who interpert rules their own way, both companys who make the rules, and the rulebreakers, (or just people like me who don’t fully understand fuzzie rules)

so my conclution is, I do understand Windstone for being afraid of their survival, (but in this case, isn’t it like an elephant being afraid of a little white mouse? or am I misunderstanding something??)
and I understand the artists who feel beaten by their Sensei

tough thread, hope it clears soon enough

I think it would be a good idea but I also think there will be some things that might not be so easy to write out as a hard and fast rule, some things are more contextually-based. And even the clear cut rules, there will be misunderstandings and mistakes from time to time, perhaps part of the modification process would be also with each poster, to be aware that the line IS often fuzzy and its up to the mods to decide one way or another and it’s nothing personal. There’s no need to be afraid to post, especially since I know Nam has offered in the past to answer any questions about whether something is inappropriate to post 🙂

Even elephants gotta eat, just sayin’… 🙂

[Author]

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