Todd Goldman: Destructive Derivative Art

This site aims to discuss derivative art - in whatever form it may be. Today, I'm going to talk about possibly the worst kind of derivative work: Plagiarism for Profit.

Anyone who frequents webcomics (and particularly the blogs of web comic artists) will by now know the name Todd Goldman. To me, it is crystal clear that this man shamelessly plagiarises other people's work without any form of credit and then profits with little or no intervention. There is no doubt in my mind.

Generally I sing the praises of derivative art, but there is a huge, inescapable chasm between Todd Goldman's rip-offs and the inspired art, videos and fiction that fans slave over daily. In fact, I think it's worth a quick gloat - there is more creativity, more individuality and more orginiality in a single mashup than there is in a hundred of Todd's poorly-rendered copycat t-shirts.

This is the kind of copyright infringement that needs careful but clear litigation. Far too much time has been spent thinking up new ways to stop people creating not-for-profit socially-shared free advertising with modern media (personalising and communicating their experiences using clearly-attributed cropyrighted works) and not enough time has been spent defending personal creativity against the kind of legal bullying that Goldman is attempting in order to keep his outright theivery profitable.

Wherever you fall on the issue of fair use rights for people to reuse what they consume, it is hard to accept that someone should have the right to sell someone elses work as their own. If that very basic principle of copyright cannot be protected then the whole system is at fault.