142: Can I Sell Fan Art?

seanwes tv

Earlier today I saw a tweet going around that had thousands of retweets. It was a photo of some Star Wars fan art. Now, here’s the thing: it wasn’t just a photo of their art, it was a photo of their art promoting prints that they were selling. I have a lot more to share on the topic of fan art, but let me get the most important piece out of the way: it is 100% illegal to sell fan art. You cannot sell derivative artworks made of copyrighted characters, and the only exception is if you have written permission from the copyright holder. For some reason, people think it’s ok because they see tweets like this going around with thousands of retweets of someone’s Star Wars fan art where they’re promoting their posters for sale. That’s not legal, but it’s easy to think it’s legal when you see a lot of other people doing it. That’s confirmation bias. You only see the people who are getting away with selling derivative artwork, you don’t see all the people who are getting taken down.