Sharpe's Opinion
Wednesday, 8th Apr, 2009
Jon Engle: The Thot Begins to Plicken
Remember Jon Engle? The designer who Twitter users the world over lent support to after he had his artwork ripped off and was then billed $18,000 by the rippers?
It was, it seemed, the internet at its very best, a juggernaut that could be tasked to help the downtrodden and harrassed within hours, the echo chamber bouncing the message from one avenue to another, recruiting one concerned designer after another. It’s always a compelling story when the internet helps the little guy fight back ‘The Man’ and to take down ‘The Villain’. Trouble is, none of the story may be true, ‘The Man’ may be right and the ‘Villains’ of this story may not be villains at all.
As with everything in life, things don’t quite feel so cut and dried after reading this. I wouldn’t want to call it one way or the other.
UPDATE: The site keeps going down, so here’s a screenshot of the post if you want to read it.
Comments
I can’t access the link either. Odd, that.
I like your attitude, AJS; quite so.
The site’s pretty flakey right now, it seems. Here, I took a screengrab, so you can read it and see the pics here
Failing that, there’s a copy of the text of the post here
Anyway, I have a feeling AJS’s plan also sends out the message ‘if you want to steal someone’s design work, go ahead – if they kick up a fuss it’ll just become public domain anyway’…
http://www.thelogofactory.com/logo_blog/index.php/stock-logos-copyright-twitter/
The other side of the story
Link’s down at the moment.
But if it says what I think it says, then the best thing might well be for the courts simply to annul the copyright on the works in question and release them early into the Public Domain.
This would send out the clear message: If you can’t play nicely together, your toys WILL be confiscated.
AJS
April 8, 2009 at 1:17 pm