RE: Copyright and Using the Art of Other Artists - Your Rights and Their Rights
Yes, exactly. You are absolutely right. Terms of use would be a good topic to write about. And it's part of this copyright post too.
So the artists, in this case coders have rights. Or the company that they work owns the rights of the filters and the app. And every user has to agree the terms of use when they use the app. No commercial use.
Commercial use is any reproduction or purpose that is marketed, promoted, or sold and incorporates a financial transaction. Examples include, but are not limited to, merchandise, books for sale (including textbooks), apps that will be sold or have advertising, periodicals and journals with paid subscriptions, TV programs and commercial films, advertisements, websites that sell images, and cause-related marketing.
https://asia.si.edu/collections/usage/
That means that for instance it's not allowed for me to print the photos to a canvas and sell those art pieces to people. Or sell the images in a web site that sells pictures. Or promote anything that sells anything. Which also would mean that as I earn something with this post, using images that have been created with Photo Lab app, would be prohibited.
Which in the other hand is funny because even if I would decline the payouts of this post, someone still would make money with this post because the front ends, Steemit for instance, has adds in it. And although Steemit seemingly does not advertise itself specifically with my post or these pictures in this post, if I should put the same images to Instagram / Facebook, their terms of use say that they are allowed to use the images that their users download there, to promote their company. And also Instagram / Facebook has adds. Beside the posts. And photos edited with Photo Lab.
And when you think about the fact that what are these image editing / filter gallery apps created for? For people to edit their photos and stuff those pictures to social media. https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/photolab/?hl=fi And Steem is a social media site too.
I could have written about this without the photos edited with the apps, but then I could have not shown people how deceiving looking some of the filters may be to those who do not know what a picture edited with a filter looks like, compared to a photo of an actual painting of a drawing.
But I think I'm pretty safe. As long as I do not start printing these images in to a T-shirt and start selling those to you. :D
I was very careful in the past when choosing which programs to use when producing my digital art. Everything of mine starts with a blank digital canvas layer, but sometimes I'll manipulate a basic photo of mine to include as a layer, but that is rare. The style is always evolving. I read all the fine print though and some of the programs out there are meant to be just for fun. No commercial use. I make sure not to use those ones for the work I publish here.
If the filter you used in this case is not intended for commercial use, fair use here is acceptable. The main focus is the commentary.
For that reason, terms of use, I always (almost, but not it this case obviously) use Photoshop that I've bought for my company. And because it has more than just the filters that sometimes are... totally useless. :) It of course depends on what I am trying to do.
Finnish law does not recognize fair use as it is determined by Wikipedia. We have a bit similar thing, restrictions of copyrights, but it's not as allowing as the fair use. But if we think that this article is meant to educate people, then it's okay by the Finnish restrictions to copyright law too.
People have to know these things. Education is legit.
Proper presentation goes a long way. When done correctly, people can relax and enjoy their rewards. The true art fraudsters we see here from time to time are not welcome, in my humble opinion. It's annoying stumbling into a post where a noob has snatched an image from the internet, applied a shoddy filter, and then said they digitally painted it.
I've caught quite a few.