Techdirt: You'd think with all the threats facing the NFL and American football, such as Twitter-spoliers on draft picks and the impending SkyNET takeover, the powers that be in America's most-watched game wouldn't have time to deal with more minor threats from non-sentient-destructo-machines, but here's the stupidity of copyright on tattoos to prove me wrong yet again. You may recall that former athlete/tattoo issues have included Mike Tyson's face being visible in The Hangover 2, as well as UFC fighter Carlos Condit being depicted accurately in a THQ game.
4 comments:
I love the way that this article is written, completely demeaning the issue it is putting out there for us to read. I have actually wondered about this before; how come tattoos can show up all over the place and no one cares, but as soon as three notes of music are played on a show, there's a sky-high pile of lawsuits? Tattoo artists, though viewed as less legitimate than your every day artists, have as much right to own their work as others. However, the nature of their art is different. They are permanently placing their creations on other human beings, who it is understood will continue to go about their business and not change how they live simply due to this addition to their bodies. Like the author of this article, I would love to see this case be fought out, but I also agree that the issue is silly and the millionaires' money should be used on something more productive and meaningful.
As a person with tattoos, and huge sports fan - I find this topic to be both fascinating and incredibly infuriating. Pirating music and other digital media, reproducing printed materials and artwork without a license all seem like logical copyright infringements, but never would I have expected tattoos to be brought into the mix. Tattooing - yes, is a valid art form, however it's also a service that you pay for. In addition to that, the artwork isn't always the intellectual property of the artist performing the tattoo, often the client provides the artwork or concept for the tattoo and requests a service from the artist. Sooo....if Colin Kaepernick presented the artwork to his tattoo artist, then isn't he the owner of those images and doesn't he have the right to determine if they are part of his brand and included in renderings of him on video games? And even if the tattoo artist took some artistic liberty in order to improve or develop on Kaepernick's concept for his tattoos...Kaepernick still paid a for the services of the artist. So where is line drawn? It think it's be interesting to see have this issue pursued in a court of law - but the idea that my tattoo artist could take me to court for royalties to my tattoos if they were part of brand and attributed to my income after I paid him hundreds of dollars for their creation is a little unnerving.
This is so stupid. Athletes should not be worrying about whether or not they should get tattoos but about training and practicing so that they can be ready to play their best game. I totally agree with the Author that copyright laws were not put in place to deal with issues like this, and that the people that created them would find them unrecognizable today. Shouldn't we be worrying more about how the game is being played than about what the athletes choose to put on their bodies?
I keep thinking about the fact that I haven't heard much about tattoo copyright issues before. Think about all of the actors, musicians, and other celebrities who have visible tattoos; their likenesses are reproduced in television shows and movies, on billboards, on posters, on merchandise, etc. And yet somehow tattoo copyright issues are arising from the representation of the tattoos of NFL players? This speaks to how ridiculous these claims are. I agree with Joe that there are some serious blurred lines when it comes to determining who should have the rights to the images depicted on the bodies of these players. Who did the artwork? Should the rights go to them or the tattoo artist? A lot of the time people go into tattoo shops with clip art, drawings, etc. that they found online and likely could not even trace back to an original artist anyways. I truly believe that the players should own and control the rights to their own likenesses. Tattoo artists are knowingly putting their work on people- people who go places and post pictures of themselves on Facebook and appear on TV and function as PEOPLE who are seen by other people. While I will gladly give credit to the artists who tattooed me, my tattoos are a part of my body and a part of my image, and I should be able to allow that image to be reproduced in ways that I wish them to be.
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