A nice catch from pride 😊💕💚Photo credit:Kevin Berrien #ironman #ironwoman #crossplay #cosplay #marvel #drag #dragaholic #qwerkout #qwerkkk

HOT DAMN

I love dressing up my friends in my clothes, i don’t know why

Violating copyright for fun and profit

A question I get asked a lot is, “How come you haven’t gotten sued?” Another thing I see a lot of is artists worrying about getting sued (for example, in relation to comic companies cracking down on fan prints at conventions). I also see a lot of terrible mash-ups whose makers by all rights *should* be sued. So for all these reasons I thought I’d put together everything I know on the subject.

Parodies and mash-ups are nothing new

People have been re-appropriating culture since the days of Mr. T, perhaps even longer. They’ve been getting away with it because parody (using elements of a work to comment on or satirize the work) is a legally recognized form of protected speech, at least in the United States.

Not all mash-ups are parodies

Check out this ad I’ve seen in my Instagram feed:

Is this.. funny? Trying to make some point? BB-8 is like asteroid B612 because… they’re both round? If you have nothing to say, what you’re making isn’t a parody. Here, two things that have meaning have been mashed together in order to create a new thing that somehow has less meaning than either of the original two things.

All parodies are original

This may sound counter-intuitive. How can something that uses existing images and iconography be original? “Original” in a copyright sense refers to the uniqueness of an idea. Are you combining existing things in a way that creates new meaning? Meaning that is different from the intention of the original thing? Congratulations, you have an original idea.

“Original work” also makes no distinction between “hand-drawn” or “hand-written” and a copy. An idea is either yours, or it isn’t. If it’s yours, you can reproduce and sell it as many times as you want.

Copyright protects ideas,* Trademark protects how ideas are packaged and sold

Copyright applies to the content, trademark is for the wrapper. Sometimes these two things line up evenly, and sometimes they don’t. I’ll use something I made as an example: many years ago I adapted an episode of “Law & Order” into coloring book format. I took copyrighted material, and turned it into commentary by placing it in a new form and context. Totally legit and legal!

However, if I were to put an official “Law & Order” logo on the book and place it in stores, I’d be running into trouble. Consumers could arguably be confusing my speech (commentary on “Law & Order”) with the speech of Dick Wolf/NBC/Universal (“Law & Order”). I would be violating their trademark.

You can actually buy the Law & Order coloring book; it’s included as part of my legit art book. But notice how this cover was carefully designed by the publisher not to stomp on anyone’s trademarks:

There isn’t a single dominant image. There’s a Batman and a Care Bear, but no one would look at this and think it was a Batman book or a Care Bear book.

A Cease & Desist carries no legal weight…

It’s true! It’s not a document that gets filed with any court. It’s the legal equivalent of your neighbor knocking on your door telling you to turn the music down before they call the cops.

… but anyone can send a Cease & Desist at any time, over anything

This is also true. Your silly mash-up could be 100% legally defensible and you could still get a C&D. It’s up to you if you want to ignore it, or fight it, or follow it (but I would totally recommend consulting a lawyer before you decide which of those things to do).

If you do end up in a courtroom, that’s when you can finally use Fair Use as an affirmative defense. Fair Use is not, I’m sorry to say, a forcefield that magically protects artists from lawsuits. Rather it’s a specific response to someone accusing you of violating their copyright, i.e., “You copied me!” “Yes I did, but it was a fair use [parody, commentary, etc.]” Shepard Fairey famously biffed this when he pretended (lied to the court) that he didn’t copy that AP photo for his Obama poster, when all he needed to say was, “Heck yeah I used the photo, but I also changed its meaning. It was a fair use.”

The “five changes” thing is bullshit

You may have heard something along the lines of, “If you make five changes to an image, it’s a no longer a copy.” It doesn’t matter how many changes are made, or whether those changes are big or small. What matters is the transformative effect of those changes. Do they change the purpose or function of the original? The function of the original photo that Fairey copied is informational: it depicts a person in a certain place, at a certain time, doing a certain thing, for the purposes of news reporting. One would not necessarily look at that original and think “hope,” but that’s what Fairey did. And by adding text and changing colors, he made sure that everyone else who looked at his image thought “hope” as well. He added his own viewpoint and transformed the function of the image from reporting to propaganda.

That’s really what this all comes down to: don’t just regurgitate what you see, but put yourself into your work. That’s true of all art, whether you’re painting a seascape or a Batman.

*A couple people have gotten mad about this statement. “But copyright explicitly does NOT protect ideas!” This is true, the ideas have to be in a fixed form (a “work”); you have to actually do something with your idea (otherwise there’d be a million, “Well, no, I didn’t write a book but I totally had the idea for Harry Potter” claims). If it wasn’t abundantly clear, this article is about ideas that have been turned into artworks.

the most wonderful time of the year

Netherstocking Tales

We’ve been hearing reports of people purchasing copies of “The Family Arcana” to use as stocking stuffers. We would like to take the opportunity to recommend AGAINST this course of action for the following reasons.

1. Stockings are for familiar, comforting things. Candy, for example, and socks, and heartwarming scenes drowned in water and imprisoned forever in glass spheres. Discovering a copy of “The Family Arcana” in one’s stocking on Christmas morning may induce feelings of confusion, uncertainty, and introspection, and even lead to bouts of singing, the recitation of poetry, and the composition of bizarre manifestos. Do you really want manifestoists roaming your house, smooching under your mistletoe, and adding strong opinions to your holiday punch? No, you do not!

2. “The Family Arcana” is currently prohibited from use in no states or territories anywhere in the world. But who’s to say when that will change?

3. The stuffing of stockings is the sole responsibility of Gramtumpter-Paw, Lord of Elf-Folk and Protector of the Eight Sky Wallops.

4. If a copy of “The Family Arcana” gets stuck at the bottom of a stocking, you may have to reach your hand all the way down there, and then who’s to say what will happen?

So please, if someone you love is considering purchasing a copy of “The Family Arcana” and stuffing it into any stocking anywhere, sit them down and talk with them about the dangers. Also, use this link to familiarize yourself with the physical appearance of this so-called “story in cards.” That way, if you do find one in your home, you can immediately play 52-pickup with it, right into the fire, where the cards will crackle and shine with the burning Fungal Fronds old Gramtumpter-Paw left in the shadow of your Jubilation Heap this year. Thank you.

Adele participated in an Adele-impersonator competition disguised as ‘Jenny’ 

im jenny

I have watched this five times and will never get tired of it.

me ordering #food at a restaurant

waitress: would you like fries or a salad with that 

me: Bryce Dallas Howard refused to take her heels off despite the director’s concerns because it was her metaphor for female strength. The narrative scolds Claire for not being adequately dressed for the situation, that she had no way to predict. The narrative treats Claire’s heels like a weakness. And what Claire does? She proves that she can’t be stopped. She doesn’t have to yield and change her(self) outfit in order to survive in Jurassic World as successfully as Owen. High heels is actually such a great metaphor because in real world women are expected to keep up with men without taking our heels off (aka giving up our femininity), women are expected to do as great as men without stopping being women. And you know what? It doesn’t matter what obstacles patriarchy puts in our way, we can overcome it. We can be everything men can be while being everything women are expected to be. A woman in heels outrunning a T-Rex is unrealistic? If you look at it as a metaphor, than you will see that women in real world do it all the time. Claire didn’t have to gave up her femininity to kick ass or to save herself, Owen, her nephews, and 20 thousands people. Claire didn’t need to gave up her femininity to belong. Owen expected her to be a weak and useless deadweight? She never let the weakness he saw in her to stop her or to slow her down. Claire could outrun a T-Rex while wearing high heels. Think twice before telling this woman what she can or can’t wear, because she will walk over your dead body in that very same heels like no big deal.

waitress: may i remind you that equating the choices made by real and living women to those artificially assigned to fictional women by male writers is a reductive move that makes media analysis less about interrogating the effect of media and holding its creators accountable for that effect and more about turning every blockbuster film into a feminist easter egg hunt where everyone is expected to scramble for any aspect of the film that seems even remotely progressive 

me: oh fuck you’re right. i’ll just have fries then 

The new supreme has risen