Thanks, I had only dated them to the 1964 TV show.
Then again, Charles Addams was a classic multiple personality case and probably did steal his own work. Really. Truly. Sure.

Again, in this case credit was given. Kraftwerk is mentionned on the album’s back cover.

It makes sense that most illustrators/artists commenting see this as wrong: We probably all agree that if we’d practically xerox a page off another’s work, we just wouldn’t feel comfortable to profit from it without at least giving very explict credit, especially if it hit it big.

You know when you didn’t create it.

I enjoyed it. I found it to be a clever retelling of the Arthurian saga, through the eyes of the women. I’d have enjoyed it much more if certain concepts and in some cases actual verbatim phrases weren’t taken from Parke Godwin’s writing.

Parke Godwin is my favorite author nobody’s heard of. He’s written several novels, but my favorites of his are the Arthurian-era books: “Firelord,” “Beloved Exile,” and “The Last Rainbow.” I first read “Firelord” when I was 14, having found it on the paperback novel rack at K-Mart and intrigued by the cover art.

“Firelord” predates “The Mists of Avalon” by about four years. I mean, MZB is still a talented author, but did she think nobody would ever notice?

All that is my way of saying IT DOES NOT MATTER how old or obscure the original source material is. It doesn’t matter how few people will notice. It’s still stealing. There’s homage, and there’s repurposing, and then there’s outright theft.

I personally find it funny that I see both “fair use” and “outright thievery” to describe this.

I believe the whole notion of Fair Use needs to be better explained, so that people can look at Fair Use and identify it as such, and separate it from outright thievery. I have seen other comments that indicate to me that some folks just do not ‘get’ Fair Use. A concept that central to the creative process needs to be better understood.

After looking at these two pictures until my eyes crossed, I think it comes down to two things: a caption and some cats. Yes, the original artist (who was not Rob Reger, let us remember) ripped off the caption and the cats. But except for the word ‘strange’ and the three-syllable name, that has very little to do with the character Reger created.

Come on, you guys are graphic designers and artists, would you just look at the two girls? Yeah, they’re identical — except Emily’s shoes are bigger and of a different style; her legs are thicker and in a different position; her body is in a 3/4 pose instead of dead-on to the viewer; her visible arm is thicker; her dress has a different shape to it; her head is bigger; her hairstyle is different; her face is of a completely different artistic style; Emily has a neck.

I don’t see how the caption and the cats adds up to “Emily’s a rip-off,” when everything about Emily in that picture is original. Part of the charm of the picture is the face and the body language — the two things that are the most changed from the Rosamond drawing.

I know this is the Internet, and we’re not supposed to be reasonable here, but I think we can get out of this without disparaging or overly praising anybody: some dude swiped some cats and a caption to go with his weird little girl drawing. Another dude saw the weird little girl drawing and was inspired to create a character that connected with enough people to be a financial success. It’s wholly innacurate to say Emily’s a ripoff of Rosamond, but I suppose “Early Emily sticker stole some non-essential elements from a children’s book” doesn’t have that sensational twist a blogger needs.

(Side note: I’m amused by the people going on about Photoshop and how easy it is to trace things on bittorrented software — guys, this was made in 1991. That’s pre-broadband. That’s pre-INTERNET for most people. That’s pre-some starving artist being able to afford primitive Photoshop)

http://www.brickfish.com/Pages/Blogs/BlogView.aspx?bid=3202

I’m not sure why I’m all defensive, I don’t particularly care about Emily the Strange one way or the other. Perhaps its only that I’ve been ganged up on before when people didn’t bother to listen to my side of the story, and it sucks a lot.

@32, Remixes don’t need to ask permission–ask any rapper who’s sampled a track. I’m not saying it isn’t–or is–plagiarism. But many an artistic endeavor–indeed all of art–owes to its predecessors.

So the rip/riff off question here is: should an homage be paid? Or a dollar figure?

Prom77, legally you don’t “redeem” a rights ripoff by building other works on the stolen original. You still don’t own those basic rights. Adding material to the original property creates derivative works, not redemptive ones. And since in this case the swiped material included the primordial character concept and character design, and Emily the Strange doesn’t have much going for it besides that character, I’d have to say the swipe is pretty thoroughly unredeemed.

The character now, by anyone’s judgment is much more refined and bears less similarity to Rosamond than before. Should he have to put an asterisk next to her that lets people know that 17 years ago she looked more like someone elses work?

There are lots of people involved with “Emily Strange” and lots of money is changing hands. This goes well beyond one person ripping off another’s work, as pathetic as that is. We’re talking cubic bucks on a corporate scale here, folks.

Q: Would you invest megabucks of capital toward making and selling licensed products and most especially a movie unless you knew there was a rock-solid, unassailable copyright for the materials you were using to back you up? Only if you were a clueless, reckless fool… of course, the unfolding Financiapocalypse shows us there are indeed many fools out there. This is the purpose of hiring a good legal team, preferably one that does its work before a major investment is made.

We’re not talking about an obscure work that’s been ripped, either. There are thousands and thousands of printed copies of “Nate the Great Goes Undercover” out there. Feigning ignorance ain’t gonna cut it.

This is all moot, of course, if the copyright holder for “Nate the Great” struck a deal beforehand to allow the use of the imagery and text for Emily Strange… but why do I think that is unlikely?

As fruit from a poisoned tree: Yep. As for his ‘larger career’, what he did was rip an artist and writer off and then turned it into a major commercial enterprise.

The character’s at least partially his own, he developed her a lot.

I think I’d rather be friends with Rosamond. Something about that smile.

1. Despite posters to the contrary, it’s obvious the original image of Emily is a direct copy of Rosamund, albeit flipped and modified. It’s not “coincidence.”

2. If you believe Reger’s story that it was a skateboard artist that created the first image (the copied one pictured) and Reger “asked for permission to use the character of Emily,” is Reger at fault for not being sure that the image wasn’t someone else’s work that was just copied? Was it the skateboard artist’s duty to tell him?

3. If Reger really didn’t know about the original ripoff, and then creates a whole Emily-based empire using his own ideas and creativity, isn’t what he’s created original, despite the allegedly unbeknownst ripoff origin? And more importantly: how much of the Emily empire should he [morally, if not legally] owe royalties on?

Personally, I think Reger should admit flat-out (which he never does, probably for legal reasons) that the original skateboard artist ripped off the image and text. Reger might also take responsibility for not asking that question of the skateboard artist (“Is this your original work, or is there someone else we should be talking to?”). I think it would be nice if Reger acknowledged that Emily had its origins in Rosamund’s character, and gave written credit to the original author/illustrator. Financially, I think Reger should estimate or guess how much money was made from Cosmic’s sales of items *with versions of the original ripped-off Emily image* and offer a percentage of that to the original illustrator. But to me, considering the bulk of the Emily corpus was Reger’s original creation and has been since 1991 or whenever, I disagree that Reger owes a percentage of profit on *all* the Emily empire. I guess I don’t agree that the original plagiarism taints the entire body of creative and actually original work that came afterwards.

That’s one of the most common business models. You weigh the low risk of getting sued against the high profit of repeatedly doing something wrong. Remember Edward Norton’s speech about recalls in Fight Club? That’s largely how America does business.