A few days ago a new company popped up on OneBookShelf - Arcana Stock Art. Now, I live grabbing stock art even if I rarely use most of what I have rights to - simply awesome to have when I want to get creative.
Sine Nomine (Kevin Crawford) released the art from his Kickstarters to the public domain. Guess who has repackaged the color pieces from the various Kickstarters and put it in a single bundle (PWYW with a suggested price of $4.99?) You guessed it - Arcana Stock Art. Alright, you don't need to pay for it and it is convenient.
But then I looked deeper.
They have other stock art bundles. All composed of pieces of art released under various Creative Commons Licenses. These bundles aren't free. These bundles cost anywhere from 5 to 10 bucks - to buy art that is already out there for free.
It might be legal but it certainly feels sleazy. If they were all PWYW, its a convenience and you can tip the guy who bundled it as such it wouldn't feel like a con. Charging flat out for the bundle of otherwise free art? Shit, look the art up with a reverse Google Art Lookup and grab it from the artist as was intended.
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| Art and license from Chtulhu Art Pack 2 |
Yep, those are affiliate links above. DON'T but the art linked but do feel free to look at the "publisher's page" and see what I'me referring to first hand. If you buy something else later from OBS I'll be happy to see change go in my tip jar, just not from this "publisher".
There's a similar thing going on with Kindle books in the public domain. Lots of repackaging of the same books you can download for free on Project Gutenberg, but for a fee. Now, if someone put some effort into collecting some stories into an anthology, sure, I might give them a buck for their efforts. But, a lot of these repackagers ask for a lot more. And, all it takes is a few suckers to pay for the time it took, many times over.
ReplyDeleteI think you nailed it when you used the term sleazy. It certainly feels that way to me.
ReplyDelete