At A Glance
Author	Asurfael
Contact	[email protected]
IAM	Asurfael
When	N/A

People see things they like. They like those things a lot. The things might be comics, movies, drawings, tattoos. They love the things they see, and if they love them enough they might just get those things tattooed on their own skin.

Now I've been meaning to write about stealing tattoos for a while now. I had been considering it before, and when Marisa Kakoulas (IAM:FREE) wrote her article "The Tattoo Copyright Controversy" nearly two years ago I decided I needed to write about the subject. However I never got around to it, somehow.

Today I got around to it, because yesterday I found out a tattoo of mine had been cheaply copied by someone else. I was never told they liked my tattoo. I was never asked if it was okay to use my tattoo as an inspiration for their own. Why would they have? It wasn't used as inspiration. It was stolen.

Having once in my life seriously considered the career of an artist I have looked into the copyright issues very carefully. If you haven't read Marisa Kakoulas' article yet I heartily recommend you do so now.

However, I'm not writing this to preach about copyright laws. Laws aren't interested in art. Laws don't care how we feel about our tattoos. Laws don't care if we feel violated. The only thing that matters to the law is whether we've lost venue with the duplication or not. They can't really ask for any compensation without clear evidence of loss of income. Possibly if you had a really good lawyer and an understanding judge you might be able to force the person to get their tattoo removed. But is that really what you want? No matter how raped and violated you might feel you still can't sue anyone for raping your mind. The law doesn't care.

So the law doesn't really care. Why should we care, then? Because it's wrong. Personally I couldn't care less what the law said about my tattoos. It has nothing to do with copyright laws and everything to do with respect.

You like something. You love something. You want it tattooed on you.

But if you love it so much you want to look at it for the rest of your life, shouldn't you respect it? If you love and respect something you should have the courtesy to ask whoever made it if it's okay to get it tattooed on you. Within reasonable limits, of course. Now I'm not encouraging anyone to break copyright laws here, but say you wanted a comic book character that's well known and the copyright is owned by a large faceless multinational corporation tattooed on you. You wrote to them asking if it would be okay to get a tattoo, months went by and you never even received an answer. That just tells you that they don't care either way. You might as well get it without even bothering.

Another thing would be to get a character out of some indie comic published only on the internet, where the person drawing the comic is doing it for fun and paying for the hosting to boot, just to give their public a chance to read their comics. It would be easy to contact the artist and ask them if it would be okay to get a tattoo of their character. Most would be flattered, but some would certainly say no. It's their art, and no matter how much you like it they should have the choice. Because if you like their art, you should have some respect for it as well.

And then we get to tattoos. On some level tattoos are even more personal to the wearer than indie comics are to the artist. The comics are something they draw, but a tattoo is something a person will wear for the rest of their lives. It's not some project that can be tossed away when they get bored of it. Tattoos often have deep personal meanings to their wearers. Not all of them do, but that shouldn't matter either.

In Marisa Kakoulas' article she quotes an expert in copyright law, Mark Radcliffe saying "in suing for infringement of copyright, the tattoo must be substantially similar, not exact." The same rule should apply when considering the basic courtesy and respect we should have for each other, too. I personally see nothing wrong with taking somebody's tattoo to a studio and saying "I want something similar." But what you need to do is find a tattoo artist who actually has some artistic ability to draw something in the same style that's not necessarily the same at all as what you took in.

Say we take my arm as an example. My arm has a heart with bones behind it, a swallow, and some clouds, clovers, skulls and stars on the background. All very common motifs. I bet there are several people with the exact same motifs on their arms already. But what makes the difference is the design.

Now if somebody took it to a tattoo artist who made every element look different but would keep the layout and motifs same I'd still recognize it as being based on my arm. Other people probably wouldn't, though, so I wouldn't be crying out theft. They took an idea they liked and granted, they didn't make it entirely their own, but they respected my tattoo enough to at least try. They respected me and I'll respect their decision even if I might not personally value their copy much.

If on the other hand they entirely copied what's on my arm to theirs, or like the person mentioned before copied an element straight out of it it would be just downright complete lack of respect towards me. Personally I didn't get upset about somebody having copied it. I just laughed - having a poorly done cheap copy of somebody else's tattoo stuck on you for life is karmic payback enough for a life time, literally. There's no reason for me to get upset as I've had pictures of my tattoos online for years and I've had the time to prepare myself to that "what if." But others might take it very personally.

So please, please, please. If you see something somebody else made and you want it tattooed on yourself, do have the courtesy to in your best effort try to ask the artist or the owner of the tattoo about it. As I said before, it has nothing to do with copyright and everything to do with respect. If you like something so much you want it permanently into your body but don't respect it enough to ask you're not just disrespecting the art. You're disrespecting your body and yourself letting something you don't respect at all into your body for the rest of your life. So please, think before you ink!