I always go back to the quote by Picasso that states "Bad artists copy, good artists steal" (or some variation of that).
As Marc and Curt just said, if you copy someone you should give them credit. If you take an idea and make it your own, then that is good.
Dave Gillaspy said it very well too. A vessel pyrographed with caveman horses is definitively Molly Winton and duplicating that would be ripping her off and shouldn't be done for public consumption. A vessel pyrographed with unique geometric shapes would be stealing her ideas but making it your own.
From a personal perspective, I do demonstrate and share my "wave" techniques. Why should I risk this? Because the woodturning community is extremely cooperative and sharing and I want people to see what I am doing and hopefully make their work better because of it. I want my students to make their own "wave" bowl and display it in their home. I don't want someone to go out and copy my designs and bring them to market, and I just have to hope that most people will be honorable enough to respect that. There is an artist that has chosen to blatantly rip me off, without learning the techniques from me, and when I challenged him on it he told me he can do whatever he wants and doesn't care. To most people he is a hack with no morals (he has ripped off other artists too) and I just have to keep striving to improve and change and stay ahead of him. I am partly flattered, and partly angry but it does damage my reputation some. I worked really hard to develop my techniques and establish them as mine, but eventually someone was bound to copy it and represent it as their own, and I have to accept that risk as part of the process.
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