Stealing from Tom

[GK Sierra]

Jul 14, 2012 12:05:27 GMT csj said:

Jul 1, 2012 4:12:40 GMT GK Sierra said:

YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR

YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A BABY

Maurice is probably my favorite Englishman after Winston Churchill and Jimmy Carr.

[psykeout]

Jun 27, 2012 11:41:57 GMT Tom Siddell said:

This isn't about me losing money, this isn't about other people affecting the integrity of the work, this isn't about keeping someone else from making a living off their own talents, this is about people selling my work. The person who lacks the creativity to make something of their own, and so takes something that belongs to someone else, is the one with the problem here. Not me. All I do is make a piece of work and decide for myself how I want to handle it. If it means I want to hire people to make merchandise for me, fine. If I want to lock it all in a safe and throw it in the ocean, that's also my right and I'm not going to appreciate when someone tries to tell me that I'm not allowed to make that choice for myself.

I, of course, respect your right to say that people can't sell work featuring your intellectual property, and I understand which things I'm allowed to do and which things I can't do and which things I shouldn't do and which things are only good to do when I'm wearing polka dot underwear, but I'm still not sure why you don't want people to sell work of your characters.

I understand why we can't; because you say so and it's your work, but I just don't understand why you say so. It's not as though I was selling your favorite russian nesting doll, and once I've sold it you would lose it forever. If someone sells a picture of Annie, it doesn't really seem to affect you in any way.

I know it doesn't MATTER why you don't want people to sell GC fanart, it just matters that you said no, and it's your property, so we shouldn't. I'm not saying "Tom stop being dumb and let us sell your intellectual property." I'm not even necessarily saying that you SHOULD, I'm just curious as to why you don't. From this quote it seems like you might be saying "if an artist sells my characters then they're not being creative, and I don't want artists to not be creative, because they should use their own creativity and not mine." I can't really tell though.

[jombra]

Jul 15, 2012 10:52:05 GMT psykeout said:

Jun 27, 2012 11:41:57 GMT Tom Siddell said:

This isn't about me losing money, this isn't about other people affecting the integrity of the work, this isn't about keeping someone else from making a living off their own talents, this is about people selling my work. The person who lacks the creativity to make something of their own, and so takes something that belongs to someone else, is the one with the problem here. Not me. All I do is make a piece of work and decide for myself how I want to handle it. If it means I want to hire people to make merchandise for me, fine. If I want to lock it all in a safe and throw it in the ocean, that's also my right and I'm not going to appreciate when someone tries to tell me that I'm not allowed to make that choice for myself.

I, of course, respect your right to say that people can't sell work featuring your intellectual property, and I understand which things I'm allowed to do and which things I can't do and which things I shouldn't do and which things are only good to do when I'm wearing polka dot underwear, but I'm still not sure why you don't want people to sell work of your characters.

I understand why we can't; because you say so and it's your work, but I just don't understand why you say so. It's not as though I was selling your favorite russian nesting doll, and once I've sold it you would lose it forever. If someone sells a picture of Annie, it doesn't really seem to affect you in any way.

I know it doesn't MATTER why you don't want people to sell GC fanart, it just matters that you said no, and it's your property, so we shouldn't. I'm not saying "Tom stop being dumb and let us sell your intellectual property." I'm not even necessarily saying that you SHOULD, I'm just curious as to why you don't. From this quote it seems like you might be saying "if an artist sells my characters then they're not being creative, and I don't want artists to not be creative, because they should use their own creativity and not mine." I can't really tell though.

I think it may have something to do with the porn aspect. Tom can't really stop people drawing porn of his characters, but he sure as hell can stop them (sort of) from making money from it.

I'm sure if you asked permission and explained exactly what you were drawing beforehand, he might give you some leeway. IE if you wanted to get a Gunnerkrigg Court tattoo. For commissions, or if you planned to publish a fan-comic or something like that, you might have to offer to give him some of your profit. (With a published fancomic, there may even be a contract involved)

His main problem with that may be that people don't ask permission? And that's of course illegal, but also very rude.

I am not Tom, however, so I can't tell you all this is how he feels, it's just how I would feel if I owned a webcomic called Gunnerkrigg Court.

[Lightice]

Jul 15, 2012 21:07:22 GMT jombra said:

I think it may have something to do with the porn aspect. Tom can't really stop people drawing porn of his characters, but he sure as hell can stop them (sort of) from making money from it.

I assumed that this was the case at first but I was mistaken. Tom's problem is with people making money out of his work, period.

[descoladavirus]

Jul 16, 2012 0:55:14 GMT Lightice said:

Jul 15, 2012 21:07:22 GMT jombra said:

I think it may have something to do with the porn aspect. Tom can't really stop people drawing porn of his characters, but he sure as hell can stop them (sort of) from making money from it.

I assumed that this was the case at first but I was mistaken. Tom's problem is with people making money out of his work, period.

Is that bad? This is a comic Mr. Siddell quit his full time job to work on. He made the characters and plot and if it weren't for him, no one would be making money from it. So why should he say "Oh yes everyone, make as much money as you can from selling my work!"

He didn't like anyone selling his work, and he most certainly doesn't like them selling porn of his work. (which is understandable given how some of his characters are 14 and some are timeless)

This is how intellectual property laws work. Mr. Siddell owns the characters. No one may sell anything featuring his characters without his express permission. Theft of intellectual property isn't like normal theft. You're not taking what he owns. You're making money off something he owns.

Doing so anyway devalues the work Mr. Siddell has put into this comic, its characters and the sacrifices he's made in keeping it around for us to read.

[Lightice]

Jul 16, 2012 13:57:09 GMT descoladavirus said:

[
Is that bad? This is a comic Mr. Siddell quit his full time job to work on. He made the characters and plot and if it weren't for him, no one would be making money from it. So why should he say "Oh yes everyone, make as much money as you can from selling my work!"

Where did I say that that is bad? That is his opinion, and I respect it with his work. Different artists have different opinions on how they want other people to treat their work, but regardless of what they are, their wishes should be respected. I was worried at one point when I misinterpreted Tom saying that he condemns all fanwork, which I think is going too far, but this didn't turn out to be the case, so it's all good and fair.

[psykeout]

Jul 15, 2012 21:07:22 GMT jombra said:

I'm sure if you asked permission and explained exactly what you were drawing beforehand, he might give you some leeway. [...] His main problem with that may be that people don't ask permission?

I'd like to know whether or not this is the case.

[jombra]

Me too, sort of. I think I'll post a hypothetical on Formspring.

[Georgie L]

As long as nobody tries to sell his intellectual property (or anything similar such as ask for donations for it, purchase art of his works from anywhere but Tom's official releases, claiming his work as being yours)
then what I gathered is that he will begrudgingly turn a blind eye to porn and he wholeheartedly supports fan-art as long as it is just that, not for sale and folks make it obvious that it is fan-art.

[Kriselia]

This has actually been a really interesting thread, and I'd like to toss my two cents into it.

Way I see it, there's two different degrees of severity here:
First, if someone makes Gunnerkrigg pictures and starts selling them, it's pretty obviously theft of intellectual property on part of the artist.
But what about an artist who's just doing commissions of whatever you'd like, when someone sends them a picture of Annie and asks for a painting of her, how acceptable or unacceptable is it?
And when a picture is sold like that, who would be the one doing the "crime", the artist who might not even know where the character is from or the commissioner who initiated the whole thing?

[GK Sierra]

Jul 21, 2012 20:32:38 GMT Kriselia said:

This has actually been a really interesting thread, and I'd like to toss my two cents into it.

Way I see it, there's two different degrees of severity here:
First, if someone makes Gunnerkrigg pictures and starts selling them, it's pretty obviously theft of intellectual property on part of the artist.
But what about an artist who's just doing commissions of whatever you'd like, when someone sends them a picture of Annie and asks for a painting of her, how acceptable or unacceptable is it?
And when a picture is sold like that, who would be the one doing the "crime", the artist who might not even know where the character is from or the commissioner who initiated the whole thing?

That's the crux of the argument. Technically such a work would be protected under Fair Use and Reproduction statutes, at least in US law, however that does not change the view that some people take of it, which is that it is nothing better than simple theft.

I believe the best solution is for the commissioners in question to donate a portion of the profit back to Tom. Now, is that likely to happen? Probably not, but on the same token there aren't Chinese sweatshops full of people ripping off Tom's art solely for profit (yet), it's private citizens here and there, and those people can weigh how they feel on the issue and decide whether they indeed owe Tom something, which I feel they do.

[Kriselia]

Jul 21, 2012 21:27:14 GMT GK Sierra said:

Jul 21, 2012 20:32:38 GMT Kriselia said:

But what about an artist who's just doing commissions of whatever you'd like, when someone sends them a picture of Annie and asks for a painting of her, how acceptable or unacceptable is it?
And when a picture is sold like that, who would be the one doing the "crime", the artist who might not even know where the character is from or the commissioner who initiated the whole thing?

That's the crux of the argument. Technically such a work would be protected under Fair Use and Reproduction statutes, at least in US law, however that does not change the view that some people take of it, which is that it is nothing better than simple theft.

Alright, so I had to check what the laws regarding this are in Finland.

Apparently, while there is no specific mention of fictional characters in law, they cross the line into original creations and are thus the creator's property.
Profiting off the work is the threshold of the action becoming clearly illegal and the copyright holder having a good chance of winning the case in court.

And regarding to my example, it's not completely clear cut but it seems the artist would be the offender in the crime, while the commissioner would be an accomplice.
The punishment tends to be a fine and compensation for the owner. The amounts are based on the scale of the crime and whether the offender was aware of the copyrighted work and their action's criminality.
In the case of the commission-making artist who doesn't know that they're profiting off someone else's characters, the fine would usually be small and the compensation would be the amount they'd have to pay to legally use the characters.
Porn might actually net the offender even bigger fines, because it would most likely fall under so-called disrespectful use of the source material!

I was a little on the fence regarding this, but after looking into it and thinking it over, I tend to agree that profiting off of other people's characters is rather distasteful, even if they haven't explicitly asked people not to do it. Reeks of counterfeiting.

[psykeout]

The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with selling art of other people's character (provided you are permitted to do so).

The people aren't paying you for the character; the character can be viewed for free. They're paying you for your artistic services. Furthermore, the original artist doesn't "lose" the character. It's not like selling someone else's stack of acorns, because after you sell the character, he still owns the character. You could make the point that he loses the integrity of the character, and that making art of the characters in distasteful light makes the characters worth less to the artist. But this discussion, as has been stated several times, isn't about porn, so I'm going to toss this point to the side.

It's sort of like telling an artist not to draw that tree over there. That tree is providing shade for someone and it's on someone else's property and you don't have the right to draw it.

You could make the argument that character design is an important element of drawing/painting/making a macaroni sculpture of something. And it is! it's very important that you're drawing something people will want too look at. However, more people profiting will either draw it because A) they were commissioned to do so. In this case, they're only drawing that character because someone asked for it. you couldn't very well be asked to draw Mickey Mouse and then give them a picture of Generic Dragon. Of course, you could just say "No that's Walt Disney's property I won't draw it ask for something else," but that's not the point. The point is that they're not drawing Mickey Mouse because they don't have the skill to draw something nice without stealing someone's design, they're drawing mickey mouse because that's what the person paying wants.
In case B), they've made a print or a computer wallpaper or a comic or whatever, in which case I think they'd usually (but not always) be drawing that because of its popularity, and therefore its value as a subject. You could create a design much better than Mickey Mouse, but a Mickey Mouse print will probably well much better than your Generic Dragon design, because it's a thing people know and like, and would enjoy seeing and other people who look at it will say "why that's mickey mouse!". Even if they ARE drawing mickey mouse because they have no design talent, it seems like a victimless crime. You're leaching off of Walt Disney's design skills, ok, and that's perhaps lazy (but maybe not, still), but no one is damaged in any way.

It just seems like stealing intellectual property isn't actually stealing, because no one loses anything. If no bad comes of something, is it really a crime?
I can't think of any reason to call it a crime, but I'm a pretty simple guy so maybe I'm overlooking something!

[Per]

Jul 22, 2012 18:50:08 GMT psykeout said:

Furthermore, the original artist doesn't "lose" the character. It's not like selling someone else's stack of acorns, because after you sell the character, he still owns the character.

If owning the character doesn't mean you get to say what's done with it, it seems you're saying that owning a character should not actually count for anything.

[GK Sierra]

Jul 22, 2012 19:04:29 GMT Per said:

Jul 22, 2012 18:50:08 GMT psykeout said:

Furthermore, the original artist doesn't "lose" the character. It's not like selling someone else's stack of acorns, because after you sell the character, he still owns the character.

If owning the character doesn't mean you get to say what's done with it, it seems you're saying that owning a character should not actually count for anything.

...and here we arrive at the big digital conundrum. Can you steal a byte by copying it?

If the original person still possesses the item, but there is now an unauthorized and un-monetized copy in the hands of someone else, is it theft?

If Thesus replaces every plank in his flagship, is it still the same craft?

The jury is still out as far as a worldwide standard goes. The big media magnates, their lawyers and their bottomless piles of money have one opinion, and citizen activists, pirates, and common folk everywhere have another.

Right now the US leans towards the Uncle Warbucks types, because unfortunately that is how politics works over here, but other places (the nordic countries in particular) have entirely different laws.

Since it's on such a small scale, it's more of a moral issue than a legal issue at this point, and you can paint much firmer lines with morality than you can with law. I think that people who chose to profit from the ideas of a fledgling artist without giving due credit or compensation is wrong. If you commission such fan-works, there is nothing wrong with what you do, you're an artist just like the rest of them, but when you decide to charge money that makes you a shameless profiteer.

[cass]

It's (copyright as a moral/practical issue - not this case in specific) a complicated issue, because so much of what's in a creative space is derivative in nature. Given you can identify large elements of mythologies in Tom's work, that he did not create, one could claim, if one were interested in taking the extreme approach, that Tom has committed plagiarism. Under such a strong interpretation no-one can draw upon any of the cultural elements in their society to create new stories. At the other extreme plagiarism loses any real meaning, everyone can draw upon everything they've access to. However, under that intepretation, there is absolutely no protection for creativity; it will always be more efficient to simply counterfeit what someone else does.

At what point does something cease to be current and justifiably enter the collective property of society as an element of culture from which others can create derivatives? How derivative does something have to be in order to be derivative, rather than simply a rip-off? And is the human-pleasurable set of stories, characters and designs large enough that we won't, fairly quickly given new information technologies, start to collapse into a system where the most dominant ideas are copyrighted, essentially, in perpetuity and we just end up creating slight variations on them? Thus gradually converging a point where, whatever we set as our boundary for acceptable derivation, further creativity is a legal impossibility.

These aren't necessarily questions with easy answers. (Though the application of most plausible answers that continue to allow creativity, in a reasonable time-frame over iteration of creation, renders an easy answer on this case at least.) However, I find the extension and proliferation of copyright, in light of the last, to be a very troubling development.

[wheat]

Jul 22, 2012 18:50:08 GMT psykeout said:

It's sort of like telling an artist not to draw that tree over there. That tree is providing shade for someone and it's on someone else's property and you don't have the right to draw it.

No it's not in any way like that. This is not a good analogy it is a very not good analogy. noooooo.

It'd be more like if someone who owned property with tree on it was selling shade from that tree and then someone else came along and said "you know what, I will sell this shade on their property too. I'll set up a towel for comfort and deliver lemonade with my shares of shade so it's different!" on that person's property. Though that little bit of shade doesn't take away from anyone else's shade, it impedes on the original property owner's ability to profit off their own tree's shade. If he or she wants to sell shade rights, they can; if they aren't selling shade rights, that doesn't give others free reign to sell things based on their property just because Untapped Markets. Economically, not using that opportunity may be a market inefficiency, but people do not see things from a profit-only perspective. Morally, some cases could be made for some (esp. non-profit) things when a lack of action hurts society (see: helping to sneak homeless people into vacated, foreclosed buildings that aren't being used resulting in less death from exposure), but this is not one of them.

By profiting on another's property and making a third-party sale, you are leeching away potential sales that the property-owner could have gained.

Of course, defying a property owner's wishes can have positive or negative social effects that outweigh the value of the transaction itself, but for a vanity transaction like a commission of a webcomic I don't think that there're any positive externalities that could morally justify it.

[imaginaryfriend]

Here is the tale of Ooka and the Stolen Smell.

[GK Sierra]

Jul 25, 2012 21:21:53 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Here is the tale of Ooka and the Stolen Smell.

That was a cool story.

We need to clone Ooka nine times and replace the Supreme Court.

[legion]

Jul 25, 2012 21:21:53 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Here is the tale of Ooka and the Stolen Smell.

I've seen several versions of this story in many different contexts, I wonder what the original was (I heard it as some medieval folktale and also as a Jewish story).

[notacat]

Jul 25, 2012 22:36:06 GMT GK Sierra said:

Jul 25, 2012 21:21:53 GMT imaginaryfriend said:

Here is the tale of Ooka and the Stolen Smell.

That was a cool story.

We need to clone Ooka nine times and replace the Supreme Court.

Interestingly, it turns out that Ooka was a real person...how cool is that?

[GK Sierra]

Jul 26, 2012 8:03:46 GMT notacat said:

Jul 25, 2012 22:36:06 GMT GK Sierra said:

That was a cool story.

We need to clone Ooka nine times and replace the Supreme Court.

Interestingly, it turns out that Ooka was a real person...how cool is that?

Almost as cool as the Boshin Wars. The Tokugawa Shogunate is a weak-sauce historical period. Too many peasant ashigaru w/ guns. Not enough BANZAAAAAAAAI!

[csj]

Anyone who is artistically-gifted enough to make money off Tom's IP with their own works is gifted enough to create their own original works. Simple as that. the value of an artwork comes not only out of the artwork itself but how valuable it is perceived to the buyer and to fans of Gunnerkrigg Court, art involving it is more valuable than something more generic. That extra value is due to Tom's work not your own, therefore you are hitching a free ride on Tom's poorly-funded spiderwagon.

If you can't come up with a creative work like his, then find a writer and collab; there are plenty of people out there with ideas they want illustrated. The luxury of being able to read Gunnerkrigg free of charge while comics of comparable quality are sold commercially is something that should not be ignored and respecting the author's generosity in doing so is worthwhile for all readers, in my opinion.

[imaginaryfriend]

I think Ooka would agree that infringing on IP is stealing. The problem is that the damages from this sort of stealing are incredibly hard to determine, if it is possible at all, because the actions involved nearly always have secondary effects that directly promote the interests of the original IP holder. That dovetails into a second problem, that the natural tendency of enforcing IP rights is to turn what is supposed to be a shield into a sword.

[Per]

What if the student had successfully charged people money for standing in his room and smelling the wonderful fish, and ended up better off than the fishmonger? Would Ooka's verdict then seem less apropos? Yet his reasoning applies just as well in that case: the shopkeeper "lost" only smell, and the fact that the student figured out a way to profit from this is incidental.

[psykeout]

Jul 22, 2012 19:04:29 GMT Per said:

Jul 22, 2012 18:50:08 GMT psykeout said:

Furthermore, the original artist doesn't "lose" the character. It's not like selling someone else's stack of acorns, because after you sell the character, he still owns the character.

If owning the character doesn't mean you get to say what's done with it, it seems you're saying that owning a character should not actually count for anything.

No, no, I'm not saying that at all! As I have stated several times, I believe that whoever owns the character has the complete right to decide what is done with that character.
I'm merely discussing the consequences of allowing one's intellectual property to be recreated.

Jul 22, 2012 20:43:10 GMT GK Sierra said:

Jul 22, 2012 19:04:29 GMT Per said:

Since it's on such a small scale, it's more of a moral issue than a legal issue at this point, and you can paint much firmer lines with morality than you can with law. I think that people who chose to profit from the ideas of a fledgling artist without giving due credit or compensation is wrong. If you commission such fan-works, there is nothing wrong with what you do, you're an artist just like the rest of them, but when you decide to charge money that makes you a shameless profiteer.

Well you should always give credit where credit is due. I'm speaking in a hypothetical situation in which the seller of the art isn't claiming to own the characters. I can't find any moral fault with that. I'm not saying there ISN'T ONE, and if there is, I'd like to know what it is!
What's wrong with being a shameless profiteer? I don't like shame, and I very much enjoy profit. It seems like a win-win.
Again, I'm nor arguing that we should sell other people's intellectual property, I'm rather arguing that I can't find a fault with allowing other people to use your characters to make money, so long as they credit you.

Jul 25, 2012 2:54:23 GMT wheat said:

By profiting on another's property and making a third-party sale, you are leeching away potential sales that the property-owner could have gained.

Well that's a good point! I suppose I was thinking of Gunnerkrigg Court as being a little too "free," because he does't make us pay to view the comic, even if he does intend to make money off of it.

That makes sense then.

Jul 26, 2012 14:03:19 GMT csj said:

Anyone who is artistically-gifted enough to make money off Tom's IP with their own works is gifted enough to create their own original works. Simple as that.

That's not quiet true though! By virtue of being part of a well-liked comic, the characters of GC are more valuable that characters who nobody knows. People have interest in buying them because they know who they are. This goes less for something like a Fan comic, and more for something like a commission.

[davidm]

There is a gray area on parody, making a joke of someone else's creative work. For example, someone made a profit on a song with exact same name as a movie that made fun of that movie and other shows: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrGaoSB0Eus&feature=related

(Someone might claim a character from this comic is based on that song as well as a joke)

[GK Sierra]

Jul 26, 2012 20:48:45 GMT psykeout said:

Well you should always give credit where credit is due. I'm speaking in a hypothetical situation in which the seller of the art isn't claiming to own the characters. I can't find any moral fault with that. I'm not saying there ISN'T ONE, and if there is, I'd like to know what it is!
What's wrong with being a shameless profiteer? I don't like shame, and I very much enjoy profit. It seems like a win-win.
Again, I'm nor arguing that we should sell other people's intellectual property, I'm rather arguing that I can't find a fault with allowing other people to use your characters to make money, so long as they credit you.

If Tom is okay with other people making money on his characters as long as they put his name somewhere in there, than he is an infinitely more charitable man than I.

The problem is, Tom ISN'T (I-S-N-apostrophe-T, ISNT) okay with it. At all. If you respect Tom, you don't do it.

Jun 27, 2012 12:59:10 GMT Tom Siddell said:

I really don't care what people draw.

Just don't sell it.

Do not sell it.

Do not sell my stuff!

If you respect Tom, it's not okay to sell his work, simple as that. I'm starting to sound like a broken record here...

No combinations of factors makes it okay to make money from someone else's characters without their permission. You may not "find fault with it", but Tom does, and since it's his comic people should respect his boundaries.

[psykeout]

I get that much. As I have stated several times!
Let me be absolutely clear:

I do not intend to sell tom's work
I know selling tom's work would be bad
When it comes down to it, the only thing that matters is whether or not Tom is willing to allow you to sell his characters. (and he ISN'T willing to do so)

I completely understand all that! I was speaking more in a general sense.
I'm not trying to argue that we should be able to sell tom's work; I'm not really arguing any point at all! I was just discussing the active consequences of using another person's intellectual property.

[jombra]

From the Formspring:

Me:
Hey Tom, question from the forums. If someone wanted to publish a fancomic, would you be interested in entering into a contract with them? A situation where you'd get a part of the profits and of course only if what they draw is in good taste.

Tom:
No, I would not currently be interested in allowing someone to publish and sell a product based on my work.
...
Well, that's that.