Quote:
Originally Posted by j2x
I am a professional architect. I draw pretty houses, mostly for clients in China.
This is as much art as it is professional understanding of construction, materials, and the client.
Yes, I expect to get paid for the time I spend working on a design. However, me and the company I work for know full well that most of the drawings we send to China are going to be copied. Literally, the drawings we produce will be used to build other projects. This is the nature of our industry and we fight it by staying ahead of our competition.
When the economy started to tank two years ago a lot of our competition, other medium to large production architecture firms based out of southern california, many of them collapsed. They weren't able to stay flexible in this challenging market. Our Chinese clients started doing more work in-house (ie: duplicating work we had produced).
The only way we were able to stay around (albeit at a fraction of our size) is to continually produce new designs that are in demand. That is the only way we can continue to receive new business- by staying inventive and accepting the industry and the world for what it is. |
This echos what you've said before: that you recognize that theft, in some cases, is inevitable, or at least wide-spread.
But surely you can agree that, if you want to get paid for your designs, you
should be paid, and they should not be stolen?
Your situation does mirror that of much art, and the coping mechanisms artists are using to deal with theft. Whether or not they can recoup their losses is not the issue, though; if someone creates a unique work, it should be theirs to distribute, and dictate how it is distributed.