This is one of those interesting dilemmas where there is no right answer. Thinking out loud as to how I would react in the same situation...

First, I would be very irked.
Second, I would try to figure out why it irked me. Two thoughts come to mind. First, I would be irked because it is MY work and I am getting no credit for it. With my friend, at last I get appreciation and the knowledge that s/he will think kindly of me whenever s/he looks at the print. A poor mass reproduction on a copy machine, passed around to unknown (?) others demeans me and my work as though it were just another dime-a-dozen crude snapshot. Second, as several others have said, there is the matter of personal pride in what you do. Worse even than the recipients treating the copied prints as an anonymous snapshot would be for them to know who it came from and to think that the quality of the print was a true representation of your work. So, yes I would still be irked. Do I want to make a big deal of it? Probably not. As a variation on what others have suggested, I would probably tell my former friend why I was irked, dwelling on the quality issue as much as anything. "I just do not feel comfortable knowing that people have poor quality reproductions of my work." Offer, for the cost of materials, to make good prints for others in the family as long as you can get back and destroy all of the bad prints. At the end of the conversation, an oh-by-the-way, "you should tell your father-in-law that he can get in serious legal trouble making unauthorized reproductions of artwork." S/he won't get it, the father- in-law won't get it if s/he passes that on, but at least you have made the point that what they did was not only rude and thoughtless, but also illegal.

Finally, again as others have suggested, I would resolve to re-ink my copyright stamp and remember to use it next time.

Not that it has done Dave much good. But he deals with horse people and everyone knows what that crowd is like.

stan


On 13/5/09, Christine Aguila, offered up the following dilemma:

I'd very much like to know everyone's views about something that has just
happened to me; here's the story:

I gave a nice print--as a gift--to a friend. My friend's father- in-law took the print to get it framed, and come to find out, he also made some scans of the print and gave them to family members. I'm just going to come out and say it--I'm really irked by this. I often sign my prints in the lower right
hand edge, but I didn't on this print.

How irked would you guys be? What, if anything, would you guys do or say?



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