I do art sometimes. Wrote a post about it, like to hear it? Here it goes.
Prep for the upcoming Art Fight continues. In the mean time, check out this video of Secret Wars, the inspiration for our event. Gotta figure out what paint markers they’re using. I’m getting so antsy I just want to art all over the place!
Two weeks until Baltimore is completely artbliterated!
[Via Secret Wars and MySpace, reported on Current via Dead of Summer]
Did a quick tech test of Ustream last night to see if we could use it to stream the carnage of Art Fight. Have to say, I’m fairly impressed with the results. All I had to do was plug in my camera, hit record, and the little web app recorded my impromptu sketching session. This is great for little quicky vids like this. Once you’re finished, you can send your recorded video to YouTube. I don’t know how it deals with videos longer than ten minutes yet. May have to run another test sometime tonight. But if we get permission from the Ottobar and the musicians performing, we could be streaming Art Fight live so you can watch from the comfort of your own home.
I can’t imagine anyone sitting through me drawing or coloring an entire page, but apparently, Ustream is the webcartoonist’s new platform of choice. There are some nice encoding tools once you’ve recorded your show. It records your video as an flv, but you can request to have it dumped out as an mp4, mov, or wmv. You can then download the format of your choice and keep it on your machine to archive your show or upload to wherever. The help docs say you can upload to other sites like blip and such directly from the interface, but it wasn’t working for me last night. YouTube obviously worked like a charm, but the other services were unavailable (either I’m a moron which is more than likely, or this is something they’re trying to fix).
Overall, quite impressed. Very easy to just plug and play. Haven’t gone much further than that. At some point, I’ll want to figure out how to take video of my screen. Perfect solution if you don’t want to mess with editing and don’t care too much about high quality video.
My hand is burning red! It’s telling me to grasp victory! BURNING FINGER!
June 1st. Baltimore’s Ottobar. MC Chris with The Age of Rockets and Karmella’s Game. And…
ART FIGHT!
Dead of Summer’s Nick “Ghostfreehood” Borkowicz and your’s truly will go one on one with canvasses, markers, and paint to unleash artful destruction upon Baltimore, Maryland! Winner takes… um… stuff!
We’re hoping to get someone to film the art of mass destruction for those of you who can’t make it out. But for the rest of you, there’s no excuse! Who knows what madness will occur? Will we attack each other’s paintings? Will we call on audience members to help finish our pieces? Will we throw random toys into the audience? Will Baltimore ever be the same ever again?!
Mark your calendars! June 1st, art happens! Doors open at 8pm. Show starts at 9pm.
[Via Dead of Summer]
You may recall that earlier this month a certain Mark Simon declared that if something isn’t done soon, the federal government will declare all your arts are belong to them. He claimed that new legislation would automatically give orphan status to all unregistered works. Essentially, you would not own art or music or writing or anything that you create unless you paid mad cash to officially register it. Sounded like doom and gloom to me. I was ready to release the hounds and call for an all out assault on our representatives. However, at the time of Simon’s article, no legislation had been introduced.
It turns out that Mark Simon is partially right. The U.S. Copyright Office is indeed concerned about Orphan Works. Two bills were introduced in the House (H.R. 5889: To provide a limitation on judicial remedies in copyright infringement cases involving orphan works) and Senate (S. 2913: A bill to provide a limitation on judicial remedies in copyright infringement cases involving orphan works) on April 24, 2008 to address the Orphan Works question.
The text of the Senate version isn’t on GovTrack yet, but the House version is up. I’m going to attempt some short hand here so you don’t have to subject yourself to cryptic legalese.
Subsection (b) paragraph (1) subparagraph (A) sets limitations on remedies that an artist can claim if their work is infringed if the following criteria are met by the infringer (the dirty rat stealing you work):
There’s some extra strength legal mumbo jumbo about the infringer consenting to the jurisdiction of the U.S. district court and something else that I don’t quite understand, but it has something to do with submitting the proper documentation.
If the conditions in Subsection (b) paragraph (1) subparagraph (A) are met, the courts may decide to asses monetary relief or injunctive relief to the original owner based on Subsection (c). Monetary relief forces the infringer to pay reasonable compensation to the original owner. Injunctive relief prevents or retrains the infringer from using the work. There are more details in that Subsection, but either way, the infringer must pay.
Okay, back to the conditions of eligibility. Subsection (b) paragraph (1) subparagraph (A) does not apply if the infringer fails to negotiate reasonable compensation with the original owner or if the infringer fails to pay reasonable compensation in a timely fashion.
Subsection (b) paragraph (2) outlines what a Reasonable Search would entail.
Wow, even the Cliff’s Notes are a bit difficult. Let’s see if we can break this down further.
If some rat bastard finds a work and wishes to use it, said rat bastard must first conduct a documented search for the original copyright owner. If said owner cannot be found, the rat bastard may use the work according after filing a Notice of Use with the Register of Copyrights. If the owner is found and the rat bastard is still intent on using the work, the rat bastard must attribute the work to the original owner and pay reasonable compensation for use.
Now, I’m no lawyer, so I could be missing something. But I don’t see anything in there that says anything about original works being orphans unless formally registered. Seems to me this puts the burden of proof of orphan status no on the artists claiming copyright bu on the rat bastards who want to use the work. That doesn’t mean the bill won’t change by the time it goes up for vote if it ever gets out of committee.
If I have this right, this bill would give us artists more leverage to prevent unauthorized use of our work. If the rat bastards use our work without bothering to figure out who created it in the first place, we now have a formalized process we can invoke to shut them down and get paid. Sounds like a good deal to me.
[Via GovTrack]
Great Kahuna Bot V is my riff on the classic giant robot style. If I didn’t have a day job, I would even do a quick one-shot comic to demonstrate Great Kahuna Bot V’s amazing might. But for now, you’ll have to settle for a shirt.
I’ve signed up with Design By Humans for some of the more illustrative shirt ideas that I have. Bountee is great but they only accept vector format. So I figured I’d give DBH a shot. In order for you to take home your very own Great Kahuna Bot V, you must sign in with DBH and vote your heart out. With your help, we can spread Great Kahuna Bot V’s protective might to the world!
Over the weekend, many well meaning readers sent me Mark Simon’s article warning artists everywhere that if a new piece of orphaned works legislation is passed, we will lose the rights to our own work. He calls on all of us to write our Congressmen to stop this bill. So, being a responsible citizen for once, I decided to look for said bill. If I’m going to write my Congressman about a bill, I damn sure better have the bill number so he knows what I’m talking about. No legislation regarding orphan works has been introduced into the 2008 congressional session.
Huh?
So I decided to do some more digging to see if Simon’s claims hold merit.
Before we go any further, let’s define some terms so we know what we’re talking about here.
Works become orphaned when the original creator or copyright owner cannot be located. Orphan works can be used by anyone.
Currently, copyright protection is automatic for any work authored in fixed tangible medium (paper, tape, computer, etc.). Basically as soon as I draw something on a piece of paper or computer, that work is protected. Registration with the copyright office is optional.
Mark Simon alleges that new legislation will now make registration mandatory. But in a statement before the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters stated that:
In our study of the orphan works problem, the Office reviewed various suggestions from the copyright community. These included creating a new exception in Title 17, creating a government-managed compulsory license, and instituting a ceiling on available damages. We rejected all of these proposals in part for the same reasons: we did not wish to unduly prejudice the legitimate rights of a copyright owner by depriving him of the ability to assert infringement or hinder his ability to collect an award that reflects the true value of his work. We also rejected proposals that would have limited the benefit of orphan works legislation to certain categories of works or uses. Both commercial and noncommercial users made compelling cases; moreover, these parties often collaborate on projects and both need the benefit of the law. Likewise, we concluded that there were significant problems with respect to all categories of works: published, unpublished, foreign and U.S. works.
The Subcommittee did propose legislation in 2006 that would force users to document their searches for original copyright owners to prove a work’s orphan status:
On March 8, 2006, this Subcommittee held an oversight hearing on our Report, followed by a similar hearing in the Senate on April 6, 2006. On May 22, 2006, “The Orphan Works Act of 2006” was introduced in the House by former Chairman Lamar Smith. The bill included revisions to the Copyright Office’s original proposal and incorporated a number of changes that were designed to protect photographers and other visual artists in particular. These changes included a requirement that users document their searches, a definition of “reasonable compensation” (taken from the Office’s Report), and the availability of attorney’s fees under circumstances where a user fails to negotiate in good faith with an owner who has previously registered his work. That bill was later imbedded in H.R. 6052, “The Copyright Modernization Act of 2006.” The 109th Congress ended before the bill could be addressed.
The 2006 bill never made it out of committee. And no bill regarding orphaned works has since been introduced.
So now I’m confused. Not only does the Subcommittee not support mandatory registration, they also want to formalize the process by which people determine the orphan status of a work. Copyright is still automatic. And there’s no bill on the floor, in committee, or even in subcommittee. What the hell is Simon talking about?
There are others out on the interwebs who question Mark Simon’s incendiary article. Meredith Patterson outlines six misconceptions about orphan works. Kynn Bartlett investigates Mark Simon’s background and tries to figure out what Simon is talking about. And here’s Marybeth Peters’s full written statement in front of the Subcommittee as well as a link to the U.S. Copyright Office’s previous finding on Orphan Works. And thank you to the readers who brought all this mess to my attention.
Have no fear internets. As far as I can tell, our copyrights are safe!
For now…
Best. Elephant. Ever!
Audrey just sent me this video of an elephant painting a self portrait. I had seen elephant paintings before and I always thought they looked like random strokes of color, but there’s no doubt the elephant knows what its doing. Too cute!
First the Diesel Sweeties thing and now this!
A few months back, NPR contacted Rob Balder and I to do an interview about Erfworld. They were interested in our process and how we come up with our insane ideas. They’ve just posted the interview which makes me sound much more intelligent than I really am. Check it out!
[Via NPR]
I’m on Diesel Sweeties! DS is one of the few webcomics I check on a regular basis and I’m honored to have my twitter face plastered on a strip. This is my second comic appearance as me! I was a dead body in a pile of corpses in an issue of Last Shot. Whee!!
While I’m pimping random me things, in other me news, you may notice that the monsters are still standing in the lineup. That’s because a few other projects jumped up ahead of them in priority. Of course, there’s always Erfworld. I also entered UDON’s Street Fighter Tribute Contest which ended on Monday. I’m pretty happy with my submission for once, but I’m keeping it under wraps until they announce who gets in. I have a web project that needs some attention, some production design for a potential television show *crossing fingers,* and an upcoming video gig which *gasp* is actually paying me some money!
The monsters are in there somewhere. When I have all the backgrounds finished, it should be a cinch to update most vigorously. For now, peep the fresh smelling background featuring Pooter.
Oh, and in a completely random bit of me news, your friendly neighborhood Angry Zen Master has a credit on IMDB! You can find out more about the movie Blood Bound at May-Sun Productions.
Photoshop Express is a free, streamlined, online version of Adobe Photoshop. You can sign up for free and you can store up to 2Gigs of your photo goodness. It requires the Flash 9 plug-in which you’re probably running anyway and is, of course, cross platform compatible. You can create slide shows, share photos, embed photos in blogs and webpages, crop, rotate, color correct, shift hues, remove red eye, apply some basic effects, and do some other nifty things to your photos all online.
All very very cool and very web 2.0.
If you don’t use Photoshop for its intended purpose (you know, editing photos), Photoshop Express won’t be much use. No brush, no pen, no drawy. However, I imagine it will only be a matter of time before Adobe or someone else comes up with an online painting ap.
Give it a whirl. Share some photos. I think Adobe might be on the cusp of something big here.
[Via Photoshop Express]
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