Canadian lawyers busted me over my art

[Cd]

So I was going to sell prints of this online at a site, similar to cafepress etc .
I was contacted by the site itself that they had taken down the art, and to not re-list the art again.
I used a popular photo of the band as reference, but modified it enough to get around the copyright issue. I even changed what is on Ged...um the bassists shirt, since he is a Jays fan.
This was not in the original photo.

I think it was the name of the band in a 'tag' that brought in the lawyers, since they scour the internet for that sort of thing. What they are calling it is 'intellectual property infringement" , saying it "violates a celebrities right of publicity".
It was a group which handles the band's merchandising i suppose.

BTW, I didn't sell a single one.

No harm done. By 'busted', I meant that they removed it. Oh well.

So if I simply sold this as " Three Dudes in a Band From Toronto ", with no mention of the band's name, could they still bust me ?
At what point would they be able to say for certain who the people in the painting are ?
I could just call it " Bubba and His Two Buddies ".

Thanks for the replies guys. I notice a lot of topics are going every which way - even here in the lounge. I'll try to keep from posting too much off topic stuff like this in the future.

[P-hack]

Originally Posted by Cd

"violates a celebrities right of publicity".

That is interesting, I wonder how they handle jurisdiction issues since you are no-where near Canada.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Cd

I used a popular photo of the band as reference, but modified it enough to get around the copyright issue.

I don't think so (but IANAL). From your own statement, your intent was to create a picture of this particular band, no?

[freebeard]

I think it was the name of the band in a 'tag' that brought in the lawyers

If it wasn't a neural network trained on the corpus of IP being protected; then it will be by this time next .... month?

[Cd]

Originally Posted by freebeard

If it wasn't a neural network trained on the corpus of IP being protected; then it will be by this time next .... month?

Eh ?

[Cd]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I don't think so (but IANAL). From your own statement, your intent was to create a picture of this particular band, no?

My intent was to create a picture of a popular bad, yes.
But to do so in a way that did not break copyright laws. I didn't consider that it would infringe on their "rights" .
I agree that celebrities don't want someone to paint them in a demeaning manner, but this happens all the time with political cartoons.
I didn't even paint them in such a way ( demeaning )

Anyway, it's over and done. This forum was just the first place i came to vent my frustration.
I'll look into 'fair use laws' .

[nemo]

You should look at copyright laws and even have some of you stuff copyrighted. The site operator is not going to defend you even if you are within your rights. Its much easier and cheaper to just take down your work.

[freebeard]

Eh ?

Sorry, I meant Artificial Neural Network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

You may have seen the pictures filled with dog's faces and eyes:

Research Blog: Inceptionism: Going Deeper into Neural Networks

They were created by running the neural net backwards. The primary function is sorting pictures w/o human intervention at blinding speed.

The lawyer's jobs go next.

[Piwoslaw]

If human genes can be patented, then this shouldn't be surprising

Too bad you had to deal with this ****, Cd

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

If human genes can be patented, then this shouldn't be surprising

Too bad you had to deal with this ****, Cd

Well, if you start copying human genes in public you will get busted!