Category — Bloghornery

A cartoon by Daryl Cagle which was re-labelled by the user

Any professional cartoonist will tell you it’s annoying when they hear that one of their cartoons has been used without permission, but it’s doubly annoying when the person doing the taking has made ‘‘amendments’’.

So it must have been, er, triply annoying when this happened to US cartoonist Daryl Cagle because the person doing the amending was not some clichéd copyright-infringing college kid, but was retired Air Force Lieutenant General James R. Clapper Jr. He is President Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence.

He used the cartoon above in a presentation to staff and added his own caption to the car and labelled Uncle Sam, the visual archetype for the United States, with his own name.

The Washington Post has the story here, and Daryl Cagle vents his spleen here. See the latter for some staggeringly ill-informed comments in relation to copyright law and the licensing of images, which is how reproductions of drawings are traditionally sold.

Bloghorn admires the fact that Lieutenant General James R. Clapper Jr. knows that cartoons are a great addition to any presentation, but does think he might have asked permission first.

If you like a cartoon, you should always ask before using it. There may, or may not, be a fee, depending on the use, but it’s only polite to ask. And as for ‘‘amendments’’, let the cartoonist do those!

“Hangover’s ain’t good man… hangover’s ain’t good”

The re-captioning of existing New Yorker cartoons, using verbatim ramblings from the Twitter feed of Kanye West, have been raising laughs on various websites.

The trend was started by a pair of US comedians and has been taken up by others. From a cartoonist’s point of view there are clearly issues with copyright, but the New Yorker appears fairly relaxed about it.

This may be because the results, despite West’s dodgy grammar and spelling, are surprisingly effective. The Mick Stevens cartoon above has a certain bizarre charm to it, and this writer’s particular favourite is the Alex Gregory cartoon of two Viking invaders on a beach where one is now saying, “This is gonna be a dope ass day.”

But you wonder what the reaction will be if the trend continues and quality dips. And, of course, it’s unlikely the cartoonists will be seeing further remuneration as their cartoons fly around the world.

The Huffington Post has more on the copyright implications and you can see the cartoons here.

Bill Stott writes:

Mr Charles Saatchi has given the Nation a large lump of his contemporary art collection, and a gallery to keep it in. Can’t say fairer than that.

Sometimes, when we’re told that “the Nation” has stumped up daft money to keep Ravioli’s Temptation of St Botolph from disappearing into a foreign millionaire’s vault, I idly wonder, as a tiny part of the nation, whether I even had an opinion.

I can’t do that about Mr Saatchi’s munificence, though. It’s a gift. Although I do think there are still a few questions floating about. Don’t some of the items in the gifted collection already belong to people?

For example, I could have sworn somebody had bought Tracey Emin’s famous bed. Perhaps they were similarly kind and let it stay in the collection rather than carting it home to make a statement in the atrium, or to upset visiting relatives.

Or maybe they left it because the power of the piece depends on the juxtaposition of the objects within it (an art critic told me that, so it must be true). It would be expensive to keep having Trace pop in to rearrange everything after the Help had tidied it up a bit.

And which bits of “the Nation” will appreciate Mr Saatchi’s kindness? Presumably the artistic gurus who tell us what is or isn’t in this year.

Meanwhile, an art-form with a far wider appeal – UK cartooning – stutters along, self-helping as usual. Apart from a few notable, contemporary exceptions, it appears to be regarded by the artistic hierarchy snootily, and from a safe distance.

“What about Rude Britannia?” I hear you cry. Yes, it’s very posh. Lots of fanfare, but curated mainly by whom? There is due deference to Gillray and super stuff from Bell and Scarfe and Rowson … but how little Carl Giles, no Larrys, and how many Bill Tidys? These last drew, observed and commented on the way of the REAL world. And they were funny. That is cartooning’s Achilles heel. No matter how well drawn, coloured, observed a cartoon is, if it makes you laugh its not “Art”.

Good cartooning is as much an art-form as Ms Emin’s bed. And it relies on tiny, feisty outfits like the Cartoon Museum to keep banging on about it. What they could do with a new FREE gallery!

Things the Foghorn saw this month…

• Musical comedian and sometime Oink! cartoonist Frank Sidebottom’s creator Chris Sievey has died.
• New museum for cartoon illustrator Heath Robinson has opened in Pinner, North London.
• The US comic strip Little Orphan Annie (probably better known over here for the musical version, Annie) has finally come to the end of it’s 86 year print run.
• Cartoonist Rolf Harris opened the Glastonbury Festival whilst cartoon band Gorillaz headlined over the weekend.

The new issue of Foghorn, the cartoon magazine of the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation, has been published. Featuring a cover by the PCO’s Andrew Birch (and a back cover by Higgins), Foghorn is available to subscribers for the modest sum of £30 for six full colour issues delivered to your door.

What’s inside?

Money in the wrong hands – Clive Collins recalls a case of mistaken identity.
This is your caption speaking – Rupert Besley goes back to school to find the trouble with words.
None shall pass! – Neil Dishington writes a short but sweet piece on the perils of online security.
Tickling the ivories – Tim Harries grabs his gold cape and widdly synth. Music lovers beware.
Foghorn guide to… – Bill Stott explains Equestrianism to non-horsey folk the world over. Some of it may even be true.
A full page of Noel Ford cartoons!

Plus…

…all the usual features – Buildings in the Fog, The Critic, The Potting Shed, Andy Davey’s ‘Foggy’ strip and plenty more cartoony random acts of humour.

You can also read older issues of Foghorn online here, right up to our most recent issue featuring a cover by, er, the author of this post Alex Hughes.

Following our recent post on Apple and control of digital content, The New York Times reports on another example of editing of drawn content. These issues around the suitablity of content mirror old arguments about what can be published in print. They are now being fought over what is acceptable inside the digital applications published on Apple Computer’s distribution systems.

The battle for control of the mobile internet device market is throwing up problems with satire for cartoonists and publishers. The Pulitzer prize winning American artist Mark Fiore is involved in a prolonged and sometimes acrimonious row with Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, the manufacturer of the iPhone and iPad.

Steve Jobs ©Hack Cartoons

Wired magazine has thorough background details of this running story, here, here and here.

Bloghorn sees the crux of the story as an argument about control of the new publishing platforms (or devices) and of legal responsibility for the material which is published on them. Jobs and Apple are explicit that they own and control the distribution system. This means the right of control or editorship over the content published there.

Fundamentally, the technology company is now more powerful than any individual or publication that wishes to publish content on Apple’s curated distribution systems. This matters in an era when the print industry, the traditional system of mass-market communication, is in sharp decline and is being replaced by digital distribution. And, potentially, it makes Jobs and his firm extremely powerful as both publishers and censors.

Advocates for free speech, which often include political cartoonists like Fiore, argue that any emerging monopoly is undesirable without explicit transparency and accountability and this is what makes the Fiore-Jobs debate interesting.

Jobs attended the D8 – All things Digital conference this week and was asked about his attitude to acceptable content on his distribution systems – and you may find his words reported at the time mark of 7.12 on this live blog from the event.

You can read Fiore’s response to these words here.

If you have any thoughts and opinions about this story and the new gatekeepers to content, please add them to our comments section below.

Bloghorn liked this video from The Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Thanks to member Jonathan Cusick for the tip-off.

Andy Davey writes:
Satirical cartoons are loved and hated, usually by different groups of people. Loved by the powerless, hated by the powerful … and a good rule of thumb is “the more tightly held the power, the more hated the cartoonists”.

The Cartoon Rights Network collects tales of poor treatment, intimidation, torture and imprisonment of cartoonists from across the world. Presently high on this unhappy list is Sri Lanka, where anti-government journalist and political cartoonist Prageeth Ekneligoda disappeared on January 24 this year. He is still missing. Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka has a report on his story.

We are extremely lucky in the UK to have a healthy love of scurrilous graphical political satire which stretches back more than 200 years and has made the governing classes aware of its persistent powers of mockery and scorn. PCOer Martin Rowson describes the facility to “stick it to power” from a distance as  a sort of voodoo.  Roger Law, creator of Spitting Image has made an extensive tour of British satire during his career and this is reflected in his recent BBC Radio 4 programme called  Satire – The Great British Tradition. This series comes as a happy prelude to a big show planned for Tate Britain later this summer. It is called  Rude Britannia and it is expected to cover much of the same interesting territory.

Bloghorn thanks the editorial writers of The Guardian for spotting what our members and many others do in working for the media, companies and individuals. Modesty prevents us from quoting the nice things said about the Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation (but do go and read them)!

The organisers of the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival would like us to add that the event is made possible by the kind, long-term support of Shropshire Council and the members of the PCO.

Festival patron, and friend of cartoonists, Libby Purves has words in The Times today for the Greek cartoonist guests at this year’s Shrewsbury. Sadly, they were prevented from actual attendance by unanticipated volcanic activity from the direction of Iceland.