A worthy cause/read for anyone using copyrights.

09/10/2012 12:41:29 PM · #1

Hi All,

I hope it is okay to post this here. Two of my good friends who cofounded a small but popular Seattle Design firm (Modern Dog Design) are in the fight of their life to save their business. All because they stood up to two large corporations who blatantly stole there illustrations. Two of the illustrations are of my dogs!
What started out as a small lawsuit on their part to recover damages has snowballed and now nearly bankrupted them.
As creative people, the link is worth a read just to familiarize you with how difficult and costly it can be to defend your creative copyrights. So please read and learn if you have a moment. And if you can kick in a little to help their cause I know it would be appreciated by them. And a positive outcome is important to us all!

Thanks! :)

Friend's of Modern Dog

ETA: Long before the fundraiser at the link above was conceived an article explaining some of the violations (some held back fearing countersue) was published in a Rock Paper Ink article. Here it is if anyone wants to see more evidence about just what was stolen and the video is quite telling. I'll just paste it to copy as links don't always work in this forum-

//www.rockpaperink.com/content/column.php?id=303&cid=13

Message edited by author 2012-09-11 10:56:26.

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM

09/10/2012 12:50:50 PM · #2

im getting an untrusted error when i click the link, is it safe?

Skip

Canon EOS-1D X

09/10/2012 12:51:40 PM · #3

i feel the pain, but the web pages for their plea need to be cleaned up. firefox is screaming at me about an "untrusted site" when i try to go there, and when i went through their main site, it came up as non-marked-up text with links that firefox didn't like. they need to do a better job with their story if they are going to get any help...

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 12:52:07.

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

09/10/2012 01:11:07 PM · #4

Thanks Mike and Skip, I did have to do a "safe link" click through myself and there is nothing to worry about. I will let them know about the issues some are having though and appreciate the heads up on that (other people setup the site for them).

Much appreciated! -Brent

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

09/10/2012 01:30:48 PM · #5

This is what Chrome tells me:

"You attempted to reach www.friendsofmoderndog.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.gridserver.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially harmful) version of www.friendsofmoderndog.com.
You should not proceed, especially if you have never seen this warning before for this site."

Sony 24-70mm F4 Vario-Tessar T* FE OSS

09/10/2012 01:36:55 PM · #6

Thanks Robert!
Apparently their security certificate for the site was delayed and is supposed to be up very soon. I will make them aware people are having other issues as well.
A description of any errors people are having is very helpful!

ETA: Just heard from the site administrator that gridserver is indeed where their site is, so I expect all is safe. They are just waiting for the security certificate to go through shortly and then all should hopefully be working smoothly :)

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 13:43:07.

Bear_Music

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

09/10/2012 01:47:25 PM · #7

All fixed now.

Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

09/10/2012 01:50:56 PM · #8

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

All fixed now.

Excellent! Thanks again Robert, you were very wise to be cautious about what was happening :)

CEJ

Canon EOS-40D

09/10/2012 02:13:17 PM · #9

Take the 's' out of the https: and it works fine. I just read the whole site - using a windows xp machine and Firefox 15.0.1 and had no problems on the site.

dtremain

Canon EOS 80D

Canon EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 II

09/10/2012 02:13:37 PM · #10

Brent_S - your original link points to https:// and still gets the message in Chrome that

bear_music refers to. If you just type in // or www.friendsofmoderndog.com, the page comes with with no issues. You may want to edit the original post...
Didn't pick on anyone too large, did they?

frisca

Nikon D70

Nikon AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

09/10/2012 02:32:38 PM · #11

posted their link to The Oatmeal's facebook page. (He is a popular internet cartoonist from Seattle and an amazing crowdsource funding magnet!)

09/10/2012 02:48:01 PM · #12

Thanks David, I updated the link without an "s" and hope it works smoothly for all now.

Appreciate you passing on the link Frisca! These really are very nice people we are talking about.

Did they get picked on by somebody large? Well, one corporation uses a cartoon rodent as a logo and the other one uses a thing you shoot arrows and such at for their logo. Kinda' big! ;)

09/10/2012 02:49:14 PM · #13

huh, so disney didn't have any artist around to handle the work for them?

i realize they have unlimited resources but why go to such extents, wouldn't it be cheaper to just pay your friends licensing rights?

09/10/2012 03:06:06 PM · #14

Originally posted by mike_311:

This really is a David and Goliath story Mike. It seems that the two corporations involved hired a third party to do the campaign and one of their staff cut corners by stealing illustrations off the net (or their book) rather than creating them from scratch.
Anyway, rather than pay the offended a reasonable amount for their transgressions once they were exposed (which I am sure would have been accepted) they just turned things over to their corporate attorneys. From there it seems the tactic has been to drag out litigation and raise defense costs to a point that will bankrupt Modern Dog Design so that they will just have to drop the case. As I understand it the corporate attorneys are even going after Modern Dog to pay for their fees should they lose or have to drop the case. And if you look at the evidence, it's so blatant that images were stolen. How is that for evil?!

09/10/2012 03:10:10 PM · #15

well i hope they prevail, maybe anonymous could take down disney and target.

seriously though the best course of action is to get this to go viral, do they have a facebook page? bad press and disney/target may settle.

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 15:11:45.

09/10/2012 03:14:22 PM · #16

Originally posted by mike_311:

huh, so disney didn't have any artist around to handle the work for them?

I'm looking at the plaintiff's drawings:
//www.friendsofmoderndog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/ModernDog-Dogs-2.jpg

And then at the tshirt:
//cdn01.cdn.justjaredjr.com/wp-content/uploads/pictures/2011/06/sharpay-dsigned/sharpay-evans-dsigned-collection-19.jpg

and what it looks like to me is that many of the images look similar (I couldn't find all of them from the shirt in the poster), but they look like they were redrawn - not direct copies.
Example:

I don't know if that makes a difference legally or not, but it makes it MUCH harder to win the case, I would think.

Pentax DA 18-135mm F3.5-5.6ED AL [IF] WR DC

09/10/2012 03:16:33 PM · #17

plus changed the names...

of course if apple can convince a jury that they patented rounded corners, anything is possible.

Message edited by author 2012-09-10 15:19:11.

tnun

Ricoh GR III

09/10/2012 03:25:29 PM · #18

Totally cheesy. Now if we can get some of the presidential candidates' children to sport these T-shirts....

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

09/10/2012 03:26:49 PM · #19

Originally posted by mike_311:

Yep :) They do have a Facebook page here (hope this link works)-
Modern Dog Facebook Page

One of the top links on their site goes to an article Robynne (one of the founders) wrote on design blog Rock Paper Ink regarding their situation too.

@Ken
Many of the images they used were simply flipped. It's possible that some of them were "re-traced" in thicker just to get the finer details to show up on a silk screened shirt.

CJinCA

Canon EOS-7D

09/10/2012 03:31:04 PM · #20

Maybe even post on Disney's and Target's Facebook page too?

09/10/2012 03:35:51 PM · #21

The more I look, the more it appears that none were actually "stolen" from the poster. I suspect they copied or were "inspired" by the poster, but they can argue that the concept of drawing dog's heads is not unique and that if you had 10 different artists draw dog's heads of the same set of breeds, many might look very similar. So, IMO, it looks like a very weak case. And the fact that these are large corporations and Disney having VERY tough positions on copyright infringement, it doesn't make much sense that they would just steal from anyone's published works.

Just playing a little Devil's Advocate here - especially if I am considering donating to a cause that may have no chance and not because of the evil giant corporations, but because of the facts of the case itself. It may very well be that the person who put the shirt together had the poster sitting in front of them when they drew the design, but how is that going to hold up / play out in court? I really don't know the answer.

Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

09/10/2012 03:37:10 PM · #22

Originally posted by Brent_S:

@Ken
Many of the images they used were simply flipped. It's possible that some of them were "re-traced" in thicker just to get the finer details to show up on a silk screened shirt.

Do you have any side by side comparisons that show this? I looked and looked and could not find any that match up in that detail...

CJinCA

Canon EOS-7D

09/10/2012 03:49:43 PM · #23

Originally posted by Art Roflmao:

You may very well be correct that the images were not exact copies but many of the images are so similar to the originals that it should be obvious to a judge that they did "copy" their artwork, especially if you look at the dog with the ears flying out at the bottom of heart. No doubt they flipped the image of "Snoopy" but still had the ears flying out. I hope those kinds of similarities will be enough for them to win their case.

If Modern Dog makes a T-shirt with the dogs on them, I'll buy one! :-)

09/10/2012 03:53:32 PM · #24

Originally posted by CJinCA:

You mean this one?

Similar, but completely redrawn, IMO. Are those dogs known for having their ears sticking out like that?