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These Days ..

The weather is hot. We’re short on carriers. Amazon continues to send us big heavy parcels that require extra time for delivery. Rinse. Repeat. .

Transmission 001

Wilhelmina Grace ceased to exist. She felt it happen. She expected it. It was part of the transmission process. But expectation and experience can be very different things. One can imagine not existing. Feeling nonexistence was something she hadn’t anticipated. The moment was brief but palpable. She felt, knew, a moment of complete discontinuity.

And then she was in a space that was not a place. It was a betweenness. There was no ground. No sky. Colors that she could not name. She felt like she was falling but couldn’t orient herself to up or to down. She felt relieved that she would transmit again in ten minutes. She knew she could deal with this experience for ten minutes.

Unless there was a down, a ground, a place where gravity mattered, somewhere in those ten minutes.

Unless minutes meant nothing in this no place. 

Back in the Light

I’ve done a lot of illustrations for role playing games. Most of them were for some version of The Call of Cthulhu. One of my favorite companies to work for was the one I started with – Sixtystone Press. I’ve looked through my archive of illustrations to see which ones could be converted to merch. Not a lot, I think. I could be wrong but most of the pictures seem too specific to the scenarios which they are illustrating to work as stand alone images.

Most but not all. I found three images in the scenario book Lost in the Lights that I think can be appreciated without context. All I needed to do was edit them so they worked better on t-shirts and such.

Above is the original front cover illustration of Lost in the Lights. The scenario takes place in Las Vegas during a convention of celebrity impersonators. One of the most prominant celebrities to impersonate, especially in Vegas, is Elvis. Below is recontextualized version of the image.

Most of the book’s interior illustrations are scenario specific but I found a couple that I lked just by themselves.

Skulls! Who doesn’t love skulls? People who don’t have skulls perhaps?

Above is the black and white version that appeared in the book. Below is the colorized version.

Creepy masks! Who doesn’t love creepy masks? People without faces maybe?

Above is the black and white version that appeared in the book. Below is the colored and colorized and edited version.

Shop Talk

Hahahahahahaha!

I wrote that the above section on Sunday morning. The featured images have been in my stores for a few weeks now. On Monday I got this email from Redbubble –

Hi David Lee ,We’re sorry, but we had to remove your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace, because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights. The owner of these rights has provided us with guidance describing the type of content they consider infringing that should be removed from the marketplace. In most cases, this means that the rights holder did not specifically identify your work for removal, but that Redbubble has detected potential similarity between your removed work and one or more words, phrases or images included in the rights holder’s removal guidance. More information: Rights holder: Sony Music Entertainment Subject matter: Elvis Presley Affected Artwork: Cosmic Horror and the King of Rock and Roll https://www.redbubble.com/people/skookworks/works/81545321-cosmic-horror-and-the-king-of-rock-and-roll What you can do next: Do nothing Your artwork will not be reinstated, and you should not upload it again. This usually brings the matter to a close. Contest the removal This is only appropriate if you believe that removal of your work is a mistake or that your work is parody, satire, critical commentary or other fair use. More information on the counter notice process can be found here. Important: Re-uploading the same content without going through this counter notice process may result in penalties being applied to your user account, including account suspension.

I like specifics. I wanted to know how I specifically violated Sony’s rights. I know they control the rights to most if not all Elvis’s music but I wasn’t aware that they also controlled rights to any depiction of him as well. So I asked for a copy of the guidelines that RB used to decide to take down the image.

I got this instead –

Dear David,

Thanks for getting in touch with Redbubble. As you’ve been made aware, your work was removed from Redbubble.com in response to complaints from Sony Music Entertainment and in accordance with Redbubble’s IP/Publicity Rights Policy, in regards to Elvis Presley related intellectual property.

Unfortunately, in accordance with our User Agreement and our IP/Publicity Rights Policy, we are unable to reinstate the content at issue.

We apologize that we are legally not able to further comment, provide individual advice, or give personal opinions on copyright, trademark, publicity rights, or other intellectual property matters. Please understand that Redbubble is a dynamic online marketplace and as such, designs on the site are constantly being added and removed by users as well as Redbubble for a variety of reasons relating to our User Agreement and IP/Publicity Rights Policy.

For some more answers to common questions, we recommend you take a look at our Intellectual Property FAQ (some helpful links below), research the relevant copyright, trademark, or publicity rights laws and their application to your work on the internet, or consult an I.P. specialist.

· Why was my artwork removed?
· Why was my artwork removed while other similar ones remain?
· Is it OK to upload fan art?
· Why was my artwork removed if I photographed or drew it myself?
· View more common questions

Regards,

The links in that bullet list are broken. I’ve interacted with RB over copyright before, weeks ago, and gotten the same broken list. That tells me that RB isn’t paying much attention to my response. I’ve pointed out those links are broken before yet they haven’t been fixed. I’m not taking it personally. The complany claims “Redbubble is a community of independent artists and designers who take sole responsibility for the content of their work. We value originality and creativity and strongly oppose infringement of copyright, trademarks, intellectual property rights and publicity rights.” It’s a nice sounding slogan but a hollow one.

The takedown of the my Elvis art isn’t the issue. There’s enough wobble around who can profit from depictions of the man that, if I were RB, I’d find it easier to remove the design too.

My issue is that RB hosts dozens, if not hundreds, of stores that sell stolen designs. Those stores are pretty obvious but reporting them doesn’t get much action from RB. They hide behind their rule that only the rights holders of a design can report a stolen design. It’s a rule that is no doubt intended to prevent malicious takedown requests but mostly just lets RB avoid responsibility for enabling thieves.

Ah well.

And that’s it for this week! Thank you again for visiting. Stay safe! Stay sane! Don’t eat your roommates if they die. Let your cats do that.

See you next Friday!