it has recently come to my attention that there is a new birdhouse on the market with tiki graphics of elviki directly lifted off the box art of my 10th anniversary elviki tiki statue figurine....i hear walgreens is selling them...i haven't seen them yet but if anyone happens across one and can post a pic of it here i would be grateful...elvikis creator cindy crowell has been made aware of it as well....neither her nor i was ever approached to give permission of any kind to use these images.....thank you.

[ Edited by: Tipsy McStagger 2007-03-19 08:31 ]

It's TIKI, you are supposed to borrow stuff. Been going on since the heyday

Before the whole argument on copyright infringement/public domain starts, I just want to say that sucks. Sorry to hear- good luck.

On 2007-03-19 09:12, Tiki Diablo wrote:
It's TIKI, you are supposed to borrow stuff. Been going on since the heyday

...not when it's someone else's copyright!!...not when you a)didn't ask permission and b)didn't compensate the owner of said copyright....in case you weren't aware, there are laws against copyright infringement.....perhaps you would feel differently if i took your tiki carvings and such, copied them in china and sold them myself, not giving you a single dime or a thank you!!....and when you called me up to bitch about me stealing your ideas i can say "oh it's okay...everyone borrows!! it's tiki after all!!".....you got some weird logic going on, my man....it's that cavalier attitude of not having respect for another designers ideas that allows theft to proliferate....it sounds as if from your statement above, that you are almost encouraging people to steal....nice!!

..and yes, it's been going on since the heyday, but you don't know if the owners of certain designs didn't legally go after those infringers either....

big companies often feel they can use another's ideas because they may feel that the individual or small company doesn't have the time, money and or legal capacity to be able to stop them, so they continue to steal, knowing full well what they are doing....

and my contract with ms. crowell is restricted only to 3 dimensional representations of elviki..i have no authority over any 2-dimensional representations of her work, however, hearing that the artwork was directly lifted off the box art that i had specifically designed, i am obligated to get involved....cindy is also a friend of mine and i help her out with these issues when possible.

now...if you'll excuse me....i have a birdhouse to purchase somewhere in this town...

yep...walgreens had them.....it's got a little graphic of elviki on the sign that says clarks tiki hut....it appears to be a little distorted from the original, but elviki none-the-less...judging from the name of the distributer, i have a hunch that wherever these were produced in china, they most likely got the images from the factory where i had my elvikis originally produced....for all i know, the factory that made the elvikis could very well be the one that is producing these birdhouses.....either way, there may not be much, if anything that cindy or i can do....certain countries outside the u.s. do not recognize our copyright laws which makes it harder to police our products world-wide.....

"It's TIKI, you are supposed to borrow stuff. Been going on since the heyday" -Diablo

I don't think its the right thing to do but since I know that Diablo say "supposed to borrow", thats the green light to start selling some awesome Diablo mugs of my own.

Ok, so I won't do that, cause I don't have the time and I'm one of those little guys that were mentioned.

-the one and only, teaKEY Diablo

On 2007-03-19 09:56, Tipsy McStagger wrote:

On 2007-03-19 09:12, Tiki Diablo wrote:
It's TIKI, you are supposed to borrow stuff. Been going on since the heyday

...not when it's someone else's copyright!!...not when you a)didn't ask permission and b)didn't compensate the owner of said copyright....in case you weren't aware, there are laws against copyright infringement.....perhaps you would feel differently if i took your tiki carvings and such, copied them in china and sold them myself, not giving you a single dime or a thank you!!....and when you called me up to bitch about me stealing your ideas i can say "oh it's okay...everyone borrows!! it's tiki after all!!".....you got some weird logic going on, my man....it's that cavalier attitude of not having respect for another designers ideas that allows theft to proliferate....it sounds as if from your statement above, that you are almost encouraging people to steal....nice!!

..and yes, it's been going on since the heyday, but you don't know if the owners of certain designs didn't legally go after those infringers either....

big companies often feel they can use another's ideas because they may feel that the individual or small company doesn't have the time, money and or legal capacity to be able to stop them, so they continue to steal, knowing full well what they are doing....

and my contract with ms. crowell is restricted only to 3 dimensional representations of elviki..i have no authority over any 2-dimensional representations of her work, however, hearing that the artwork was directly lifted off the box art that i had specifically designed, i am obligated to get involved....cindy is also a friend of mine and i help her out with these issues when possible.

now...if you'll excuse me....i have a birdhouse to purchase somewhere in this town...

Teakey, I enjoy a lil friendly competition, bring your A game though.

Tipsy, just pointing out that you are complaining about not being asked permission to use a design that somebody came across while trying to bring a product to market. You are just sounding hypocritical to me. You borrow, I borrow, 99% of art is borrowed in one form or another.

I have been in this situation a few times, and am not by any means encouraging everyone to rip each other off. Is it going to happen to some degree, Yes, can't stop that. I guess you have to chose your battles, because you won't win them all.

Artist are not going to ask permission first to use an idea or image for their own subject material all the time. They might say" the place has closed down now" or The guy that drew that is probably long dead" But I'll check first and wait to hear from them before I do my thing.

Maybe you did ask first on stuff like this..

https://tikicentral.com/uploads/2706/45ecb732.jpg

https://tikicentral.com/uploads/2706/45de3f4e.jpg

Now that I have got your juices flowing , go win that fight! errr the one with the other guys,.... not me. :wink:

Danny, those two links, the first one is not taking food out of the artist mouth where "borrowing" from working and living artist is something different.

The second link, I brought it up to Tipsy's attention and he didn't know the artist were current and after he found out, he pulled the product. Its not for sale, he is not making money off it.

All artist I like don't rip off. Take Mark Ryden, latest show is with forest. Eyes on trees with children. People have painted trees, people have painted eyes, people have painted children, but no one have done the combination of all three. I could use a better example, but its like this. All stuff is a #1 , you can use a 1 form here, a 1 here there, and a 1 that is new. Your painting is now something added together that was never done before, a 3.

"Teakey, I enjoy a lil friendly competition, bring your A game."

I think more friendly competition is great and lacking from TC. There really isn't competition going to here but I think its fun and pushes both to higher levels that may not be reached otherwise.
It will be years before I hit my stride but I want to make the best one off mugs. Right now I don't really have competition. Only Van and I are really the only ones doing mugs from the ground up. Munktiki got into the game with there Kustomas but it was off a mold and that different still but I like what they did. I would love a blank to work off on. Munktiki declined me for theirs.
But I got something up my shelve. It's just on idea for now but I want to see it come to terms. I think it will have you looking twice. If it did, I would like to hear that from you.

Your last mug OKi OKi is one of my favorites. I can't believe it took so long for someone to do that design. Actually the three place mug in TikiFarm's contest has that look.

We have a client that deals in the manufacture and rental of those inflatable kid's jumpers. The kind that get rented out at kid's birthday parties. They've copyrighted several the designs and have several licensing agreements with some companies to display certain logos, etc. as well as their own original work product. Now and then someone copies the exact design. They get *issed. Call us and we typically write them a "cease and desist". We've gone as far as suing them and confiscating the copyrighted items. We've subpoena their books to see how any times they've rented the copy-cat jumper and then recover that money as well. Everyone is upset -- it's not fun.

Although I enthusiastically support all new forms of art tiki and otherwise; this might be why I have decided to collect vintage tiki.

Arguably there are some very talented artists out there creating tiki in many forms and we see it all the time on this site.

Agreeably, there has to be a consensus that any tiki, aside from any original aboriginal design, has been copied, ad nausea um. Unfortunately for the ancestral creators, neither copyrights laws nor a forum to gripe about it existed for them.

Luckily, we have laws that protect individuals from plagiarism and prevents the explotation of other people's endeavors. No one who supports the tiki culture and the talent and efforts that individuals create should accept in any way the misuse or abuse of their creativity and fruits of their labor. Some people actually make an honest living doing what they do.

It is a sad commentary on what we all love when we fight!

Go back to your corners and re-think your positions! Can't we all just get along?

Psycho Tiki D (I know I am and I am sad for tiki today)!

On 2007-03-19 17:12, Tiki Diablo wrote:

On 2007-03-19 09:56, Tipsy McStagger wrote:

On 2007-03-19 09:12, Tiki Diablo wrote:
It's TIKI, you are supposed to borrow stuff. Been going on since the heyday

...not when it's someone else's copyright!!...not when you a)didn't ask permission and b)didn't compensate the owner of said copyright....in case you weren't aware, there are laws against copyright infringement.....perhaps you would feel differently if i took your tiki carvings and such, copied them in china and sold them myself, not giving you a single dime or a thank you!!....and when you called me up to bitch about me stealing your ideas i can say "oh it's okay...everyone borrows!! it's tiki after all!!".....you got some weird logic going on, my man....it's that cavalier attitude of not having respect for another designers ideas that allows theft to proliferate....it sounds as if from your statement above, that you are almost encouraging people to steal....nice!!

..and yes, it's been going on since the heyday, but you don't know if the owners of certain designs didn't legally go after those infringers either....

big companies often feel they can use another's ideas because they may feel that the individual or small company doesn't have the time, money and or legal capacity to be able to stop them, so they continue to steal, knowing full well what they are doing....

and my contract with ms. crowell is restricted only to 3 dimensional representations of elviki..i have no authority over any 2-dimensional representations of her work, however, hearing that the artwork was directly lifted off the box art that i had specifically designed, i am obligated to get involved....cindy is also a friend of mine and i help her out with these issues when possible.

now...if you'll excuse me....i have a birdhouse to purchase somewhere in this town...

Teakey, I enjoy a lil friendly competition, bring your A game though.

Tipsy, just pointing out that you are complaining about not being asked permission to use a design that somebody came across while trying to bring a product to market. You are just sounding hypocritical to me. You borrow, I borrow, 99% of art is borrowed in one form or another.

I have been in this situation a few times, and am not by any means encouraging everyone to rip each other off. Is it going to happen to some degree, Yes, can't stop that. I guess you have to chose your battles, because you won't win them all.

Artist are not going to ask permission first to use an idea or image for their own subject material all the time. They might say" the place has closed down now" or The guy that drew that is probably long dead" But I'll check first and wait to hear from them before I do my thing.

Maybe you did ask first on stuff like this..

https://tikicentral.com/uploads/2706/45ecb732.jpg

https://tikicentral.com/uploads/2706/45de3f4e.jpg

Now that I have got your juices flowing , go win that fight! errr the one with the other guys,.... not me. :wink:

I was waiting for someone to take the bait with that aku-aku- sign....

.first of all, after a certain amount of time elapses, some things become public domain...vinatge tiki signs are a great example...yes, odds are that the owners/designers are probably dead or dying, the company was dissolved, they went out of business or any number of things may have occured, but there is a double standard when it comes to art and producing product. most artists appropriate other work from their surrounding cultures/environments....if we didn't appropriate, alot of art would never have been created in the first place. But the difference between appropriating something from another source to use in a work of art that there will most likely be only one example created, and that of "borrowing" to make multiple items to bring to market to sell and profit off of is astonishingly clear. Furthermore, yes, artists do sell their work and both they and the galleries that represent them do profit......but only from a single sale. Most of the images artists use in their art, when they do appropriate them, is public domain, free for any to use, which is why it chaps my ass that with all the generic tiki clip art available on this planet that they could have used without infringing on someones idea, they had to go and use mine (cindy's).!!! I just don't get it...anyway, it's a complicated argument because each situation has to be viewed on an idividual basis...lot's of nuances and things...yadda, yadda.

Years ago i made a single lamp based on shag's tentacled moai character...it was a shown at La Luz gallery and it ended up selling.....but i made sure i had shag's blessing before i did anything. In fact, he was in the same show and people thought he made the lamp!!

on that note, i only started this thread to get some info...which i now have, not to get into a discourse on copyrights.

Agreeably, there has to be a consensus that any tiki, aside from any original aboriginal design, has been copied, ad nausea um. Unfortunately for the ancestral creators, neither copyrights laws nor a forum to gripe about it existed for them.

hmmmm...i don't seem to recall a vintage elviki from which anyone was able to make a copy of.....

oh my god!! is it possible to create a new tiki, the likes of which the world has never seen before.....!!! say it isn't so!! this could be the ruin of all tikidom!!!! LOL