So he was startled when someone emailed him a link to a New York Times magazine piece about another artist, Elsa Hansen Oldham, who had once cross-stitched his exact designs and was now describing her own designs—which appear to be based on his—without any mention of his original work to the Times.

“So I emailed her,” Robinson wrote in a blog post. “In her reply she acknowledged my influence, told me that she mentioned my influence to the Times... but went on to say that she comes ‘from the school of thinking that art cannot be created or destroyed, only remixed.’ Which is convenient, isn’t it? Very convenient that your school of thinking allows you to piggyback off my idea, my work, my hours and hours and thousands of hours to get yourself a sugary write-up in the New York bloody Times and exhibitions in New York.”

The author of the story in the Times told the newspaper’s public editor that

Oldham didn’t actually mention “Mr. Robinson’s influence” in their interview—but also said that he didn’t perceive that as “a slight from her in any way.”

Oldham, for her part, describes the whole thing as “a bit of an internet trolling episode” against her, she told me in an email. She says Robinson has ignored her emails to him.

“When I first began cross stitching as a hobby, I stitched a bunch of Craig's designs. I then began to design my own and have done so ever since. My first quilt is where these stitched designs of his ended up. I also stitched an image of him on this quilt, as I have always been forthcoming about the fact that this quilt has his designs on it. It is an homage to his work.”

Robinson doesn’t see it that way.

“I’m not cool with it,” he wrote in his blog post. “I feel like this person has created a career for herself off the back of my work. She may no longer be actively copying my work, but she’s still ripping the style, and would never have got to that place had it not been for copying my work in the first place. It feels wrong. I’m not happy about it.”

Questions about artistic appropriation are evolving with technology, as they always have. How much does a transfer in form—from pixels to thread, or from pixels to brick—influence notions of authorship? And what about cases when the original artist is no longer around to offer consent?

People continue to debate what constitutes fair use of audio in songs. For instance, the estate of a performer who went by the name Messy Mya is suing Beyoncé for using samples of his voice in her song “Formation.” That audio originated on YouTube, where Messy Mya published it before his death in 2010. This potentially matters because determining a case of plagiarism, both legally and culturally, still depends largely on the medium. With text, things are often (though not always) more straightforward than music.

“It is curious to note that the standards don’t seem to apply the same to music,” said Sharon Sandeen, the director of the Intellectual Property Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. “It’s a very controversial issue.”