Friday, February 7, 2014

Copycats: It's not a Good Thing

If you happened to see my post on Facebook yesterday, you know that I'm having an issue with  a former student who is teaching a technique of mine in a workshop at a large jewelry venue.

I'm going to direct you to a website that I have found truly eye-opening and informative about copyright infringement and theft of intellectual property. I became aware of Harriete Estel Berman's website "Ask Harriete" after her keynote speech--"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the Age of the Internet"-- for the International Polymer Clay Association's 2013 Annual Meeting, where it raised quite a bit of controversy. Check out the video of her presentation and you'll see why: http://www.slideshare.net/Harriete/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-in-the-age-of-the-internet

This link will take you to her post: "The Color Blind Paint Salesman and the Workshop Imposter" for a dose of reality: http://askharriete.typepad.com/ask_harriete/2013/04/workshop-copying-gets-ugly.html

After her presentation, Ms. Berman says that people just came out of the woodwork and shared their stories with her. Copying and teaching what's not your own orginal content is more widespread than you know and you may think "so what"? -- until it happens to you.

In the next post I'll share my personal experience with this and the impact it's had on my life in the last few weeks.

No comments:

Post a Comment