donkey

Congrats Social Media Donkey!

It’s election time in Canada which means the Internet becomes very active with rhetoric and persuasion, from all sorts of contributors, from political parties, opinion writers, Russian bots, trolls, and idiots.

Congratulations anonymous Twitter account holder Can Neo Cons purveyor of a robust chop shop of editorial cartoons. He (and he is a he) describes himself on his Twitter profile as, “I believe in standing up for what I think is right, Too much hatred going on in the world. I am into politics. All in the meme. Left Wing Populist.” He’s made quite a hobby out of extracting caricatures from editorial cartoons and reassembling them in tell tale bold bordered boxes with hackneyed thought bubbles peppered with spelling and grammar mistakes. He is the latest useful idiot to be used as a prime example to others why it’s not a good thing to repurpose professional satire to convey pea brained musings.

He isn’t the first person to do this and he won’t be the last, but there is a consistent hideousness in all of the reworked intellectual property that points to a pathological affliction among such individuals so obsessed by stealing other peoples work.

The behavioural pattern is very familiar. An artist will share work on a social media platform and among the discussion thread below will suddenly appear a chop shop art thief posting his awful repurposed work, in some vain attempt to flatter the artist. When alerted to their misdeed it is almost always the same: They’ll demonstrate immediate guilt, apologize for ripping off your art, and promise not to commit anymore vandalism to your art. Then they won’t bother to remove the offending rip offs of your art from their threads. After a little more back and forth between thief and the original creator, the thief will quickly dig in his heels, cite freedom of expression, telling the original creator that it’s the artist’s fault for sharing their art on social media. Then the fraudster will unleash a volley of insults.

Now, some of my colleagues have passive attitudes to these bottom feeders. Their follower counts are minuscule and in all likelihood there are mental disorders afflicting the individuals behind such accounts. Why bother giving them a broader audience?

In my view, they ought to be treated like any other thief of intellectual property. As we are taught in grade school we are to design our own work. We are told to cite supporting sources of our essays or creations. We are told at a young age that there are consequences for destroying property not belonging to us, intellectual property, or otherwise. This isn’t parody, it is theft, and if some people are so willing to engage in such wreckless activity, one has to wonder what other things such people might be up to. Let this serve as a convenient flag to authorities in case he has other shameful behaviour he thinks he’s hiding.

So, Michael Labelle, retired guy from Cornwall, Ontario, turned intellectual property thief, your misdeeds aren’t so anonymous after all. Your true identity is only mere clickity-clicks all over social media. 

 

Past Recipients of the Social Media Jackass Award. Each winner eventually removed stolen items from their feeds but it always took persistence:

Canadian Pride

“Teflon Jim” Stewart

HarpersGotaGo

Ontario Liberal Press Secretary’s Office

CJ Kalish

Facebook’s email!

UPDATE: Tuesday March 12, 2019

It took a week of waiting but after a complaint was lodged against Michael LaBelle’s theft his repurposed use of my intellectual property was scraped off the bottom of Facebook’s shoe.

Most of it, anyway. I listed 25 violations of intellectual property theft.

Tonight, Facebook sent me an email message following up on a complaint I lodged last week, and confirmed that Michael LaBelle had indeed violated Facebook’s rules regarding unauthorized use of Intellectual Property and has removed the offending material from his page Can Neo Cons. 

A quick scan through Michael LaBelle’s Facebook thread of awfulness will reveal a few more of my cartoons that were overlooked on a morning of logging infringements when I could’ve easily been more productive with my time than picking away at some loser’s pathetic hobby. Still, there remains extracts of cartoons drawn by well known cartoonists whose work has been degraded and repurposed to convey this thief’s twisted thoughts for all eternity.  The word needs to get out that this behaviour is unacceptable and that it won’t be tolerated. While some may wonder why I bother to devote more than a few seconds of fuming towards some cretin that pops up on my Twitter notifications, this is really meant for the future Michael LaBelles.  Michael LaBelle, rather stupidly, opted to react unwisely when his dirty hobby was exposed even when he was given the option to recant. Let this serve as an example to other Michael LaBelles that before the DMCA takedown happens you’ll be shamed first, and you’ll become the next useful idiot, like Michael LaBelle.

 

Saturday January 27, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 27, 2018

Brown’s loss may be a blessing in disguise for PCs

Suddenly, an Ontario election that looked wildly unpredictable appears utterly confounding.

June 24, 2017

The only certainty is that Patrick Brown’s dramatic decapitation as the Progressive Conservative candidate for premier is destined for the history books. No one, however, can foretell the province’s political future.

Never mind the partisans and pollsters who confidently predicted a PC rout of a forlorn Liberal government. No one truly knew how Premier Kathleen Wynne would fare against the untested Brown or the NDP’s Andrea Horwath on the campaign trail, nor how voters would respond.

We know even less today. Tempting as it is to write off the Tories as leaderless, they are hardly rudderless — and may even enjoy a renaissance.

June 23, 2016

At their moment of maximum disarray, a dislikable leader has been dispatched. If they can improve on their last disastrous choice — pollsters were already noting Brown’s creeping negative ratings, and the more than 44 per cent of Ontarians who had no opinion of him — the Tories may yet surprise people.

Put another way, the best thing Wynne and Horwath had going for them was Brown. Unlikeable, unknowable, unimpressive as a politician and most especially as an aspiring premier.

But not to be underestimated. Brown surprised his rivals in the 2015 party leadership race by massively outhustling and organizing them, signing up tens of thousands of instant Tories by reaching out to ethnic communities. As leader, he picked up the pace by setting remarkable new fundraising records.

Yet organizational talent does not translate into political vision. Brown was not only bereft of charisma, he was utterly lacking in presence when he walked into a room.

The Tories can do better — and better late than never. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator) 

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Latest Donkey Award goes to: Canadian Pride

Congratulations Facebook Fan Page Canadian Pride, you are the latest recipient of my Social Media Jackass Award. Canadian Pride follows in the footsteps of other online notables Harpersgotago, and “teflon Jim” Stewart. Both of those jackasses were caught repurposing others’ cartoon work as their own, a practice, which unfortunately happens to a great many artists who put their art online. Canadian Pride went a step further by attempting to make money, without authorization, using my cartoon work for a design they were marketing on Facebook for purchase on a custom t-shirt company called Tee Chip Pro. A casual glance through Canadian Pride’s Reviews (boasting a 1.5 out of 5 star rating) with comments mocking the products they shill, to accusations of racism, to charges of other instances of design theft. The thought crossed my mind that Canadian Pride might have some connection to the alt-right Proud Boys group given its themes of protest against the left. However, there’s no way of telling who’s behind Canadian Pride, as the page is shrouded in anonymity, without lurking into the movement and details of Facebook likers of the page – Feel free to do your own investigation. Anyway, it is rather ironic that a group calling itself Canadian Pride uses an American company to sell its stolen work.

Without permission, Canadian Pride was caught on its Facebook page repurposing my depiction of a clown extracted from a May 29, 2014 editorial cartoon (right) for its own monetary benefit on shirts and other products for sale on TeeChip.com (left)

Nowadays, thankfully, enforcement is being levied against the pirates of intellectual property in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a U.S. copyright law that’s been around since 1996, but whose teeth seem to be getting sharper as time marches on and its might successfully fends off challengers. Social Media companies and reputable user submitted online marketplace companies are now marching in lockstep to avoid DMCA violations. Compared a laissez-faire snails pace approach from a few years ago, Internet companies act with little hesitation from beefed up legal departments, to claims of trademark and copyright infringement.

In my experience of filing two reports of misuse regarding this incident to Facebook and TeeChip.com, the powerful social media giant took less than an hour to remove the content, and the shirt company took longer than half a day.

A very satisfying sight to see after a report was filed

Canadian Pride is now using the online store Moteefe with a new Elect a clown design, which is probably someone else’s design being used without permission. Could it be yours?  The best advice is to keep one’s eyes peeled – this mysterious group hops around from one online marketplace to another, ripping of artist’s work, and repurposing stuff for their own financial gain. Sadly, they are not alone. 

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Wednesday December 24, 2015

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator - Wednesday December 24, 2015 Where will the cold come from? Warmer weather forecasted in Hamilton T.S. Eliot wrote that the cruelest month is April, when flowers emerge from "the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." But the poet never experienced our December, which may end up the warmest on record, with confused buds blooming on land that doesn't know when to die. Cruel? "People are loving it," said Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips. "Forget about the whole Great White North reputation, people see this as payback for the last two winters, which were brutal." The Hamilton forecast not only calls for a green Christmas, but the temperature spiking to 15 C Thursday. Mild weather has been influenced by the impact of El Ni–o Ñ unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. Phillips cautions that December is not over yet, but offers these highlights: ¥ Hamilton's average 2015 December temperature has been 4.8 C; the normal is -2.3 C, a seven-degree difference that Phillips calls "shocking." ¥ Total snowfall has been 1.8 centimetres; the lowest on record from fall through to Jan. 1 was 5.4 cm ¥ It can all change fast, but: "I see no end in sight for 2015. Because of El Ni–o, I don't see where the cold will come from. The ground is warm, lakes wide open, and any cold air that comes from the north is being moderated." Reaction depends on who is weathering the warm snap. Golfers delight: Knollwood golf club in Ancaster, for one, reopened, heralding on its Facebook page it's "the season that never ends" and noted 174 golfers teed-off one day. Commuters like it, as well as joggers, and those who never tire of talking weather Ñ the last refuge of the unimaginative, said Oscar Wilde. (And journalists.) Squirrels in Hamilton, meanwhile, have been spotted looking noticeably plumper from eating everything in sight like it's an end

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday December 24, 2015

Where will the cold come from? Warmer weather forecasted in Hamilton

T.S. Eliot wrote that the cruelest month is April, when flowers emerge from “the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

But the poet never experienced our December, which may end up the warmest on record, with confused buds blooming on land that doesn’t know when to die.

Cruel?

“People are loving it,” said Environment Canada climatologist David Phillips. “Forget about the whole Great White North reputation, people see this as payback for the last two winters, which were brutal.”

The Hamilton forecast not only calls for a green Christmas, but the temperature spiking to 15 C Thursday.

Mild weather has been influenced by the impact of El Niño — unusually warm water in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America.

Phillips cautions that December is not over yet, but offers these highlights:

• Hamilton’s average 2015 December temperature has been 4.8 C; the normal is -2.3 C, a seven-degree difference that Phillips calls “shocking.”

• Total snowfall has been 1.8 centimetres; the lowest on record from fall through to Jan. 1 was 5.4 cm

• It can all change fast, but: “I see no end in sight for 2015. Because of El Niño, I don’t see where the cold will come from. The ground is warm, lakes wide open, and any cold air that comes from the north is being moderated.”

Reaction depends on who is weathering the warm snap.

Golfers delight: Knollwood golf club in Ancaster, for one, reopened, heralding on its Facebook page it’s “the season that never ends” and noted 174 golfers teed-off one day.

Commuters like it, as well as joggers, and those who never tire of talking weather — the last refuge of the unimaginative, said Oscar Wilde. (And journalists.)

Squirrels in Hamilton, meanwhile, have been spotted looking noticeably plumper from eating everything in sight like it’s an endless September. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Thursday May 23, 2013

Thursday May 23, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 23, 2013

Harper in Peru

Prime Minister Stephen Harper insisted Thursday that he did not know about – nor was asked to sign off on – the arrangement that saw his chief of staff cut a personal cheque for $90,000 to Sen. Mike Duffy.

Harper, currently on a trade mission in South America, took questions on the Senate expenses scandal for the first time since news emerged about the controversial cheque written by his former right-hand man.

I did not know … (and) I was not consulted, “Harper said, the Peruvian president standing at his side.

“I was not asked to sign off on any such thing, and had I been consulted or known, I would not have agreed with it, and it is obviously for those reasons that I accepted Mr. Wright’s resignation.”

Harper said he learned about the arrangement the same way Canadians did: through media reports. At that point, “I immediately asked that that information be released publicly,” he said.

He also described himself as “sorry,” “frustrated” and “extremely angry” about the whole mess, which has engulfed his government and threatens its carefully cultivated image as a pillar of accountability and sound financial management.

The payment allowed Duffy to stop co-operating with an external audit of his expenses – an audit that has since been referred back to the same Senate committee that has already reviewed its so-far-incomplete findings.

The affair is also under investigation by the federal ethics commissioner. (Source: iPolitics)

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