Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Bonanza's already taken down the shirt from their store; we're waiting on Ebay now. Fingers crossed! Even if only one of the big copyright holders flex a bit of muscle, there should be some entertaining fireworks. As far as I know, the Beeb, Warner Brothers, SyFy, Disney, Hasbro and Paramount have all been contacted directly so far, along with Ebay and his various hosting sites. We'll see.

Well, I'll be hornswaggled! I can't believe someone would stoop so low as to steal your work, Rich. I also can't believe that he's weak-minded enough to believe that he could get away with it without someone in the rather insular Doctor Who fan community noticing said plagiarism.

It's a good thing you said to not send him viruses, as my evil side might be tempted to come out and release so many digital horrors upon him that he might never recover. I'm sure your better half (who has knowledge of such things) knows of which I speak.

Rich, we're all behind you on this and this bozo will never sell another piece of merchandise when it all comes to light. What a jerk!!

Supportively,
Eric

Ditto on that.

I have to wonder how tiny this pinhead's brain is. He/she/it didn't even bother to try and hide the fact it was obviously someone else's work.

Construction lines are the same, hair lines are the same, the ear and nose lines are the same, and the only difference was playing with the contrast levels in photoshop (probably to enchance the fine lines for the T-shirt printing). It would be like stealing your neighbours car, disguising it by hanging fuzzy dice from the mirror, and then trying to sell it back to him.

And looking at his/her/its site - I wonder if Mr "Sue em" Lucas knows about his Obi-Wan shirt, or the BBC knows about his Dr Who stuff he is selling.

Looked through the archives of his blog and apparently he's had some tangles with the BBC already. End result was (he claims) he was ordered to take the name "Doctor Who" off of some of his first shirts.
It didn't stop him. Obviously.

In which case I think he is in serious trouble, especially with prior warning. The problem is however the fallout.

Some time back, I remember a woman had made a crocheted Ood, and then put the pattern up for people to use. The BBC were apparently willing to turn a blind eye to this (it was freely available and good publicity, even though technically a copyright violation).

However someone took the pattern and started selling the crocheted Ood on Ebay. Of course, the BBC went nuts and came down hard on it - unfortunatly it also meant the original pattern creator got caught in the fallout and had to take the pattern down as well (they couldn't stomp on one offender while overlooking another, and I dont think copyright laws allow for the difference between the two). I suspect it was a similiar story to the crocheted daleks and TARDIS which still lurk around out in the interwebs (and yes I can/do crochet - even though male - before anyone asks ).

It only takes one moron to make everyones life a misery - and I sincerely hope you dont get caught in the crossfire between the copyright owners and this thieving cretin.

so were the shadows behind the Doctor his pas incarnations? if that’s the 11th, why am i only counting 8 shadows?

Also: on # 11 now Doctor! Only two more to go!

Anyone else notice that the Doctors appearance seems to get younger and younger the older he gets? Mid life crisis anyone?

Not unless there is a criminal statute against this. Does anyone know of a case where someone wound up in the pen over something like this?

Theft of work, in the sense of putting your name on something that someone else created, or simply using it without permission is rife. Part of the reason is that it's easy - you don't have to break into someone's crib and actually lift anything. Canacreations was being really self-serving when they said this, but it is somewhat true - anything you put up on the web can quickly become worthless commercially - the medium makes it remarkably simple to copy things - this being the whole issue with digital music.

Because I ran out of space on the paper by the time I got to the 3rd Doctor.
And I don't think that's really true about him getting younger each time. Some of the classic Doctors' ages were mixed. It's truer now than it was, mind you, so that might be the current thinking.

Didn't that whole thing have to do with a knitted Adipose doll free pattern being forced to cease and desist at the same time? That ended with BBC looking at the pattern creator's work, and publishing a book with her, I thought.

Here's to hoping for an equally happy ending for Rich and Hilary.
*fingers crossed*

Regrettably true -however the real sticker is not just the theft - _but selling it for a profit in the open market_. And in real terms (I dont know how legal materials behind electonic works) posession of stolen goods is a lesser offence than selling stolen goods. And while there are plenty of legal dodges for simple posession of others works, actually selling them is a whole different matter.

Eg: If I made a Enterprise out of lego, showed it off and released the plans on how to do it, Paramount could not do a lot (they would threaten and hiss with attack lawyers, but legally it is weak). But if I stared _selling_ lego Enterprises both LEGO and Paramount would want some serious words with me - both to protect their copyright and income sources from merchandise sales.

Ditto if I started selling Pirated DVDs in public as opposed to just watching them - both are illegal but one will really get the lawyers frothing.

And the the bigger sticker is that even a complete idiot knows they should "file the serial numbers off" before passing off stolen goods as 'a family heirloom' or 'fell of the back of a truck". In this case they didn't even bother to try and then started whining when caught out.




I vaguely remember the Adipose doll, but I never liked them so never has a real desire to get the pattern. Though you are probably correct as there was a lot of nastiness being thrown around at the time. a\And it is nice to hear that in the end the BBC and the pattern owner cut a deal benefical to both.

Now that would be something interesting to come out of the mess- The Ten Docs as officially licensed Dr Who material, and BK with a 'BBC approved' Dr Who site (I mean the Beeb would have to know about TTD).

That first part doesn't sound quite right to me. I think that, given what we've seen in Marvel Entertainment v. NCSoft, if Paramount had a problem with me making Lego starships, their beef would be with Lego Group for making a product that allowed me to do it. But I'm not a lawyer, so don't know how that works. As for the second part, you'd have a problem with Paramount, but not with Lego - there's no rule that prevents one from reselling Legos.

And there's more looking the other way that one might think. At this year's BrickCon, in Seattle, there were plenty of people selling customized Halo bits (just like last year), and it seems that no-one has gotten a cease-and-desist, mainly because while it's pretty obvious what they are when you look at them, they are not advertised or described as such. And considering that MEGA Brands has the Halo license, you'd think that they would have come down on the convention organizers like a ton of (ahem) bricks. BrickArms freaking goes crazy with it - you'd think they would have been sued into sometime next century by now, especially considering that it's Microsoft that they're messing with, but they seem to be getting away with it, and have been for years.

ahh well that explains it then, sorry

we'll I’ve only watched the latest Dr -who episodes (from Rose Tyler to the Dalek reality bomb) so i don’t really have a ton of knowledge from before that. Could just be a continuity error like the Doc's first companion being his granddaughter and the sudden appearance of the time war. (IIRC the reboot hasn’t stated anything towards the formers existence, and the latter was never mentioned in the original series)

A friend of mine once wanted me to create a website that would showcase his art yet prevent people from downloading the images. Unfortunately, that's not really possible. You can make the images too small to be of interest (which also makes them too small for anyone to be impressed by) or overlay a watermark across the picture, or use code to hide the download option, but the sad fact is that once the image is on someone's computer, they have it to do as they please. Legally they can't distribute it or use it, but technically nothing can stop them.

The Internet is akin to the old West. It's a lawless territory where rules are broken on a regular basis and no one's really sure who the sheriff is.

I'm guilty of distributing someone else's work myself. I run a website dedicated to old men's magazines from the 40's to the 70's, and I have complete issues available for download. My saving grace is that the copyright holders don't really care about 40 year old pornography and really have no interest in republishing it. I don't include the ones that do care (Playboy & Penthouse mostly), and I don't sell it or make any kind of profit. If any copyright holder were to ask me to take their property down, I would do it in a heartbeat. As it stands, I've heard from artists, writers, and even models who appeared in the mags and none has expressed more than "this takes me back some years".

Rich's case, of course, is quite different. He CAN'T sell it without the BBC's permission, but neither can the bozo emeritus selling the T-Shirt with Rich's work on it. Even if he had the Beeb's permission, he doesn't have Rich's permission, which is something else entirely.

At the risk of taking this discussion off topic: NuWho isn't a reboot, it's a continuation of the classic series (including the Fox film, which was sadly our only on-screen look at the Eighth Doctor).
Twice after the reality bomb episode (once in The Next Doctor, once in The Eleventh Hour), we've seen pictures of all of the former Doctors in order. They've established pretty clearly that everything that happened in the classic series is still part of the Doctor's past. In fact, the new series is full of large and small references to the old. The Doctor's first companion was still his granddaughter. The fact that he doesn't mention her does not change that, just as it doesn't for any of the other former companions.
And no, the time war was never mentioned in the old series, for the simple reason that it hadn't happened yet.

And now, back to the T-shirt discussion ...
To which, sadly I have nothing of value to contribute right now.

I was over to look at the bad guy's blog. Football is on and I'm kinda bored and I don't have a video game I feel like playing or really anything I feel like doing tonight as we just had our fall barbeque yesterday and all the cooking and cleaning that implies. Plus, cold medicine always makes me loopy. But I digress, frequently and at great length. For instance, just the other day I was telling a friend of mine about how our chicken hatch was going and I didn't get the number 11 out for over an hour of the conversation. Instead, I talked for a while about my poor duck who is having issues that are unmentionable in mixed company, but whose prescription ointment caused some comment at the barbeque when the label was read by our guests. For: Richard (AV). Apply to ***** twice daily.

Anyway, I tend to think the guy is a little misinformed. (If not entirely off his rocker, which is neither here nor there. I had to read his post and the one after a couple of times to "get it" which really doesn't say a thing about my attention spa---oooh, a butterfly!) The web does make it possible for more theft to occur, but it also provides such neat things as date stamps, especially if you are posting on some one else's website, like, say, DeviantART.

Anyway, I think there is a chance that something I just said made sense and wasn't just me channelling Cap'n Fang.

I've known some one, btw, who had whole web pages stolen with very minor adjustments to the layout. We proved it with upload dates on the server. This works until you change servers, generally, but if you do take something down or move to another server and lose your date stamp there is always Internet Wayback Machine.