I was recently made aware that the online “deals...

I was recently made aware that the online “deals site” Tanga.com is selling a T-shirt with a nearly word-for-word copy of my original bumper sticker, which reads “I was an honor student — I don’t know what happened.” (Based on this Wondermark comic from 2009.)

Slogans without designs are especially hard to prove deliberate infringement of, because they’re so short and punchy and may have occurred to multiple people at the same time. But this sealed the deal:

They also sell a “sarcasm” T-shirt, and unless someone out there thinks a lot like I do, they clearly have seen my work before. The ad copy is nearly word-for-word copied from my own “sarcasm” shirt.

To be honest, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but it is the first time that a quiet, polite email from me hasn’t resolved the issue. (Or, in other cases, the case is just too circumstantial.) But my communication to Tanga has thus far gone unanswered.

I sent a somewhat more formal C&D letter today. Let’s hope it ends here. Tanga also sells shirts featuring artwork of the Hypnotoad, and slogans from The Big Bang Theory, both shows that typically license their slogans and designs only to approved vendors.

Why is this a big deal? Artists, myself included, make pop-culture references in our work all the time, and borrow ideas from other artists shamefully. Sometimes I do both at once — using artwork I didn’t draw to make jokes about a movie I didn’t create.

So why do I personally draw a distinction between, say, Snorg Tees:

And Glennz Tees:

What’s the difference between them? Both traffic in pop-culture references. Why do I dislike Snorg, but like Glennz?

Largely, it’s the difference between imitation and commentary.

There’s also a subjective argument to be made about artfulness — simple design aesthetics — but in general, the Snorg tees take ideas that we are familiar with, and remind us of them. The Glennz tees take ideas that we are familiar with, and twist them.

The Snorg tees provoke a feeling of identification in the viewer, while the Glennz tees provoke a feeling of discovery.

As a culture, we typically place a premium on creativity and integrity. That’s why it delights us when a creator makes something clever and new, but offends us when someone copies the work of another and profits unfairly from it.

But we also have other impulses: a desire for safety and security; a desire to be part of a tribe. A big website like Snorg can impress us with the scale and the success of its business, and thus gain credibility in our eyes. In addition, purchasing its products can allow us to self-identify as part of a tribe with a certain taste — a person who’s hip, who’s seen such-and-such TV show or knows about such-and-such meme. We may not really care that the shirt saying “I like turtles” isn’t fundamentally saying anything except “I’ve seen an internet video.” And the designer of the shirt isn’t making any creative statement beyond “Have you seen an internet video? Buy this shirt, then.”

I think fandom is great, and fandom is important to culture. Someone who makes something creative, like let’s say the TV show Futurama, should be able to make a tribal piece of merchandise around it — a shirt with the Futurama logo, for example — and sell it. They create it, they earn that right.

But I don’t think anyone else should make that shirt. That’s just imitation. That’s trying to make a buck from someone else’s idea. I don’t think that’s fair, and while in some cases it may be ruled legal, I think it’s classless. It comes from a place of pure profit motive.

I don’t think drawing that line stifles culture, either. If everyone who was making bootleg Futurama shirts had something personal to add to the collective conversation about Futurama, and was turning it into something new for the next generation of artists to interpret, I’d feel differently. But they’re not; they’re just trying to trip a tribal trigger in your brain — “have you seen this TV show? Me too” — to make a buck for themselves.

Do I think it’s fair to take Futurama clips and recut them into a shot-by-shot remake of The Godfather? Yes, I do. I think it’s interesting and it’s creative and it advances the culture. Do I think you should be able to sell a DVD of that? I think that decision should be left to the Futurama rights holder, who may feel that it damages the commercial prospects for their own original work — but if they don’t feel that way, or (in a perfect world) if it wouldn’t at all affect the commercial prospects for the original work, I say go for it. (Rifftrax is an example of someone making good creative work in collaboration with existing pieces of culture.) Do I think that you should be able to draw your own Futurama porn and sell it? Again, I think that question should be left to the rights holder. I’m not interested in trying to quash creativity, even if I may personally find the aesthetics of it distasteful.

What I do find distasteful is a disregard of the rights of others for a purely profit motive. That, I think, should be stamped out when it occurs for the benefit of a creative culture generally. Artists need to feel that they can be free to create and put their work out there without fear of being ripped off. If ripoff artists are rewarded, or even just ignored, then artists suffer.

I’m making a point of this not because I think I’ve lost a ton of revenue to this Tanga website, but because I have a platform to talk about this and many others don’t. Who knows what other artists have been ripped off by them or other sites? It happens all the time. We should default to abhorring the practice.

I’m glad that our knee-jerk reaction to seeing a ripoff is to call it out and shame it. I think we’re right to feel proud of someone coming up with a new idea, or creating a new combination of old ideas, but bored or sickened by the same old lazy references being regurgitated for profit. Don’t tolerate it! Having high standards pushes the culture forward faster.

1 year ago