intellectual property

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.

 

Friday November 16, 2018

Going Viral Virus

On any average day editorial cartoonists spend their days toiling on work for the purpose of filling a square for the print version of the next days’ newspaper for which they are employed. For the entire 20th century that’s how it worked.

In the next century, we began to showcase our cartoons on the Internet. 

Take for example this cartoon, drawn in 2006:

It was drawn at a time when Canada was at war in Afghanistan, meeting its international military obligations, and contributing to an allied mission to neutralize al-Qaeda terrorists based in the region, and bring down the Taliban regime. My critique on May 20, 2006, was of the federal government’s dithering position on whether or not to extend the mission, which began in 2001, for another 2 years. The Liberal Party, leading the government at the time, had become deeply divided over its willingness to continue the mission as soldiers were returning to Canada in body bags at an increasing rate. It didn’t help that their commitment to the effort could be seen in the underwhelming financial support to properly equip the hundreds of armed forces personnel sent.

It’s not my favourite kind of imagery, familiar and overused, and quite frankly, if I could choose which of my cartoons could go viral this would be last on the list.

So to my surprise it resurfaced on a popular cartoon Facebook page 12 and a half years after, the image intact, and the captions butchered to suit an American audience.

 

As posted under the unauthorized version of my cartoon, it’s like I put this cartoon in a bottle, dropped it in the internet Ocean in 2006, and it’s washed up on my FB page, all pixelated with the captions all monkeyed up. You can almost smell the mothballs and cat pee coming from the account of whoever made the modifications.

It’s getting all kinds of likes and shares, and even after pointing out that the original work had been doctored, the usual sort of social media sewer rats emerged endorsing the act of butchering someone else’s satire to suit their political opinions. 

In the past I’ve made a point of making examples of the sort who take pleasure ruining the work of professional cartoonists. I call it the Social Media Jackass Award. Today I’m pleased to announce that CJ Kalish (ChristopherJohn Kalish) who runs the above FB page, but refuses to delete the cartoon, is the latest winner of that award.

According to a colleague in the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists:

 CJ Kalish is a known thief of other’s work. He frequently posts doctored cartoons on his “fan site” without checking their veracity, uses other cartoons without permission, and often publishes material with no credit or ID of the real artist.

A growing number of legitimate cartoonists have been having a running legal battle with him for years now. Clay Jones and Nick Anderson first discovered he was stealing and using doctored work of theirs in 2016, and when called on it, CJ responded with lies and abuse.

Sounds like the classy sort of fellow who’s more than deserving of this recognition.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: don’t change intellectual property that doesn’t belong to you. Do your own work! As for those in the know of these breaches, yet refuse to do anything about them, enjoy the shame and humiliation.

Update: CJ Kalish has removed the doctored cartoon. Ensuing discussion I’ve had with cartoonists both on and off Facebook indicate that he’s had many run-ins with many cartoonists. As Clay Jones put it, quite simply, “he needs to share from the creators’ pages”, instead of copying images to his desktop and reposting them from his FB page.

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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