Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

Not Goldman This Time

Helpful correspondent Zoe sent me links for a t-shirt company called Dirty Microbe which advertises on a lot of webcomics sites. She’s wondering if their Cutty the Razor owes anything to Randy Milholland’s Rippy the Razor, or if their pixel pirate shirt resembles that of R Stevens. My opinion? Cutty and the pirate shirt would be tough to prove, but the fact that the Jolly Roger there is composed of pixels when the rest of their line isn’t is somewhat telling.

Since the ire of the webcomics community is now well and up, I’m wondering if we need a clearinghouse for suspected webcomics theft sightings. On the one hand, the word could get around that webcomics creators and their fans won’t stand for theft of their property. On the other hand, it could devolve into mindless bitching over what constitutes parody, fair use, and reworking vs. outright theft. What do y’all think?

I could be totally wrong but– they have a shirt on their site called “Assasins Do it from behind” — and I thought Penny Arcade had a shirt that said “Rogues Do It From Behind” in reference to Warcraft?

Seems to me Dirty Microbe, which has also advertised on my site, might be mining for “funny” or “clever” ideas.

Hurm.

I’d say it’s probably unintentional. DM lets readers submit designs and slogans, and sometimes people will submit stuff that’s they’ve bitten from somewhere else. I know this because they dropped me a line once, letting me know that someone had submitted my “A Wizard Has Turned You Into A Whale” design wholesale (they just attached the image from my site). I think they’re sincere in not intending to take other people’s stuff – maybe an email would clear this up?

Assassins do it from behind would be a much broader joke, because, you know… Assassins are a big deal in the world? People get the joke?

I don’t think you can just say that every joke a webcomic has come up with is the first time that joke has been done. Giving us too much credit, no?

Also some sites, like Zazzle, allow the creator to “release their design into the wild” — essentially allowing other Zazzle account holders to use their designs on their own products (for a cut of the action, I believe). So until you know whether or not there is a specific business relationship between site and artist it’s going to be hard to say.

By way of contrast, we know the business relationship between Dave and Goldman — there isn’t one.

Gary, didn’t you mention youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com? Don’t they do what you’re describing? Maybe it’d be better to enrich that site than create a new one from scratch? They’d probably be more experienced in separating plagiarism from coincidence than the average dude…

Well youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com has very specific rules about what they do and don’t cover — they DO cover corporations ripping off artists, they DO NOT cover artists ripping off other artists. Mr. Goldman may or may not qualify because of his T-shirt business…

Of course I’m getting my articles confused, and this one wasn’t about Goldman… so nevermind.

And I also notice that they did post about Goldman’s ripoff of Dave’s work… so nevermind again, even more.

“Since the ire of the webcomics community is now well and up, Iâ€™m wondering if we need a clearinghouse for suspected webcomics theft sightings. On the one hand, the word could get around that webcomics creators and their fans wonâ€™t stand for theft of their property. On the other hand, it could devolve into mindless bitching over what constitutes parody, fair use, and reworking vs. outright theft. What do yâ€™all think?”

I was actually thinking of this myself last night. I hope someone does set something like this up.

I don’t think this is going to lead anywhere good, if we end up going on a witch hunt.

I doubt it’ll do good for our image, especially when there will undoubtedly be a few people who will be overzealous.

I have to agree – I think right now we want to focus on the case that is absolutely clearcut, rather than let that get lost in chasing after shadows. Especially as a lot of ideas could quite easily come to more than one person, and dragging someone’s in the name in the mud when they didn’t steal an idea certainly isn’t good for anyone.

So exactly where does Andy Bell’s Cutty design fit into this?

I agree that you really need to have a 99% exact match or else people are gonna think you’re crying horse-rape like Jon Rosenberg.

I agree with the general gist of the comments so far, this seems a very tenuous link and we need to be cautious of falling into a mob mentality.

Let’s win one fight before we go picking more.

What JJ said

F*** WIKIPEDIA

[…] Peripherally Related To Kelly/Goldman Item One: As reported here, there were questions raised regarding some designs from t-shirt vendor Dirty Microbe. Christian von Kleist wrote from Dirty Microbe wrote to us: Hi! This is Christian from Dirty Microbe, and I came up with the pixelated skull design and approved the Cutty one. I saw your post when I was doing a Google search for “dirty microbe” (to check our AdWords ads). I’d be totally happy to address the questions you have in your post! We definitely haven’t stolen any ideas knowingly, and I have a good relationship with two of the comic artists in your post and its comments. So… Shoot me back a line and I’d love to chat about stuff! […]

When I saw the “cutty” design I couldn’t help but recal the Stabby Mcknife design off threadless.com

The pixellated skull-and-crossbones thing is pretty stringent, imho. They look different, they have different slogans, they just both happen to be pixel art. Pixellated skulls aren’t exactly a new idea.

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