vmulligan

I hate to have to post about this again, but I just caught three more instances of a photo of mine being used without my permission.  In two cases, the culprit was making money off of my work without giving me a cent.  I'll say it again: all works posted here are intended for personal enjoyment only.  They are ABSOLUTELY NOT in the public domain, which means that you may not use them for your personal websites or for commercial purposes without my permission.  This is deviantART, folks, not Pinterest.  We're all artists here, and we all know that time and effort goes into a piece of art.  Let's respect one another's intellectual property, eh?

I re-rendered at 1080p resolution an old animation that I created back in 2007 for a lecture series given by Jay Ingram.  The HD version of the animation, showing an artist's conception of a folding protein, is available on YouTube.  Note that this is for educational purposes only; unauthorized commercial use is prohibited.

For those who live in or near Toronto, the following petition, regarding recent advertisements that have appeared on TTC vehicles and bus shelters that encourage victims of child abuse to pray in lieu of reporting their abuse, may be of interest.  Note that the petition urges the removal of these ads because they condone silence in situations of child abuse -- not because of their religious nature.  Theists, agnostics, and atheists alike can support this.

Here's the text of the petition:

As described in a recent Toronto Star article, the Toronto Transit Commission has permitted a religious group called "Bus Stop Bible Studies" to run advertisements on TTC vehicles and bus stops. One of these advertisements shows a crying young girl, with the following text: "Dear Jesus, my mom and dad do drugs at home and it scares me. Would you help them stop? Thank you for hearing my prayer." The advertisement continues with this advice for the child: "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand."

This advertisement essentially tells children in dangerous or abusive situations to remain silent and to substitute prayer for any attempt to alert an adult or to seek help. This message goes beyond mere poor taste. It is a message with serious harmful effects on children that it reaches, who may well internalize the notion that they must remain silent when suffering abuse.

It is not the responsibility of the TTC to provide an unrestricted platform for free expression to absolutely everyone -- particularly not for the purpose of advocating demonstrably damaging opinions. We, the undersigned, do not object to these advertisements because of their religious content or denominational affiliation; nor are we objecting to the attempt to indoctrinate children into the religious practices of one faith. Rather, we object to these advertisements because we find them objectively harmful, no matter what one's personal religious beliefs are, for they condone silence in situations of child abuse. We call on the TTC to be more stringent in choosing what materials it permits in advertisements, and to remove all advertisements from TTC vehicles that advocate unsafe action or inaction by children.

If you'd like to sign this petition, you can do so here.

None of the images in my gallery is in the public domain.  I don't make stock.  When I find that images of mine have been used without my permission, I go after the person through every legal means at my disposal.  I don't do this to be vindictive; I do this because I firmly believe that artists should be able to make art without having to worry about the leeches of the world thinking, "Hey, that saves me some time and effort.  Yoink!"  I also like to have some control over how my art is to be used.  I don't appreciate the fact that a photo of mine is currently being used to advertise a Chinese health product that I wouldn't endorse in a million years, for example.  And I certainly don't want to be making money for someone else when my artwork makes no money for me.

I just submitted a complaint to deviantART about another DA member who had used a photo of mine as a background for a work, and I requested that the work be taken down.  The irony is that if this individual had simply asked permission, 99 times out of 100, I would have said "yes".

It takes thirty seconds to send a quick note asking permission, folks.  If you're already saving time for yourself by using someone else's work, at least invest a bit of that saved time in doing it legally.  If you're not willing to do that, I'm perfectly willing to make headaches for you -- headaches that you might be able to deal with, but which will cost you more time than it would have taken to ask permission in the first place.

The illegal route doesn't make sense.

My labmates and I just finished a silly video entitled "Macroprions!" for our department's annual video contest.  Check it out on YouTube!