T-shirt art and copyright issues

Art Life Collective, www.artlifecollective.com, is fluctuating around 64 artists now who have sent in t-shirt designs.
I have to say I am particularly impressed with the range of designs we are seeing, from friendly logo-style artists like Debbie Gray to the darker images of Kenneth Goff, we are seeing it all. And that's great. ALC was designed to give all artists a good venue to show off their work ... keep it coming.

A word of note, though. We have had a couple of cases of copywrighted material uploaded to the site. Unless an artist owns the rights to an image, even if it has been altered or is only part of their work submitted, it cannot be up on Art Life Collective because, aside from promoting artists and their work, we also sell it on shirts to promote the site. Now, that being said, some images are allowed in parody situations, especially photos of famous people. We have had several artists contribute politically charged images ... which I think lend themselves well to t-shirts and tend to be good sellers ... and their right to use those works is protected by a number of court cases, most notably Falwell v. Hustler, which covers fair comment and criticism (sorry, journalists have to know the legalese here, it protects us on the editorial page).

Still and all, be careful about using copywrighted images and artwork. There are a couple of other notable exceptions. Some files of clip art allow it to be used for commercial distribution. The paper I work for uses such libraries and resources when we build ads. But not all clip art and art libraries, even if you have purchased them, allow commercial distribution of the work, so read the licensing agreement that came with the service carefully.

Again, Blair and I are overwhelmed by the number and diversity of the people who are taking part in Art Life Collective. Kudos to you all.
Graham Hadley
www.artlifecollective.com