# Does This Constitute Stealing or Copyright Violation?

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/does-this-constitute-stealing-or-copyright-violation/172623>\
**Category:** design\
**Created:** [December 16, 2005, 6:04am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/does-this-constitute-stealing-or-copyright-violation/172623 "2005-12-16T06:04:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![h2o](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/35a633/32.png) [@h2o](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/h2o)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 6:04am UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/does-this-constitute-stealing-or-copyright-violation/172623/1 "2005-12-16T06:04:16Z")

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Say I take a picture from the Internet, unwarranted, without permission of whoever owns rights to the picture/photo/image/whatever.

I’m assuming most of you here know basic Flash, so…

Let’s say I took that picture, imported it into a blank .fla, and dragged it on the stage. I lock this layer. Then, I make a layer on top of the layer that the picture/photo/image/whatever is on. Using the drawing tools, I trace lines in the picture/photo/image/whatever, and color in at my own liking.

I add different elements and get insanely creative, but essentially, I outlined another picture somewhat. The final product of my work maybe similar or outrageously different from the original picture/photo/image/whatever.

Would that be considered an illegal offense to the person who own’s rights to the picture/photo/image/whatever?

…and no, this is not just some hypothetical trivia for the sake of fun argument, I’m actually wondering. Because, I wonder, for example, how this guy made a [motorcycle completely in Flash](http://www.kirupa.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=28752)…I could do something quite similar if I…

a) drew a sketch on paper, scanned it into my pc, then used that outline to do something in Flash  
b) got an image from the Internet (as I have described above) and made an outline, then gone from there

Anyone?