[deadbeeves]

>You might believe they don't have the right to say "no," but they can say whatever they want.

You have a right to say anything you want. Others aren't obligated do as you say just because you say it.

>If you studied my (we will assume "unique") techniques and used them without my permission, then let us say I sue you. At that point, you would claim "fair use,"

On what grounds would you sue me? You think my defense would be "fair use", so you must think my copying your style constitutes copyright infringement, and so you'd sue me for that. Well, no, I would not say "fair use", I'd say "artistic style is not copyrightable; copyright pertains to works, not to styles". There's even jurisprudence backing me up in the US. Apple tried to use Microsoft for copying the look-and-feel of their OS, and it was ruled to be non-copyrightable. Even if was so good that I was able to trick anyone into thinking that my painting of a dog carrying a tennis ball in his mouth was your work, if you've never painted anything like that you would have no grounds to sue me for copyright infringement.

Now, usually in the artistic world it's considered poor manners to outright copy another artist's style, but if we're talking about rights and law, I'm sorry to say you're just wrong. And if we're talking about merely studying someone's work without copying it, that's not even frowned upon. Like I said, it's unavoidable. I don't know where you got this idea that anyone has the right to or is even capable of preventing this (beyond simply never showing it to anyone).

[withinboredom]

> Others aren't obligated do as you say just because you say it.

Yeah, that's exactly why you'd get sued for copyright theft.

> you must think my copying your style constitutes copyright infringement

Autocorrect screwed that wording up. I've fixed it.

[deadbeeves]

I'm not sure what you've changed, but I'll reiterate: my copying your style is not fair use. Fair use applies to copyrighted things. A style cannot be copyrighted, so if you tried to sue me for infringing upon the copyright of your artistic style, your case would be dismissed. It would be as invalid as you trying to sue me for distributing illegal copies of someone else's painting. Legally you have as much ownership of your artistic style as of that other person's painting.