Smiting your fans with bad mojo

The widespread pirating of famous comic strips is instructive for those of us involved in media access. Artists can be restrictive or open and this has a big impact on the perception of their art.

Who hasn’t seen a decal like this?

Image: Bill Watterson’s persecution of his fans has done little to prevent improper usage and has done much to dilute the brand.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but Bill has prevented any merchandising of his work and the result has been that this is the only kind of image we see. Bill Watterson has tried unsuccessfully to protect his images. So the primary visual available is a knock-off image used for automobile decals.

On the other side of the spectrum is Garfield creator, Jim Davis. When he discovered that his strips were being modified and republished he took it as a public relations opportunity. He said something nice about the comics (see below) and let it go at that.

Source: Garfield Minus Garfield – May 30, 2008

Garfield Minus Garfield is just what it says, a comic developed by someone who has erased Garfield and his speech bubbles from Garfield comics. This may just sound like another example of Internet lunacy, but I think it is significant for the way in which Jim Davis reacted. (HT: Mashable)

Another important example is The Far Side and its creator, Gary Larson. Based on a brief survey of the Internet it looks like Gary spends a lot of time and money hunting down copyright infringers and asking them to remove his images. See one of the many examples of Gary Larson serving cease and desist orders on Internet copyright infringers.

When I look at the Google Image results for “Far Side god at his computer” I’m struck (or should I say “smitten”) by the wide range of (mostly poor) quality of the reproduced images. It’s also interesting to note that the first five images are all from Blogspot blogs.

See my own contribution to the discussion: smite-a-potamus.

Mark Hopkins at Mashable has been comparing how musicians like Prince and Radiohead have reacted differently to their fans’ attempts to get creative with their music.

When you get overseas and start looking at development efforts, things get really fuzzy:

• Copyright is an alien concept. Sharing is a culturally reinforced value.
• Many of the publications that NGO’s work with have a tangle of copyright and “not-for-sale” restrictions attached.
• In the case of recordings and folk literature there has been a backlash against exploitation of nationals by NGO’s.

I’m in favor of artists being proactive in sharing their work. It’s far better to be an authoritative source for your own work than just to spend your time chasing down unauthorized duplications and treating fans as criminals. Look at this interesting case on my Lingamish blog. Another blogger complained when I hotlinked to a New Yorker cartoon that he had illegally duplicated on his blog, calling it “very bad mojo.” That’s doubly ironic in my book. But more than that, his jumping on me created far more bad mojo than it prevented. (I’m a Christian so I forgave and forgot, no problem! )

There’s a lot to think about on this topic and no easy options. But the gray area between “All Rights Reserved” and “Public Domain” is where most of us increasingly spend our time and effort.