Above: UP WITH CHRIS HAYES from Sunday, February 5, 2012.
This is part one. Part two is here.
When I saw a cartoon flashed on MSNBC's UP WITH CHRIS HAYES show yesterday morning, I asked aloud (yes, I really talked out loud in my living room), "I wonder why the cartoonist wasn't credited."
There was no reason for that to be a rhetorical question. I walked down the hall to my studio. I Googled and Googled and finally found the cartoon online. I tweeted:
Before long, I got a response.
The fact that the cartoon was used, she tweeted back, was news to her.
So, MSNBC took it without asking.
Stuff on the Internet is free for everyone to use, I have been told. If you put it out there, then it's fair game.
I disagree.
If someone puts one of my cartoons on their Facebook page or on a chat board without asking, then that is OK with me. It's the equivalent of taping a cartoon up in your break room or inside your locker.
But when a company or individual takes my images without asking for their own business purposes, that's not fair use.
On the UP WITH CHRIS HAYES show, Chris is paid, the guests are paid, the people who run the cameras, light the set, direct the show are all paid. All of the content you see is compensated ... except, this past Sunday, for the cartoonist.
UPDATE: From the Chris L. Hayes Twitter feed:
My thanks to Tom Tomorrow and everyone else who retweeted this. Sorry that the link I posted to the UP WITH CHRIS HAYES Facebook page was taken down.
UPDATE: Part two is here.
Above: a drawing I did for the National Cartoonists Society to protest the Orphan Works Bill. This is a snapshot I took with my camera when I was finished with the cartoon, resting on a table outside of a Ritz Carlton conference room at the 2008 Reubens. That's why you see Sharpies at the top of it.
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9 comments:
Hallelujah! I am so tired of the devaluation of all intellectual property - particularly visual imagery.
Here here I agree!
That's so wrong! The cartoonist should be compensated. Twice!
Go get 'em Mikey! WOO!
Thank you so much for your help with this, and for your succinct explanation of the difference between the press and facebook. I watched the image go viral and many, many, "regular" people asked me on twitter or tumblr if they could repost the image on facebook (I always said yes, and just asked for a link back). But national television is, indeed, something different. For me not to have been aware that the image was being used is simply unfair (and unfair use, as it were).
Same thing happened a couple years ago with Meet the Press and Mike Keefe: http://www.cagle.com/2010/02/meet-the-press-not-the-cartoonist/
In the article Rob Tornoe posted above (thank you!), NBC said they would verbally identify cartoonists. Interestingly enough, they credited the image with my website (not the original tumblr site where it appeared); that means they knew exactly who I was, as the very first words are "Lian is a writer, artist, and experience designer..."
The clip where they discuss my cartoon simply credits me as "just a grassroots thing that started getting around." Really sad. The clip is here, at timecode 39:40.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/up-with-chris-hayes/46271803
Furthermore, if I were an artist like Jeff Koons, this would have never flown.
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