You have probably heard about killography, the new word coined by the National Institute on Media and the Family to describe our depraved entertainments. Yes, Spell Checker, that is now a word. We do not dispute that it is a lot of fun - perhaps even stuponfucious - to invent new words to describe the events in our world. We also think there are perfectly acceptable words that exist already, whole books full of words, some of which are capable of describing gratuitous violence. The trouble is, they just don’t pack the propaganda punch cultural watchdogs crave.
I’ve seen articles recently praising the ESRB ratings system, which is great, and while I endorse efforts to make people aware of that system I don’t think it’s all that hot. It’s the system we’ve got, so I don’t mind using it until we change it to the system I am about to describe.
There is absolutely no reason that games should not be utilizing the same ratings system as movies.
The shift isn’t really that complex. The ESRB has EC (Early Childhood), E (Everyone), T (Teen), M (Mature), and AO (Adults Only). I’ve never seen the first one or the last one. I have a sneaking suspicion that they have established this parallel system in order to actively exploit the fact that parents don’t know what it means, but that’s impolite and I apologize. At any rate, let’s just switch it out. G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17 are perfectly analogous to the existing system, the only difference being parents already know what it means. No doubt, parents will continue to let schools, televisions, and videogames do their parenting. The only difference is now they can’t feign ignorance regarding the content.
The movie industry, which boosters of electronic entertainment always compare our passtime to, polices itself because they know that PG-13 is a magical alchemical formula for producing money. Certain sorts of movies, or movies released at certain times strive for this rating because it is a sort of sweet spot. It’s possible that a system that employed the sensible, established ratings for films might have a similar effect - coupled with enforcement of these ratings at the store level. Ordinarily, I support measures like this with tongue firmly in cheek, because I know that young gamers are clever creatures: they can get their games on ISOs from IRC, so my suggesting such a system won’t actually keep you from games any more than some RIAA bugaboo is going to keep you from downloading music. But I have a fear that this whole thing - the whole violent games thing - is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Call it a hunch.
In a bit of Child’s Play news, I’m completely exhausted. We outgrew the second of two storage areas, so we had to rent a truck and unload all the toys to a third storage facility. This one is pretty vast - it’s also more secure - so it seems like it’ll probably keep us for the long haul. I’d love to give you an update on the amount we’re up to, but I couldn’t even hazard a guess at this point. Not even counting toys, there’s twenty-thousand in Paypal - we’re going to see if we can go to Kinkos and get one of those big Publisher’s Clearing House checks made. Also, MG over at Slackers ran a drive on his site to buy an Xbox for Child’s Play - and they did it! A webcomic in Singapore raises money for sick children in Seattle, a gamer’s charity drive raises over a hundred thousand dollars in toys and donations - and then some dumb fucker pulls a firearm at a Counter-Strike tournament. This is a communique to all dumb fuckers - we’re trying to do something here, idiots. Do you think you could maybe not kill anybody for the next, oh, twelve days? I know it’s hard.
(CW)TB out.
today my heart beats only out of habit
I don’t generally comment on stuff that’s going on in the forum but this is just crazy. For those of you not brave enough to venture into the forum let me give you the scoop on the latest drama.
I was contacted a few days ago by a young man who told me that people in my forum were stealing his copyrighted intellectual property and using it as avatars without his permission. Here is the meat of his mail to me:
I am coming to you because I am dead serious about protecting both my intellectual properties and my copyrights and you have an opportunity to
remove the offending art before things escalate to a point nobody wants to
go.
He goes on to tell me that he has “shut down six web comics that were using his art” and he expects there will be plenty others. Not exactly a good way to open a dialogue.
I went to his web site again this morning and he has now removed the post asking his readers to spam our forums. He has also removed the pictures of the offending artwork that he had posted in order to help prove his case. He has added a new section regarding copyright laws and the swift punishment he will rain down on anyone who steals his stuff. I was lucky enough to see the offending artwork before he removed it and I can honestly say as someone who has been dealing with this sort of thing for over five years that he is insane.
Keep in mind that I am very sympathetic to artists who are having issues with copyright violation. Real issues with Copyright violations that is. From what I saw, apparently some forum member had created sprite based avatars whose feet looked a lot like the feet this guys “draws”. That might sound like a joke but its true. The heads were totally different as were the clothes, but the feet did look kind of similar. Of course it’s hard to determine if the plagiarist in question was copying the sprite work of Squidi.net or the sprite work of every single videogame released for the NES.
So my tip to Sean is to stop and think before you send pissy emails and threaten to shut down someone’s website. Let’s say for the sake of argument that people in my forum had actually stolen your artwork and not just drawn similar feet. That is the cost of doing business on the internet my friend. Chances are they took it and used it as an avatar because they like it. Contacting their ISP and threatening to sue them is not a good way to keep fans. If someone is using a drawing of yours as an avatar, take it as the compliment it is.
Feel free to contact me again when you have people selling T-shirts with your characters or creating homo erotic flash cartoons(NSFW) with your intellectual property. Then maybe we can have a real discussion about artist’s rights as they pertain to the ever changing world of digital distribution.
-Gabe out
Squidi had this to say regarding my post:
When you’ve got a view from the top, it is easy to look down on everyone
I’m honestly not looking down on you buddy. I’m simply letting you know that as a person who has actually had experience with this sort of thing, you have no legal grounds at all to do the sorts of things you are doing. I understand that sending emails that threaten to contact ISP’s or worse may cause some people to give into your demands. However I’m letting you know that when you send out those sorts of emails eventually you will send them to someone who actually knows a thing or two about copyright laws and how they apply to digital artwork.
I am simply trying to give you some advice. I’ve been in your position countless times and the best thing you can do is just roll with it. If someone is using your work as an avatar just send them a nice letter asking that they please provide a link back to your site. I see my artwork being used as avatars in nearly every forum I visit. I take it as a compliment. These people have chosen to use something I drew to represent themselves amongst their friends. If someone asks where they got it they will more than likely say Penny Arcade. All it’s doing is getting your name out.
I understand that you want to protect your work but you have to weigh that against the value of viral marketing which can be huge for a web comic. You have just disabled the ability to right click on your images. Honestly that’s a bad move if you want to increase readership. You want people to save your comics. You want them to print them out and put them in their lockers. One person saves a comic and shows it to a friend and you have a new reader. That is probably the number one way to gain new readers.
By the way, you will be hearing from my lawyers.
(that was a joke)
-Gabe out
Okay Squidi you linked to the site about copyrights so let’s use it. Let me say though that this is nuts. We are talking about someone using a heavily modified version of your highly derivative sprite art as a forum avatar. This is not something that would ever make it to a court. For the sake of argument though let’s say it did. This is from the web site you linked to pal. These are the questions that would need to be addressed in court to determine if the artwork was covered under fair use.
Fair Use
1. The purpose and character of the use (the more transformative defendant’s use, the more likely to be fair use, whereas if defendant merely reproduces plaintiff’s work without putting it to a transformative use, the less likely this use will be held to be fair; further, the more commercial defendant’s use, the less likely such use will be fair),
Okay so let’s apply this to our little situation here. The artwork in question has been transformed and altered and it is not being used commercially. So far it looks like the artwork would be protected under fair use but we have more things to consider.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work (the more creative and less purely factual the copyrighted work, the stronger its protection),
Okay in our case the work was creative. You might have an argument here if the rest of the points weren’t against you.
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion the defendant used.
This one is harder to judge. Personally I’d say that less than 10 percent of the original artwork remains unaltered. It’s obvious that the basic shape and size of the character was used but that’s about it. Very little of your copyrighted character actually remains.
4. The effect of defendant’s use on the potential market or the copyrighted work.
Someone using your artwork as a forum avatar does not hurt you in any way. In fact all it could possibly do is increase awareness of your comic strip which is a good thing.
Like I said, it’s silly to even bring this up as this is not something that would ever go to court. But if you are going to link to websites in an effort to defend your position you should try reading them first.
-Gabe out
I know an important battle is being waged in this space, so I won’t take up a lot of time. I know know that the closure of Black Isle hit a lot of us hard, and I simply wanted to verbalize the fact.
(CW)TB
