Two Bits – November 8, 2013

How many of us have taken something – a picture, a verse, a wise saying, and a joke – off the Internet?
My guess is, most of us have “cut and pasted” something and passed it on to a friend, or put it on Facebook or used a graphic in something we’re making, like a birthday card. It happens all the time.
Do you consider that simply using something you like, or borrowing an idea, or do you call it stealing? Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? But the Internet is a vast place, so if you ‘borrow’ something from a Canadian website, for instance, and use it here, who’s to know? Or care?
Social media in advertising and graphic design circles has been in a flap recently over accusations by a Cape Town graphic artist that shopping giant Woolworths pinched her design of a hummingbird for use on cushion covers.
Artist Euodia Roets claims Woolworths approached her at the beginning of the year, as they were interested in using some of her work on their products. A couple of months later she was told they weren’t interested, but they kept the samples she had supplied.
Imagine her surprise when she walked into Woolworths Cavendish Square and there were what she says were her hummingbird designs on a cushion cover range. So Euodia (what were her parents thinking?) gets on her blog and blasts Woolworths to hellangone for pinching her idea.
Next thing everyone’s in on it, laying into Woolworths, dragging up issues like the fuss over Frankie’s Olde Fashioned soft drinks and the company’s recruitment drive for black staff, which was interpreted as anti-white. In the first case, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that Woolworths had illegally copied Frankie’s “olde fashioned” label for their own ginger beer line.
So there are plenty of people out there who believe the company is a bully and when the hummingbird issue came up, they piled in, boots and all. It didn’t really help that the company said no, it got the design from a Durban artist in 2012. Which I’m inclined to believe, because a company like that doesn’t conceive of a summer range only a few months ahead.
Turns out Ms Roets was “inspired” by a photo by an American photographer. The two images appear on this page. I’d say they were identical. Which raises the question of copyright law. Can Ms Roets claim to be the owner of copyright of an image, which is a substantial copy of somebody else’s photo?
The law says copyright is infringed if it not only reproduces the entire work, but also if it reproduces a substantial part of another work. Also, do they look similar or not?
I googled hummingbirds and got a few hundred pics of hummingbirds hovering. That’s the only time they pose for long enough for a picture, and one hummingbird hovering looks pretty much like the next.
If I copy da Vinci’s Mona Lisa then alter her enigmatic smile by Photoshopping on a cheesy gap-toothed grin, is the new picture my own work or have I stolen someone else’s idea? And can I complain when someone lifts my Cheesy Lisa? I think Leonardo da Vinci might have sued me if he was alive, but my point is that the Internet is a vast and marvellous thing, but as much as you can find things from far away places, in an equal instant they can also find you. And secondly, when you badmouth someone on the net, it has the potential to go worldwide instantly.
Companies have to be very aware that people are looking over their shoulders more than was ever possible before, so be on best behaviour at all times. The bigger you are, the more you’re being scrutinised.
As for Ms Euodia, on the one hand she got her name known countrywide. On the other, not a lot of companies are going to want to talk to her for a very long time, if ever.
As my primary school English teacher wrote large on the classroom wall: Think before you ink!

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With all the new technology for fertility, a 65-year-old woman was able to give birth to a baby. When she was discharged from the hospital, her relatives came to visit.
‘May we see the new baby?” one asked. ‘Not yet,” said the mother. “I’ll make coffee and we can visit for awhile first.”
Thirty minutes passed and another relative asked, “May we see the new baby now?” “No, not yet,” said the mother.
After another few minutes had elapsed, they asked again, “May we see the baby now?” “No, not yet,” replied the mother.
Growing very impatient, they asked, “Well, when can we see the baby?”
“When he cries!” she told them. “When he cries?” they demanded. “Why do we have to wait until he cries?”
“Because I forgot where I put him! Okay!”