1982 DC Comics Style Guide
facebook.com
facebook.com
Comics out this week for reference:
Maybe I've spent too much time looking (and laughing) at comic "art" by the likes of Liefeld...
Save for the colour palette It's just pictures, part of me expected to see some sort of exposition about what given characters could and couldn't do.
I'm reminded of the time a Spike Lee documentary was on HBO. The Boing Boing lunatics were outraged that it wasn't available online, so they published 18 links to YouTube (videos were then limited to ten minutes in length). I doubt anyone even made it to part #6 of 18 before the whole thing got taken down.
Likewise I'm sure they think they invited HBO GO and Hulu as a result of their radical, innovative behavior. It was not. And they did not.
The post is cool, the art is super cool... and Facebook couldn't be a dumber place to put it.
It's not costing anyone any money, not even in the theoretical sense. It's not exposing any trade secrets.
OF COURSE he doesn't have a problem with it. It benefits him. That's not the issue here at all.
Once this hits Reddit I'm pretty sure it won't be on Facebook for much longer.
I didn't say it was posted because José Luis García-López gave permission, I noted that he had a relationship with DC, and it was possible it was posted with permission, and by that I meant permission from the rights holder. Additionally, if he drew much or all of the book, which I have no information on, who is to say he did not retain some rights to use those images? There are scenarios where this is not an illegal act, just as there are scenarios where it is.
Again, do you have any actual info on this situation, or are you just making assumptions and getting worked up without any?
I worked in Hollywood and cashed checks from Warner Bros. If you think an illustrator retained rights to anything done for them in the 80s -- again, I'd love to live in your world.
My points are simple:
1) him posting it wholesale in its entirety isn't brilliant 2) posting it on Facebook as part of a business page is even less brilliant and 3) somebody else linking to it prominently from HN isn't brilliant either.
These are all "shades of grey" arguments/observations around how copyright plays out in the current culture. It's always demoralizing being the grownup in the room around IP issues but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop gently ringing the bell.
I'm not making public assertions it was posted with permission, unlike you, who publicly asserted it "this really is over-the-top copyright infringement". If you are going to make factual statements about the legality of an action without supplying evidence, nor even making the unsupported claim that you know more about what's going on that what's available publicly, expect to be called out.
> My points are simple:
It was simple, but you've conveniently left out that you stated simply and clearly that this is copyright infringement. If you had simply said "this looks like copyright infringement, and if so it's fairly stupid to do it like this because..." then there wouldn't be a problem. I would agree with you, for that matter.
As much as you might want to cast this as some anti-copyright vs copyright debate, it's not. It's purely about your unsupported statements and tone. I doubt anyone would have cared to downvote you had you actually backed up your statements (and to be clear, I haven't downvoted a single comment of yours, I prefer to engage).
There's no way in hell he has the rights to publish detailed character drawings of every hit DC character. And the odds of him getting ANYTHING cleared through Warner legally are below zero. This is common sense to anyone who's lived in Los Angeles for more than week.
It's obviously the typical "hope nobody notices!" status quo that lurks behind much of what's on the web.
A quick scan of the comments here on HN reveals the typical "it's on the web, it must be good for all involved! And now I'm gonna buy some comics and watch a movie, too!" exuberance. I've stated nothing about my opinion on those matters other than I post here and I'm also an artist -- so you might guess where I lie on the spectrum.
That said, the decade-old Cory Doctorow boilerplate arguments obviously did not pan out so we should probably stop using them now and figure out a way to sort this mess out. Unfortunately if your first instinct wasn't "geeze, that sure is a copyright violation" you're unlikely to be able to close deals with those corporate shitheads.
It's not so obvious to me he's breaking any law. Yeah, he doesn't have rights to publish detailed character drawings, yadda yadda. But is that what he's doing? He's posting digitized excerpts from a freely distributed, 33 year old style guide. Is that the same thing?
Those are sincere questions. You seem to know a lot more about this than I do. I honestly don't know what terms would come with that style guide in 1982. I know some modern "style guides", say mobile HCI guidelines, are copyrighted but can be redistributed.
Well, it's great that you think the rest of the HN community has lived in LA for a week and therefore have this common sense.
Does it change your estimation of the situation to know that it's been online in multiple locations[1][2] almost three weeks? Those sources all reference facebook, so it's been up for a while. Actually, based on that fact that it's all over the web, and has been for weeks without uproar, and that it was originally commissioned as both a guide for in-house artists and to be given to to licensee artists and outside artists to make sure they got the look right, I imagine there's not a problem with it being in the public.
I think since it and information about it has been widely available[3] for a while now, and I'm not finding any info on Warner Bros. or DCE complaining or requesting it be removed, it was with permission, or he had some rights. Keep in mind it was never for sale. I think at this point, the onus is on you to prove your common sense actually makes sense.
1: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2015/08/the-entire-1982...
2: http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/the-1982-dc-comics-style-...
Oh no! They're losing money now that people don't have to buy it! Won't someone think of the poor, starving Time Warner?
The post, which I would have never seen otherwise got me excited about DC comics, including the new movie coming out, at a cost of 0.0 dollars.
Threats of legal action against fans, produce the exact opposite effect. Companies that understand the realities of the current century will survive.