Messages

As I say, pish. Relevant to the quantum of damages, and whether there is merit in pursuing a claim, but of no relevance whatsoever to the question of whether or not there is infringement.

Why would Bagwell bother pursuing a claim if there was no money in it?

As I said, he seems happy that laughing boy's been publicly shamed and forced to come clean. The bad publicity the toerags have incurred is probably more detrimental to their career prospects than any putative damages would be.

Bagwell seems to have made his point and I'm completely happy to deferr to the point your making about the strict legaility of their actions, but- and I'm paraphrasing no less an authority than Pete Waterman here- where there's no hit, there's no writ.

[Warner Brothers]

Spike Lee's views are irrelevant.

Tell that to Warner Brothers.

[A Tribe Called Quest]

Agreed. And, as the wee rascal wasn't going to reap any direct financial benefit from using Bagwell's work, a public slapdown is censure enough.

If the offender was getting paid for that image it'd be a different matter and Edmund could look forward to DVD and image royalties for years to come- in the same way Lou Reed and James Brown bought beach houses after A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy etched onto their work.

[Safe]

If the trailer doesn't hit this week, I'm going to be surprised.

Statham's new movie SAFE was financed by the same companies, will be distributed by the same studio (in the US), and will probably have the same rating. Even their budgets are similar.

I love Statham, but can we all agree that Dredd (2012)'s almost certainly going to be a bit better than Safe? Or Mercury Rising 2, as it could easily be subtitled.

[Marcel Duchamp]

Marcel Duchamp[/url]'s estate would be inundated with lawsuits from Armitage Shanks, and Damien Hirst would have to pay royalties to the skint students who labour in his art factories physically making all those spot paintings he flogs under his name.

Neither of those examples makes any sense.  Duchamp bought the Mott (not Armitage Shanks) urinal he 'repurposed', rather than stealing it from the manufacturers or making an exact copy of their design and setting himself up as a urinal-maker.  Hirst's (-ahem=) assistants knew what they were getting in to working in his studio, as all artist's assistants have since at least the Renaissance.  He didn't sneak into their bedrooms and nick their portfolios.

Quick capsule summary of my previous point: if you do something to make the original your own (even if that's only conceptual), then it's art, and there's no (legal) issue with "repurpose(ing)" it. If you can't be bothered doing that, you've got to pay for the privelege.

But you've chosen to use, quote and emphasise words from the same lexical index (money, theft, contractual relationships) as my own post, so I'm certain you understood what I was getting at, even if you took issue with my specific examples.

I think we're in danger of spending the rest of the evening furiously agreeing with each other, Tordelback.

Given the breadth of debate in US politics, Obama might as well be sharing a toothbrush with Hugo Chávez.

[Doc]

This seems open and shut breach of copyright ... There is a simple "sweat of the brow" test. A court will ask itself: is this product the result of the sweat of the artist's brow? In other words, did he make it? ...

What is protected are the words and images. Lift them - lift them unadulterated - and you are in breach of copyright. That is what happened here. Simple as.

If only it was that simple, Doc.

Marcel Duchamp's estate would be inundated with lawsuits from Armitage Shanks, and Damien Hirst would have to pay royalties to the skint students who labour in his art factories physically making all those spot paintings he flogs under his name. Or are you making some kind of distinction between fine art and commercial art ? Because the courts don't (i).

Spike Lee has a general rule concerning the appropriation of images and sequences from other peoples' films: if he recreates the shot from memory (and it therefore changes a little in the making), it's an homage; if he looks at the original film in order to recreate the scene, it's stealing. 

This case falls exactly halfway between those two stools. The cheeky scamps treated Bagwell's photographic original like a piece of commercial clip-art, but they did (slightly) alter the image. The only meaningful legal test would be whether they intended to profit directly from their appropriation of Bagwell's original. Unless I've misunderstood the details of the story, it was a portfolio piece or a rough; so unless money changed hands, there's no case to answer. Still morally dubious, though.


(i) Douglas Gordon's mirthlessly pretentious 24 Hour Psycho, which recontextualises an original print of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) for folks with a season ticket at The South Bank Centre, is legally considered an original work of art; while Gus Van Sant 's 1998 shot-for-shot recreation of Hitchcock's original feature would just be termed as stealing if the makers hadn't ponied up for the rights to remake it.

[Third Estate Ned]

I loved Simon Harrison's art too, Third Estate Ned. Everyone read The Final Solution sporadically; for various reasons- not least the change in artists and the move to full colour- it took Alan Grant two long years to finish poor Johnny Alpha off. Once it was clear where the story was headed, it just felt plain sadistic.

The Final Solution is one of the few comics I'd recommend reading using the Joey Tribiani method, and I've never gone back and read all of it in one go- let us know what you think when you're finished.

P.S, the Kev Walker quote Radiator alluded to earlier from Megazine 290: "Painting comics is even more labour intensive than drawing them and, at a rate of a page every four days, something had to give. "The decision to go to ink drawing was purely out of practicality. I was broke and needed to earn money quicker than I was capable of doing while painting ... I was going into insane detail, and I just needed to change ... it's not as easy as it looks. I have to labour over every pencil line ... there's none of the speed and vigour I'd wanted when I was painting comics. ". So Walker stopped painting to speed up his process ... but it didn't.

[Miriam Margolyes]

Miriam Margolyes, voice of the Cadbury's Caramel bunny and the face behind your first hard-on.

Miriam Margolyes, voice of the Cadbury's Caramel bunny and the face behind your first hard-on.

[Spetsnaz]

FUCK the ladies, Spetsnaz, they'd have to beat me off with a shitty stick to get at that prime piece of blue bloodied manhood.

You know what most makes me want to saddle Cameron up and ride him like Synchronised? It's the thought of that big, round, pasty-eating face bearing down on me; it kind of reminds of when Nelson Bunker Kreelman took over The Doghouse wearing a face mask that looked like bald humpty dumpty with a little residual quiff of hair perched on top. That's what does it for me.

Plus- thanks to this picture- I know exactly what his moon face and contorted, dribbling mouth will look as he discharges his aristocratic, hopelessly inbred sperm into my unworthy proletarian cavity. So the answer's yes.

[Third Estate Ned]

Well done for reaching inside my head and expressing some of my thoughts as if they were your own, Third Estate Ned. Origins is great fun to read, but- as noted elsewhere- it was very much establishing the necessary conditions for the last five years of unparalleled excellence from Wagner. I was never entirely convinced that Fargo had to undergo the pre-and-post-mortem indignities heaped upon him just to facilitate that brilliant final exchange with Dredd.

Dredd taking a mixed lot of young judges into the Cursed Earth is a reliable shortcut to storytelling gold, but the real thrill of that story was in seeing Dredd and Rico working the streets together; and Tour of Duty called back to that, with the twist of pairing Dredd with a younger version of Rico/himself. I wouldn't complain if we're treated to more stories showing the two Dredds' early days in the Academy or patroling the slab.

I'm can't remember Kev Walker talking about the change in his approach (I'd be grateful if anyone can provide a link), but in David Bishop's useful Thrillpower Overload he talks about the experience of producing countless painted art pieces for the 1995 Judge Dredd film as an exhausting and traumatic one.

It's possible Walker felt he'd taken his painted style as far as he wanted; and, from an economic perspective (even taking Radiator's point into account), the advent of computer colouring means it's more cost-effective to produce coloured line art than spend hours fiddling with an air compressor and masking film. It's pure speculation on my part to suggest that the sight of US artists like JH Williams III and Mike Mignola bringing their high-contrast, heavyily inked styles to Dredd- and making much of the painted art then-dominant in 2000ad look awfully mediocre- could have played a part too.

MacNeil's early take on the city is always going to rank right up there with McMahon for me, but new(er) guns like Bagwell do equally impressive (if less colourful) work too. You do know The Final Solution doesn't end .. well, don't you?

Say it ain't so, Molch-R; the kid's ready to move up to The Big Show. You really socked a few dingers there, son; but I'm worried about your anatomy. You been hanging out in the locker room with Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds?

You've got a natural aptitude for outrageous exaggeration and grotesquerie, but your Animal Farm piece demonstrates a grasp of the subtelties of composition and a sophisticated wit beyond your tender years.

[complete]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFDQxKC_JXY&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap (2012); June 15th US, no UK release date. High production value documentary with an emphasis on lyrics and skills, in which the super-connected Ice-T talks to some of the most influential artists in rap about the creative process and the social and cultural importance of hip hop, rather than how many Bentleys they've got.

The chronology of the featured interviewees:
Afrika Bambaataa, Melle Mel, Reverend Run & Darryl McDaniels (Run DMC), Doug E. Fresh, Rakim (but not Eric B), Chuck D (Public Enemy), Marley Marl, Salt (but not Pepa), Big Daddy Kane, Dr. Dre, MC Lyte, Treach (Naughty by Nature), Ice Cube, Q-Tip, Snoop Dogg, KRS-One, DJ Premier, Common, Raekwon (Wu-tang), Mos Def, Kool Keith, Nas, Redman and Eminem,
tells you all you need to know about the film's thesis on exactly when the 'art' and the 'something' started losing out to the 'nothing' of the title.

Apparently Kanye West manages not to come across as a complete nob, which is worth paying to see.

Thunderbird 2!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12110386

Although, from some angles, it does look like the Pillsbury Doughboy's arse.