Comics, Art and Letters Links: Plagiarism and what isn’t. Bloggers sue Huffpo.
on April 15th, 2011I am at the point on Gone to Amerikay where I want to gnaw off my own leg. Because no matter how hard I seem to work, I seem stuck. So close to the end. I know it’s all in my head, and I just have to work through this.
Ignore my art angst.
Go read some entertaining links instead.
About a week or so ago, I wrote this gentle, carefully considered defense of Alex Ross and his use of photo reference.
JESUS H Christ on a totem pole, HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN WHAT PLAGIARISM MEANS? Did IQ’s drop precipitously when they invented the internet, or were all of these stupid people just out there hanging about unnoticed before they learned to type and display these wanton acts of idiocy?
No one CARES if you use your own photo reference. For God’s sake, you’re supposed to! Why do you think REAL illustrators pay thousands of bucks for models, photographers, and costumes?
After I finished a lovely cup of tea and a plate of little iced cakes, I went on to explain why artists must use reference.
Does anyone really think I have the total knowledge of world history, right down to ships an Irish immigrant would have sailed to Amerikay on in 1870, stored away in my little brain?
Hell, no, I spent more than two weeks just researching ships for this thing, and an extremely frustrating two weeks attempting (unsuccessfully) to build a digital model so I could be sure to have it perfectly drawn from every angle in every shot.
And then I told Sergio Aragones, and he said, “Why didn’t you just buy a model?”
And then I wanted to kill myself.
My self deprecation never fails to charm.
Over here, Kyle Baker goes one better by not only posting swipity swipe from the greats like Norman Rockwell and Maxfield Parrish, but he comes out of the closet and posts his own swipe file secrets as well! The man’s a rock!
Enjoy!
While we’re on the subject of swipe, hop on over to this most excellent blog Plagiarism Today, for an absolute MUST READ article on ’5 Mistakes “Anti-Copyrights” Constantly Make’.
You know the canards. Or maybe you don’t, so you should go read this article, spread it around, hug it, make it a nice dinner of roast chicken and tuck it to bed under an Eiderdown quilt. Then buy it a puppy.
And I’d add one more Copy-wrongster mistake:
“You can’t stop piracy.”
Who said you could? In fact, laws haven’t stopped anti-social behavior since Hammurabi wrote his first code. Laws provide consequences for unacceptable behavior. I’ve yet to see a law stop a speeder from speeding, a shoplifter from shoplifting, or a pervert from pinching. And yet, for lo, these many years, these things go on.
Because laws don’t work. Right?
Arianna Huffington, whose unique take on labor and compensation has earned her the ire of thousands of unpaid bloggers after she sold her website for 315 million bucks, is the target of a lawsuit on behalf of said bloggers.
“The Huffington bloggers have essentially been turned into modern-day slaves on Arianna Huffington’s plantation,” Mr. Tasini said in a conference call with reporters. He vowed to picket Ms. Huffington’s house and turn her into an outcast in the liberal circles where she made her blog so prominent.
Behind the push: Joseph Tasini, of the landmark Tasini case.
The seven-justice majority opinion penned by Justice Ginsburg found that “[b]oth the print publishers and the electronic publishers … have infringed the copyrights of the freelance authors.” In the end, the court concluded “that the Electronic Publishers infringed the Authors’ copyrights by reproducing and distributing the Articles in a manner not authorized by the Authors and not privileged by sec. 201(c). We further conclude that the Print Publishers infringed the Authors’ copyrights by authorizing the Electronic Publishers to place the Articles in the Databases and by aiding the Electronic Publishers in that endeavor.”
I’d heard that the HuffPo bloggers were suing but I guess I don’t understand what the basis for their suit is. It’s not as if they were ever promised, offered or otherwise led to believe they’d ever get any payment, so why do they think they’re entitled to any?
The disproportional gain Arianna Huffington has made off their uncompensated work?
Is it just me or does Arianna Huffington sound like a particularly floopy font style?
@ Jan:
The issue may not be that Huffpo was their employer, but that Huffpo has resold rights to their work. I do not know the original terms of the blogger’s agreements, so I can only speculate.
In most publishing agreements, there are terms that cover what happens to your rights if your contract is sold.
I could be wrong.
These bloggers could have been compensated a modest amount and considered themselves well treated. It’s not like Huffpo is a small press making $10 per page on their books. She made $315 million. If she’d taken, say $500,000 of that sum, and divided it equally among the bloggers, they’d have received $55 each. Which, by the way, is more than I got paid on Tori Amos Comic Book Tattoo for full color painted comic art.
Alternatively, she could have just agreed to remove any post on request.
Her lawyers may have told her to pay no one, in fear of setting a precedent. I don’t know.
This is just the beginning. People are seeing the techies make all the money and treating the art/writing labor like dirt.
They’re beginning to see why the techies are so anxious to get ahold of content. As much of it as they can for free, by convincing as many people as possible that they’re going to make them famous. The only value is in code. There’s no value in 0′s and 1′s, I mean art. Or writing. Or journalism.
Without content, code is just a bunch of numbers.
Huffpo even nominated one of these unpaid bloggers for a Pulitzer, but when that blogger came asking for a paycheck, they told her her work wasn’t worth money.
Worth a Pulitzer, but not worth money.
Pull the other one.
Someone at work was lamenting about a show they liked being cancelled due to low ratings and over the course of the conversation I found out that they were just downloading the episodes from a torrent site. I asked why he didn’t just watch it on tv when it aired? Got some convoluted response and he pointed out how it was an apparently popular show since it was one of the most downloaded. He got annoyed when I made the statement that if those downloading the show had watched it when it was actually broadcasted, maybe it would have stayed on the air.
If there was no written agreement between HuffPo and the bloggers, the bloggers may have a more difficult time obtaining compensation. I wonder if people will still write for HuffPo now?
There’s always someone with stars in their eyes and sawdust for brains who will work for free. Harlan Ellison’s “Pay the Writer” statement in his documentary should be required viewing for anyone looking to earn a living in that profession (equally applicable to artists as well).
Thanks, Colleen, that does help make it clearer. I keep hearing from friends that they have to work for free in order to get exposure and I keep referring them to Harlan’s “Pay The Writer” piece. It doesn’t help. They’ve bought into not valuing their work from the outset.
You can certainly stop piracy, you just need to start hanging a few pirates.
Loved the thing Sergio said about buying a model. It’s sooooo important to hang onto your analog skills, as well as developing digital ones. Don’t know what you’re using for digital models, Colleen, but I use Google Sketchup and their 3D Warehouse is an enormous help when I can’t figure something out.
If it wasn’t enough that creative work isn’t seen as “real work” by many, there’s also the simple fact that abundance of it is available to anyone with an internet connection these days. Even if an artist had internalized the fact that anything they work hard for (invest their time in) is valuable, the sheer volume of material can make it hard to asses how much you and your work is worth.
On a related note; has anyone seen The Stolen Scream?
Hi Jeremy,
If memory serves, in the absence of a contract, rights remain with the creator. You can transfer First North American Rights without a contract, but anything on the web really isn’t going to stay in America. So, I’m honestly not sure what the deal is here.
In the absence of an employment contract, I’d say the bloggers are not entitled to any employment compensation. I could be wrong.
The cognitive disconnect between those who love to pirate and who then whine about their fave creations getting canceled…1+1=2.
@Joe: thing is, I never used a digital model of anything until I tried to build that model of a ship. Everything I have ever drawn is entirely by hand until this past year. I thought I’d try some digital trick on Gone to Amerikay, and found it to be more trouble than it was worth.
While there are many things I don’t love about Google, Google Sketchup is something I do love. I started to get the hang of it this past year while working on Mangaman. The book ran behind schedule, in part, because I went whole hog with learning digital art, and it took some months to get the hang of it!
Lots of artists are using Sketchup these days. I would like to get to the point where I never have to draw another car.
I have not seen the Stolen Scream. Is this it?
http://screameverywhere.com/
Yup, that one. It’s nothing new, but I thought it illustrated the point pretty effectively.