Maybe it’s not a big deal that a bunch of people like the style and used it in an ad campaign? Maybe?

I’m not saying that the corporations or right, or that folks like Cory or Shepard are in the wrong (legally or morally) but I am saying that there should be some consistency in the way that these things are viewed here, otherwise it just seems like it’s not a principled stance against overbroad copyright laws, and is instead just a knee-jerk against businesses.

Nina Katchedourian has been doing these type of cut-out maps for over a decade.

In addition, even if they were “inspired” by Karen O’Leary, (which they likely were… Creatives at ad agencies “borrow” things all the time. Just like artists.) it’s probably a common-enough paper cut-out that I don’t think anyone can “own” it. It’s called “decoupage”, and it’s an ancient practice.

http://www.designboom.com/tools/WPro/images/blog13/map3.jpg

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-10-08-artist-gets-settlement-from-bmw-sa-over-advert

It is not hypocritical to defend the right to appropriate in some circumstances and not others. We shouldn’t be afraid to make value judgements about who is involved, how it is done, and for what purpose.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efmL3W2dPjk

Lebbeus Woods is a reasonably well-known architect and academic; he has lawyers, and some cultural juice. The film producers (their lawyers, actually) knew Woods could make a case for theft (yes, people, that’s what it is) so they copped to ‘unintentional appropriation’ and settled out of court.

Karen is just an artist on Etsy. And having worked among lazy, cynical advertising ‘creatives’, I can guarantee that they saw Karen’s work and ripped it off for their ad campaign to bring a little [misappropriated] art and soul to their soulless enterprise. But first, they took it to their lawyers, who assured them that it was ‘perfectly legal’…

…using the arguments outlined by all you callous assh*les pooh-poohing Karen’s claim in the previous comments. And so the ad agency was paid very well for their ‘work’.

That this happens all the time isn’t surprising; what is surprising is the number of comments suggesting that cultural theft by commercial interests is ok because it happens all the time. ‘Legality’ is not society’s sole standard of behavior – unless that society is a police state.

What’s most interesting is BB’s hazy ethical stance in the admittedly hazy area of copyright, ownership and originality in any artistic endeavor. If the design had originated with the ad agency and Karen O’Leary had hung a Nissan poster in a gallery and claimed it as her own, would BB jump to the agency’s defense?

When physicists want to denigrate a controversial theory they say it’s “not even wrong”, which is kind of how I feel about any suggestion that advertising is art, bad or otherwise.

Advertising is just scummy.

Several others have pointed out that many other artists have been doing paper-cut maps for many years in styles very similar to this. Asserting that you know for sure that Nissan’s ad agency stole from one particular paper-cutting-map artist is reckless.

Finally, the agency in Brazil isn’t obliged to respond to a tech journalist’s accusations of a potential legal problem. I certainly wouldn’t

So I’m a bit lost here. What was stolen, exactly?

Just because Karen O’Leary’s iteration of this well-established concept “went viral” doesn’t mean she now has exclusive license over it and all subsequent iterations are a ripoff.

Nobody puts “inspired by Pollack” by their signature on a painting made of paint splotches. But the critics will say “comparable to Pollack at his most uninspired!” or something.

Good remixers give credit, and credit from a large org like this could mean a huge boost to an artists income. But this is not even a remix, so I see no requirement, *even a moral one* for them to credit in this case: it’s not her work.

Lastly, the artist should feel happy to know that he is getting more exposure.

PS: I’m working towards a BFA. These are just my views on the subject.

But of course maps are derivative works, taking the centuries of work by individuals and municipalities to create networks of roads, buildings, and landmarks, and stripping it down to a few lines and words on paper. I’ve just looked through the fine print on a number of maps that I own and none of them even credits the city for anything.

And does a “no response” from a Brazilian design firm really say anything? They could probably care less about a “media” request from some foreign blog. ‘BoingBoing? Who are they? Never heard of ‘em, into the trash.’ I’ve made similar decisions when dealing with requests from foreign media only to realize later that someone I had never heard of is Big Stuff in another country.

I mean, for crying out loud, Keran’s using copyrighted maps to do her thing and you don’t see the mapmakers going after her. Of course now that this has been brought up on BB, maybe they will now.

The agency used an idea one of their designers probably saw in college and built a reasonably neat-looking campaign around it. And to complain about the language being vapid? It’s advertising…and the tech that allowed them to do the cut-outs is exactly the same tech that lets them design and build cars more efficiantly than in the old days, which is a perfectly valid thing to put in an ad.

I think what many are mad about is that a horrible greedy multinational company is doing it, so they MUST have stolen it from some poor innocent starving artist.

It’s not a “rip-off”. If Karen made her beautiful hand cut cities for another car company let’s say Mazda and Nissan came and did the same thing, or if Karen had consulted with Nissan and they used her idea then I would say you had some merit to the claim.

This is actually some good publicity for her I bet she might sell a few more posters.

You can agree or disagree with those values, but to apply them selectively is simply hypocritical.

No question, it’s absolutely a rip off.

It’s not the last sign of the end times, but it’s lazy, and it speaks to me of bored, creatively frustrated people who want to get out of their boring, creatively frustrating office, and drink beer.