If LogoMaid made your logo, you are supporting trademark theft and copyright violation
Pretty self-explanatory. After seeing yet another blog post in the community on this, I decided to throw in my meager PageRank 5 help on the LogoMaid are rip-off artists campaign.
Update: Why trademark “theft” versus copyright “violation”? When you violate copyright you are committing a crime, but not directly taking anything away from the owner, unless you would have bought the product yourself, or you are distributing it to other who would have (then the lost sales argument comes in). Not that I support any form of Intellectual Property violation, as I depend on IP for my living (I don’t even generally download music – since I don’t pirate, and am boycotting the RIAA), but the case for it being directly equivalent to theft in most cases seems harder to make. Dilution of a trademark, though, to me, seems to be a more cut-and-dried harm, and you are directly taking something from them: public recognition of their branding.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. As a graphic designer, I too make a living on IP, however, most people ate ignorant about it altogether. The lack of knowledge and understanding of what IP is and how it affects businesses both large and small is astounding. I also find it quite amazing how a small business owner would be willing to pay upwards of $65.00 per hour to style their hair or repair their vehicle, yet, they wouldn’t consider paying an artists their equivalent value for as many hours as we put into work.
I can recall numerous times that someone would ask me to design a website, logo, etc. all for $500.00. They don’t consider the hours of research, sketches, proofs of concepts to final renditions. $500.00 just doesn’t cover that sort of time.
Oh yes, try digging up web work in SLC (where I used to live until recently) and you’ll see a lot of that.