Saturday, June 14, 2003
Selling Themes With Photos You Didn't Take? Bad Theme Maker! Bad!
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 02:30 PM
I saw this package for sale at Pocket Themes, and I felt the urge to rant a little. This practice has been going on now since themes first came out, but this is one of the more brazen examples of it. Now I could be wrong here, but I'm going go out on a limb and guess that Peter Jackson didn't give permission to Prismesoft to sell these themes.
Prismesoft seems to be particularly aggressive in selling the work of others - their site has several theme packs for sale, and I see no copyright information or permission from photographers. Does Prismesoft really think that cropping a photo and making a theme from constitutes a work that they can sell? Contrast that with the unique work being offered by Ray Elder. I really like seeing artists creating themes and selling them - they created the work, and they should benefit from it.
I personally don't have a problem with people creating themes from commercial works and giving them away - just like McDeb did with the Nemo pack. I'm sure the lawyers from the movie studio would disagree with me, but the marketing man in me says that someone doing the work to extend your brand, then give it away for free, is a good thing.
So if you're making themes based on the creative work of others, and selling those themes, go get a real job. :roll: If you don't have the creative instincts to create your own work, go find a royalty-free photo site, pay for a license, and create your themes the legal way.
UPDATE: It turns out that not all of the themes that Prismesoft sells are made from copyright images. Several of the packs are made with royalty-free images, which is great - that's exactly the kind of thing I like to see! I apologize to Prismesoft for unfairly judging all their themes as being based on stolen images - but there's still that Lord of The Rings pack being sold... :wink:
Prismesoft seems to be particularly aggressive in selling the work of others - their site has several theme packs for sale, and I see no copyright information or permission from photographers. Does Prismesoft really think that cropping a photo and making a theme from constitutes a work that they can sell? Contrast that with the unique work being offered by Ray Elder. I really like seeing artists creating themes and selling them - they created the work, and they should benefit from it.
I personally don't have a problem with people creating themes from commercial works and giving them away - just like McDeb did with the Nemo pack. I'm sure the lawyers from the movie studio would disagree with me, but the marketing man in me says that someone doing the work to extend your brand, then give it away for free, is a good thing.
So if you're making themes based on the creative work of others, and selling those themes, go get a real job. :roll: If you don't have the creative instincts to create your own work, go find a royalty-free photo site, pay for a license, and create your themes the legal way.
UPDATE: It turns out that not all of the themes that Prismesoft sells are made from copyright images. Several of the packs are made with royalty-free images, which is great - that's exactly the kind of thing I like to see! I apologize to Prismesoft for unfairly judging all their themes as being based on stolen images - but there's still that Lord of The Rings pack being sold... :wink:
