Posts Tagged ‘copyright’

73 items.

Marvel vs Kirby: Audio Smackdown

by Colleen Doran on November 8th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Culture, Comics, Comics History, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Legal

The Comics Journal blog has audio of the discussion between Steve Bissette “…founding faculty member of the Center for Cartoon Studies” and outspoken creator rights advocate, and Professor Oliver Goodenough, Professor of Law and Director of Scholarship at the Vermont Law School. “Marvel vs. Jack Kirby: Legal Rights and Ethical Might”.

I’m just going to quote from the comments, because I’m going to the other side of the planet and have no time to blog responsibly.

The key to the case was the attempt by Toberoff to show, that like Siegel and Shuster, Kirby brought characters to the publisher he created at home, by himself, with no understanding he would be paid.
That is why the judge said Marvel’s case “stands or falls on his (Lee’s) testimony.”

Countering this was the testimony of Lee who categorically said he alone created every single character and basic plot by himself, and then assigned the cartoonists to illustrate his concepts.

That is why the judge said Marvel’s case “stands or falls on his (Lee’s) testimony.”

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Arts and Letters Links. And Three Black Hearts to go.

by Colleen Doran on November 1st, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Colleen's Work, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Culture, Culture, Fine Art, Creator Resources, Legal

Over at my portfolio website, I posted an entire out-of-print short story, “Three Black Hearts”. I’d hoped to find time to color it, but maybe I will leave that task for some new print story collection.

Here’s page one of the tale.

Also, art and business linkage. Cool stuff.

In praise of hand lettering at The New York Times.

On the surface, this riotously raw lettering looks like it was produced by those who are incapable of rendering letters with any semblance of accuracy or finesse. And while this may or may not be true, a decade or so ago, this lettering was a critical reaction to the computer’s cold precision.

10 Reasons Why Prince Valiant is the bestest adventure strip hero ever.

He’s part Errol Flynn, part gritty badass, part Joseph Campbell myth on the make, part nostalgic vessel for our grandparents’ yearning for some more civilized age, part Mel Gibson-style torture survivor, even part MMORPG knight slowly accumulating levels and power and inventory.

He’s my all-time favorite comic. And the only comic I truly collect.

Ten great child geniuses in literature.

…the more compelling characteristic of the child genius is the fact that he is alone in what is many ways a foreign world. After all, alienation, in our digital world, is one of the most defining themes of our generation, something that occupies everyone.

Something you should never do: respond to your critics. Never ever respond to them like this. And don’t let your family do it, either. Michael Chabon’s wife has meltdown on Twitter. V. sad, because I respect the Chabons.

BTW, I really need to clean out my bookmarks.

If someone hasn’t written a book about this yet, I sure wish they would. Reclusive art love/heiress Huguette Clark and her eccentric ways. And to make this story even more frustrating, her art was selling on ebay recently for a song, and I couldn’t afford any of it at the time. I assume people did not recognize her name: her work had a storybook quality. It was quite nice. I imagine a little context would have sent those prices soaring.

The daughter of a disgraced former U.S. senator, Huguette inherited millions from the Montana copper mines, and has lived a solitary life while her three fabulous homes sit empty: a $100 million estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, a $24 million country house in Connecticut and a $100 million co-op, the largest apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park — all immaculately kept but unoccupied for decades.

As Huguette has just marked her 104th birthday in an ordinary hospital room in New York, there are unanswered questions as well:

Who protects an old lady who secluded herself from the world, limiting her life to a single room, playing dress-up with her dolls and watching cartoons? Who protects an old lady whose Stradivarius violin, the famous one called “The Virgin,” which her mother gave her as a 50th birthday present, has been sold secretly for $6 million? Who protects an old lady whose dearest friend, a social secretary to whom Huguette supposedly gave $10 million, now has Alzheimer’s and is unable to visit anymore? Who protects an old lady who has no children, and whose distant relatives have been prevented from visiting her? Who protects an old lady whose accountant fell behind on his own federal income taxes and is a convicted felon and a registered sex offender?

Two very fine articles with pics at MSNBC.

And here.

Fascinating stuff.

Robert Levine, author of Free Ride, at Salon.

The premise of my book is that most online companies rely for their content, and hence for their money, on traditional media companies. If they destroy that business model, it’s unclear what they’re going to have to distribute. If you look at YouTube, eight of the top 10 videos are major-label music videos. If the major labels shrank to the point where they can’t make videos, YouTube isn’t much of a business. It’s still a great social phenomenon, but it’s not much of a business.

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CREATOR RIGHTS LINKS: Getting Paid, Getting Robbed

by Colleen Doran on October 11th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal, Creator Resources, Money Management, Creator Resources, Publishing

I’m a bad blogger for not updating more frequently, so here’s a linkpalooza of cool things to read.

Boy do I need to clean out my bookmarks.

At the New York Times, “Begging for Your Pay”.

He waited on $31,000 through November 2009; by February, the company still owed him $20,000. Wisdom, who said he had had a perfect credit score until then, racked up over $20,000 in credit card debt, and his bank raised his interest rates to 30 percent. He was paying more than $500 a month in credit card interest, and withdrew from his retirement accounts to make ends meet.

I feel your pain, dude. It’s been over a year, and a producer still hasn’t forked over the dough.

China and Intellectual Property.

Bootleg copies of the “Dark Knight” and Shenzen sweatshops churning out fake Louis Vuitton bags are only part of the problem. Last March, the United States International Trade Commission banned imports of cast steel railway wheels made by the Chinese group Tianrui. Tianrui had hired nine employees from the Chinese licensee of Amsted Industries of Chicago, a maker of railway parts. They came with an armful of trade secrets that allowed Tianrui to muscle into the business.

What really happened to htmlcomics. You may recall I had a run-in with this scary dude, a convicted felon pirating comics, some time ago. He followed up my post several times with some vaguely threatening emails, odd complaints I had lied about his kindly cooperation with my request he stop pirating my work (read the link and decide for yourself,) and demands to remove anything I had ever said about him online, all of which I ignored. I did not publish any of his later emails, especially after learning what he did to this cop who pissed him off. That’s so not normal. I just handed the letters to my attorney.

He also made the odd claim that he had been released from “all charges”. Whatever charges he thinks they were, the real story is that he was sued by the federal government and had his servers and websites permanently shut down and forfeited. You can read all about it at Copyhype.

Copyhype’s article also lays to rest some of the online cheering from people who claim they had the dude shut down via their blog posts or something. The investigation began in 2009.

The case of htmlComics.com is, as far as I know, the first time a domain name has been forfeited under 18 USC § 2323(a) as property “used, or intended to be used, in any manner or part to commit or facilitate the commission of” criminal copyright infringement.

And while my bottom line has gone up considerably since I first wrote about the perils of digital book filching, I’m chalking that up to the many thousands I spent on advertising, having the website redone, and other rather expensive incentives, not to mention my ubiquitous web presence.

I’m also working with Image Comics to create A Distant Soil digital books. The first 14 issues of A Distant Soil were not published by Image, and they are undergoing a major cleanup operation. They also require new covers and will have some new content. They should be available soon, but this art is more than 20 years old, and digital files did not exist back in the day. We’re doing major restoration here.

I also hope you enjoy the online comic experience at my official website. It’s been fun bringing it to you.

Jaron Lanier declares “Web 2.0 is utterly pathetic.”

“Musicians and journalists are the canaries in the coalmine,” says Lanier, “but, eventually, as computers get more and more powerful, it will kill off all middle-class professions.”

At Plagiarism Today: “Why I don’t Fear Chilling Effects.” Chilling Effects sometimes posts the personal information of people who file takedown notices for copyright infringement online. I think that’s kind of creepy. Here’s another take on the matter.

First, the name Chilling Effects, to many copyright holders, sounds very accusatory. Though Chilling Effects “aims to support lawful online activity against the chill of unwarranted legal threats” it does so by being an impartial database of notices. Not every notice in Chilling Effects is “chilling” free speech in any way, in fact, the vast majority are not.

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Legal Issues in Contemporary Art: Copyright Class

by Colleen Doran on September 16th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Education, Creator Resources, Legal

Legal Issues in Contemporary Art:
Copyright
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*2.5 CLE credits: 1.5 Professional Practice and 1 Skills (Approved for Non-Transitional and Transitional Attorneys)

When: Monday, September 26, 2011. 4 – 6:30pm
Where: VLA, 1 East 53rd Street, NY, NY 10022 (Auditorium) Map it!

With the recent increase in copyright issues and lawsuits, visual and performing artists need to be aware of copyright laws and the legal issues that may affect their practice and the presentation of their art work. This class will focus on copyright law, with a primer on some of the more pressing legal concerns for artists today, such as the distinction between ideas and expression, the use of appropriated images and text, as well as fair use. The class will refer to legal cases in order to illustrate key concepts.

This VLA workshop is open to artists, arts administrators, and serves as an introduction to copyright law for admitted attorneys.

This class will be taught by Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq., VLA’s Associate Director.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

What people are saying about this class:

“Very creative and engaging presentation of important issues in copyright.”

“Very well taught class with extremely useful information.”

“Thank you Sergio. This was a great introduction to VLA. You made the subject very interesting even after a very long day.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Fees (there is a late registration fee of $10 if you register the day of the class):
$15 Artist (VLA member)
$25 Artist (VLA non-member)
$75 Legal Professional (VLA member)
$100 Legal Professional (VLA non-member)
$50 VLA YAM’s (Young Associate Members)
*Free for All You Can Learn Pass

To register, please complete and fax this registration form. All registration fees are non-refundable. For more information, please call Joni Todd at 212.319.2787 x10, or e-mail her at jtodd@vlany.org.

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Google Books Settlement – Bad News for Billionaire Looters

by Colleen Doran on August 18th, 2011
Posted In: Blog, Creator Resources, copyright/trademark, Creator Resources, Creator Resources, Legal

The Google Books Nightmare. Read all about it here:

For a paltry settlement of $60 per book, Google claimed digital publishing rights with or without author consent as a part of a 300 page settlement with 200 pages of amendments, written in such a way as to virtually guarantee that almost any author would not see their $60 for…well, goodness knows when. The contract was a NET agreement.

The case has been winding its way through the courts for years. And it looks bad for poor Google. A recent court case has probably killed any chance of a settlement. The Department of Justice has repeatedly kicked this one back already.

New York Law School’s James Grimmelmann didn’t mince words. “The Google Books settlement—any settlement—is now dead,” he noted. “There is no square one: this case is going back to litigation.”

Review the famous Tasini case. Tasini is also involved in the recent fight against multi-millionaire moocher Ariana Huffington, whose sale of The Huffington Post netted her a cool $315 million, and her team of unpaid bloggers…well, lots of unpaid.

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’m thinking this may be one of the (many) reasons people are turning from blogging to link sharing activities like Twitter. You can still get your point across without a lot of labor, share your info or ideas, and not make some uber-blogger rich off your hours of effort. A 140 character tweet is a lot less effort than a blog post.

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.

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