CSotD: Ban the cons from the Cons
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I don't know if there is a Comics Convention season, but there do seem to be a lot of them going on over the summer, and, at the moment, there is an eruption of talk over copyright infringements at Cons, specifically the people in Artist Alleys who sell artwork the rights to which they do not own.
I don't have a lot of art to go with today's rant, so I swiped took this photo from City Pages, which covered a dust-up at Wizard World that has brought the topic forcefully to the attention of those in the cartooning business.
Again.
This is not a new topic.
The story — from City Pages and from the aggrieved artist who raised the fuss — got picked up on Comics Beat and has gone viral, in part, I think, because the guy who complained was so loud and uncivilized about it, and because it has been simmering more politely for quite awhile.
Which is to say, as long as it was being discussed by calm, intelligent professionals like Tom Richmond, it was being shared by knowledgable people who agreed, indeed, that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Which I did when Tom wrote that, and you may find it worth revisiting.
And I still find it strange that San Diego Comic Con would sue over misuse of their term "Comic Con" when they do such a shit job of protecting anyone else's intellectual property.
But, now that it is being screamed about, it may bleed over into WTF? territory, which is how you get past the tut-tut phase that helps set it up to go viral.
Come to think of it, I do have a related cartoon to tie into it: Here's part of a Matt Lubchansky cartoon from the Nib that is not about selling knock-offs of other people's art but is an indication that the "I'm so hip I can break all the rules" element of Uber has begun to fade.
I only include the first two panels of his six-panel commentary because lifting the whole thing would be counter to the topic of the day, so hit that link and read the rest.
Point is, there seems to be a rising anger among young people who realize they are being ripped off by their cohorts and are no longer willing to let them hide behind being hip.
Kind of reminds me of Boulder, when the STP Family would even curse and spit on other freaks who didn't give them spare change. It wore through the shell of universal brotherhood pretty damn fast.
Pushback against the "Everything Should Be Free" crowd isn't nearly to that point, but one eloquent, viral rant against their copyright piracy is called "Dear Broke Reader: Your Sense of Entitlement is Killing Me," and is about as peer-to-peer as you're likely to get in this more buttoned-down, civilized era.
It's a topic that matters to me because what I do here is, indeed, to pass on other people's work without permission or compensation, so the issue of fair use is constantly on my mind — as in how much to share and how to credit work in a way that best promotes the artist's interests.
It eases my conscience that this is a hobby and that the only money I make comes from people using the Amazon link, which channels $$$ to the artists as well, when people use it to buy cartoon collections rather than other stuff (which I welcome, by the way).
If I had banner ads, I'd have to consider whether using other people's work to drive traffic was ethical, much less legal, and I'd say "no" to the former and "probably not" to the latter.
But I'm also covered because I comment on the work, which makes it legitimate "fair use," though someone could sue if they felt I was using too much of their work. And I'd back down because I'm a nice guy and because even frivolous lawsuits cost money to defend.
Which reminds me that the photo I led with today is credited to Darin Kamnetz, and I don't know if he owns it, or if City Pages was simply crediting him because publications do that as a matter of ethics, even when it is "work for hire" rather than someone's own creative product.
However, when I started writing serial stories for kids at a newspaper, I made it clear that this was my stuff and not work for hire, and, when the paper sold, I made sure again that the new bosses were clear on who owned what.
Belt and suspenders is how you keep your ass covered.
Also, the artists I work with retain their copyrights because I can't afford a fair buyout, so they could sell prints of those illustrations at a Comic Con, except that I'm not Marvel or DC and so the demand for the stuff falls under the general category of "nanomarketing."
However, other artists would be more favorably positioned to capitalize on their work, and one of the great unfairnesses in Artist Alleys is that the artists who worked on those Marvel/DC comics are not allowed to sell their own renderings of the characters they drew for hire.
That's wrong, but it's up to the publishers to correct and that's not happening at the moment.
It should be happening. Artists should be able to put a clause in their contracts allowing it.
But there's another element of supply and demand: There are enough artists willing to accept the terms as given that there's no need to offer more.
Anyway, if you go to a Con, don't buy pirate crap from crappy pirates. You are stealing from real artists.
If you'd like to know more, or just want an entertaining, informative and slightly chilling read on the topic, check out this graphic reference to the topic of copyright.
Which you can download for free in a couple of different languages, as long as you don't sell copies.
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