We are so used to seeing sweet and clever images all over Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Do you know who originally created that content? Do you know how to find it? This has been an ongoing problem in the Magic: the Gathering (MtG) community that when new art is released from Wizards of the Coast, the artists are not tagged, and they do not find out that their work has been publicly released. It has started a small campaign among the art lovers in the MtG community to ask people to tag their artists.
Learning about attribution with Creative Commons this week really emphasized how important it is to credit original creators. If you are using someone else’s content, it’s your responsibility to make sure that you are using it in a way that people consuming your content know where that content came from. To learn more about it, try this video I made out of public domain footage!
I hope that everyone will include the original creators of whatever work they use on their social media, blogs, and works. If you choose to use someone else’s content in your own, it should absolutely be within the boundaries that the creator has agreed to through copyright laws or choosing a Creative Commons license. Honestly copyright law still confuses me even after several hours of additional research. I still can’t decide if .gifs are fair use or not. In the meantime I will tag my artists, and hope you will too.
References:
Luft, Lindsay. (2019, March 24). Attribution with Creative Commons [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/bVcCmHa2J7o
Vorthos Mike. [@VorthosMike]. (various). tag your artists @vorthosmike – Twitter Search [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/search?q=tag%20your%20artists%20%40vorthosmike&src=typd
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