Artistic Integrity

This is a commonly touched-upon topic, but though I think about it often, I've never really talked to anyone about it...

Well, today I made a sacrifice for my artistic integrity, and I'm proud of myself for it. Probably I shouldn't be...it was only decent of me...but I did give up something, so I reserve the right to my pride as a consolation prize.

I read something on the Etsy forums (fora...) recently, an artist's confession that she had accidentally stolen some other people's designs. She said that she got a custom order request, and the woman requesting claimed that she had designed the images herself, and wanted them put on the seller's wares. The customer was a dear friend of the artist, apparently, and the artist thought that her friend's images were so cute that she asked, in exchange for a discount on the custom order, for permission from the customer to reproduce the images in her shop. The customer gave her permission, got her discount, and got her items.

The seller reproduced the images on her wares, and apparently received many very angry messages that she was a plagiarist, a copyright-violator, a business-thief, etc.. She was reported to Etsy admin several times, I don't know if anyone pressed copyright violation charges or anything, but she was humiliated, abused, threatened and reprimanded, all because the customer, her FRIEND, had lied and said that she had created the images herself...and then let her friend take the fall for an unknowing but illegal action in exchange for a discount. She sold her friend out for a discount from her...talk about reprehensible. The least she could have done was said that she planned to sell the images herself and saved her face AND her friend, and not taken the discount.

Since the friend knew that she had not created the images and said that she had, clearly this is a case of knowingly defrauding other artists.
Well, today, I received a custom order request for a ring "similar to" one that I had in my shop...the only real similarity was that they both involved a heart shape. She attached a picture of the ring she wanted made. It was a real ring, and had been made by someone else.
The customer probably didn't know that the techniques involved in making my ring and the ring she wanted were completely different, and she may not even have known that my knowingly reproducing a work that someone else designed - even if it was as iconic a shape as a heart put on something as normal as a ring - is illegal and considered plagiarism. But I do.

As an artist who is just-starting-out in the slowest and most preoccupied way, EVERY sale is a big deal to me. Every custom order, especially, because those, at least in theory, make people the most happy that you exist to make them jewelry, and therefore the most likely to brag to other people about it: oh yes, I had it custom made for me by this artist on Etsy, oh yes, she's fantastic, she makes the most adorable things, I just had to get one that was just for me, more personal, you know - the more they talk you up, the better they are likely to feel about having bought from you, and so it makes everybody happy, including the people they're talking to, who may go on to order from this so-esteemed artist. Custom orders are a big deal.

But, you know. I'm not like that. And because it's an object, not just an image, I know she didn't make it or have claim to it...if she could make it, she wouldn't be asking me to do it. And I do realize that, unlike the woman who lied to her friend and claimed that she made the images herself, this customer probably didn't realize that it would be a problem for me if I were caught making what she wanted. She was probably just hoping I would make it cheaper than whoever made it first, and she didn't try to claim anything about the legality of it to me, or falsify anything. So I don't blame her. But it still rubbed a bit of salt in my wounds to know that not only did I not get the order, but I was the one who had to decline it, like saying "No, thanks, I won't take your money and buy new beads with it." I don't have the money, I didn't make the piece for her, I didn't satisfy her want, and it's MY FAULT. Though it isn't really, it just stings a bit to have had to write back to her myself that I must decline.

And what REALLY stings is, I directed her to look at other Etsy shops who make similar things, hoping she'd just break down and buy what she wanted from the original seller or get a similar one from someone who actually created a design in the same vein that she wanted...and hopefully my pointing out that that would be plagiarism and illegal will be enough to convince her not to put other people in the same position as she put me. It's very possible that she didn't intend at all to steal business from someone and just hadn't thought about it. But I have no guarantee, none whatsoever, that she won't just send the same message to someone else, and that that person will be as scrupulous. And I'll have my dignity, and my artistic integrity, and no money to buy more beads. And the unscrupulous person will have her money instead. Why is that allowed to win?


Luckily, I just bought more beads, so I'm happy for a while. Lucky stones! And in the end, I feel better for having chosen integrity over money, when the choice was offered. Someone may still get plagiarized, and I will be able to sympathize, and consider myself to have more integrity than whoever did it, and if I am ever plagiarized I will be angry, and I will not be a hypocrite for it. Thank you, mom, for raising me that way.

But seriously! New focal beads! LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY! And one of them is just for MEEEEE.