It’s becoming a huge issue. There’s confusion because of things like fan fiction and bloggers who post pictures without attribution that someone else copies thinking it’s public domain.

Courts consider, among other things, how much harm is done. If someone sells t-shirts using someone else’s image without permission (which is frequently done on Etsy, BTW), and the copyright holder is also selling t-shirts with that image, it would be argued that the copyright owner’s profits were cut into. Disney, for instance, has an army of people who will hunt you down at the harvest festival for selling quilts made with Disney print fabrics.

Sadly, most people (like yours truly) don’t have the money to go after the people who steal their work. Often, even if they did, the perp lives in a country that doesn’t give a crap about US copyright law. I know because it happened to several stories I wrote on this platform.

All this makes it very confusing for writers and artists. Some are even claiming that copyright laws are obsolete and should be re-written or abolished altogether, something I would never support. It’s a topic all content creators need to keep an eye on.