I am always very careful about using work that belongs to someone else, but the depth at which this issue can go is beyond me.
My experience with copyright issues has been if someone else won’t create something on your behalf without permission, then you need to get permission. This came into play in 2008 when I married my husband. We are both huge Iron Maiden fans, he more than I. It is son ingrained in his being that we both wanted to have something of Maiden as part of our wedding. We decided to have the grooms cake made in an image of one of their album covers. Of course, Publix would not re-create the image without permission. So, my husband contacted the artist to ask for permission. We found out that copyright isn’t always owned by the creator. We had to contact the band in order to get permission to use the image. What we found amazing was that it was incredibly easy in this particular case because the band feels that the images and the music belong to their fans. Even though they were on a whirlwind world tour, we got an official letter within a couple of days. The funny thing was when my husband actually did one of those special fan events where he met the lead singer, Bruce Dickinson. He explained what had happened and Bruce was shocked at all we had to go through to get permission, until he realized my husband was American.
This tells me that in the “litigation happy” society that we live in, copyright is much more of an issue than in other parts of the world. I’m certain that I would only have gotten permission to use the image for personal reasons, not to financially benefit, but really, shouldn’t that be the real reason behind fair use?
My comment
What a great story and I am happy you got permission to have the cake, as you wanted it. United States’ copyright laws needs to really be re-examined against the backdrop of the popularity of social media and realize those laws do enforce or control how people outside the country use the material they are getting from the Internet.
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