Derivative Works are the Sincerest Form of Flattery
February 2, 2021 1:33 PM Subscribe
In January of 2018 cartoonist Adam Ellis was at a crossroads. He felt stifled making comics for Buzzfeed, which were often the target of scorn. So he left. After leaving, he drew a short and deeply personal comic that put to page his feelings about reclaiming his creative abilities and regrowing as an artist.
Two years later, two filmmakers made a short film version of his comic without authorization. Adam was not pleased.
This isn't the first time a comic has been used as unauthorized "inspiration" for a short film and case law is muddy about what constitutes a transformative work protected under fair use.
Is it fair use to put on a play that lifts a great deal of plot and dialog from an action movie? Yes.
Is it fair use to sell a parody song made without authorization? Yes.
Is it fair use to make a movie that takes substantial story elements and archetypal characters from a play? Yes, so long as the characters are not "well-delineated."
Is it fair use to use a character from a work you don't hold the copyright to? Yes, as long as the character is merely a vehicle for the "story being told."
Is it fair use to make and sell real-life replica batmobiles? No of course not don't be silly.
In conclusion, copyright is a land of contrasts.
Two years later, two filmmakers made a short film version of his comic without authorization. Adam was not pleased.
This isn't the first time a comic has been used as unauthorized "inspiration" for a short film and case law is muddy about what constitutes a transformative work protected under fair use.
Is it fair use to put on a play that lifts a great deal of plot and dialog from an action movie? Yes.
Is it fair use to sell a parody song made without authorization? Yes.
Is it fair use to make a movie that takes substantial story elements and archetypal characters from a play? Yes, so long as the characters are not "well-delineated."
Is it fair use to use a character from a work you don't hold the copyright to? Yes, as long as the character is merely a vehicle for the "story being told."
Is it fair use to make and sell real-life replica batmobiles? No of course not don't be silly.
In conclusion, copyright is a land of contrasts.
Adam Ellis seems to have a complicated relationship with plagarism. Not to say that what the filmmakers did is any less sketch as a consequence; two wrongs not making a right, etc.
posted by hackwolf at 1:51 PM on February 2, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by hackwolf at 1:51 PM on February 2, 2021 [8 favorites]
Someone made a short film that credited me for "Special Thanks" and I discovered it was out there by reading my own IMDb listing and having it pop up there. The description makes it clear it's riffing off of Old Man's War, but I've never watched it so I can't say how much it does or if any of it was actionable in a legal sense. By the time I discovered it, it was already a couple of years old and had done its time on the festival circuit without too much notice. I can't imagine at this point going out of my way to make a fuss about it.
(Which is not to say Ellis is not right to complain! Merely how I handled a vaguely similar event.)
posted by jscalzi at 1:53 PM on February 2, 2021 [39 favorites]
(Which is not to say Ellis is not right to complain! Merely how I handled a vaguely similar event.)
posted by jscalzi at 1:53 PM on February 2, 2021 [39 favorites]
I was just working on a post about this. IMHO the initial story about the film is overshadowed by the truly bizarre ouroboros of plagiarism that played out in the replies. To wit:
Bonus bonus: turns out that for all the accusations, the biggest thief of Ellis's work may be... Ellis himself. The plagiarism is coming from inside the house!
Bonus bonus bonus: Davros has now also been accused of plagiarism!
This has been your dispatch from the cutthroat world of funny internet comix.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:00 PM on February 2, 2021 [77 favorites]
- Lesser-known webcomic artist Yanni Davros calls Ellis a hypocrite, claiming Ellis similarly ripped off one of his own comics and never fessed up -- merely added a linkback that has since been deleted. He includes a comparison of a now-deleted 2019 comic from Ellis's Instagram and his beat-for-beat original from 2018.
- Ellis strikes back with the revelation that his supposed plagiarism was actually a re-draw of an even older one of his own comics from his now-defunct blog booksofadam.com, adding a screenshot of the original 2012 post as proof (presumably via Archive.org). Looks like Davros is the real plagiarist here! What a clown. Cue a savagely mocking reaction from Ellis's ~1 million followers.
- Except... turns out there's no record of that comic on that date in the Archive.org copy of Ellis's website. Or on any other archived page from it. And it doesn't show up in the Flickr or Tumblr accounts he used at the time to store and cross-promote his comics. And it doesn't match the style or formatting of his other comics from that period. And it has no hits on reverse-image search sites. There's literally no trace or mention of the comic outside of the screenshot. It looks as if Ellis, not wanting his Twitter crusade against the filmmakers derailed by an inconvenient counter-accusation, quickly sketched up and backdated an "original" comic to discredit his accuser and turn the Twitter mob against them. Remember for context that Ellis has nearly a million followers while Davros has under 5,000.
Bonus bonus: turns out that for all the accusations, the biggest thief of Ellis's work may be... Ellis himself. The plagiarism is coming from inside the house!
Bonus bonus bonus: Davros has now also been accused of plagiarism!
This has been your dispatch from the cutthroat world of funny internet comix.
posted by Rhaomi at 2:00 PM on February 2, 2021 [77 favorites]
Wtf, Rhaomi! That really is amazing.
Also, this is not the point of the post, but I really liked the original comic (the one that got made into a film version). I wasn't familiar with it, but it's really powerful.
posted by Omnomnom at 2:04 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Also, this is not the point of the post, but I really liked the original comic (the one that got made into a film version). I wasn't familiar with it, but it's really powerful.
posted by Omnomnom at 2:04 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Creating an entire fake comic and blog screenshot in order to make the person you plagiarized look like a liar is so audaciously villainous that I completely forgot about the short film thing, so gg Adam
posted by theodolite at 2:09 PM on February 2, 2021 [14 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 2:09 PM on February 2, 2021 [14 favorites]
Well, these all seem like very stably honest people as a total set. There's probably good odds at this very moment Ellis and the film?makers? are scrambling to make metafilter sockpuppet accounts to objectively argue that the relevant parties are actually wholly original creative geniuses.
posted by Drastic at 2:19 PM on February 2, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by Drastic at 2:19 PM on February 2, 2021 [8 favorites]
Ah, this post with Rhaomi's update makes me feel like it's 2004 again, I'm reading FandomWank and CrystalWank has just started. Made me feel 15 years younger.
Slightly more seriously, fandom is an interesting comparison - a community where copyright is ignored actually has a strong sense of what is and isn't plagarism, though that community is diverse and the limits are different in different corners of it. You can use and bounce off others' material, that is expected to the point that things become adopted as fanon, but there remains a clear idea of what is plagarism. If you are in a small fandom and transgress their boundaries of plagarism you will suffer social consequences.
But fandom is female-coded and queer-coded and therefore can be laughed at (and laugh at itself), whereas this is Dudes who are Creating and this is therefore a Very Serious Business.
Anyway, I have my popcorn out for NailWank and await developments.
posted by Vortisaur at 2:26 PM on February 2, 2021 [19 favorites]
Slightly more seriously, fandom is an interesting comparison - a community where copyright is ignored actually has a strong sense of what is and isn't plagarism, though that community is diverse and the limits are different in different corners of it. You can use and bounce off others' material, that is expected to the point that things become adopted as fanon, but there remains a clear idea of what is plagarism. If you are in a small fandom and transgress their boundaries of plagarism you will suffer social consequences.
But fandom is female-coded and queer-coded and therefore can be laughed at (and laugh at itself), whereas this is Dudes who are Creating and this is therefore a Very Serious Business.
Anyway, I have my popcorn out for NailWank and await developments.
posted by Vortisaur at 2:26 PM on February 2, 2021 [19 favorites]
Am I so jaded that I think this could be mutually agreed upon manufactured controversy so that each party can draw additional attention to themselves? Yes, yes I am.
posted by roue at 3:19 PM on February 2, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by roue at 3:19 PM on February 2, 2021 [7 favorites]
I'm hoping we get a cascade of faked-up "original" versions reaching further and further back in time - a fanzine from the eighties, an altarpiece from the fifteenth century, Etruscan inscriptions, petroglyphs scratched into a cliff in the Olduvai Gorge. Why should plagiarism be restricted to one direction of time?
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:31 PM on February 2, 2021 [46 favorites]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 3:31 PM on February 2, 2021 [46 favorites]
→
A land of whoever has better lawyers, more like.
The filmmakers reaching out to Adam to do promotion and acknowledging where they got the idea: that's real "do it for the exposure" stuff.
posted by scruss at 3:33 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
In conclusion, copyright is a land of contrasts.
A land of whoever has better lawyers, more like.
The filmmakers reaching out to Adam to do promotion and acknowledging where they got the idea: that's real "do it for the exposure" stuff.
posted by scruss at 3:33 PM on February 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
Am I so jaded that I think this could be mutually agreed upon manufactured controversy so that each party can draw additional attention to themselves? Yes, yes I am.
Since Adam Ellis was also behind "Dear David" where he pretended* his apartment was haunted, I am also suspect of his current narrative. The movie rights sold and then nothing much happened with them.
*Yeah, it could've been that he never really meant people to believe it but he still wanted it to go viral.
posted by edencosmic at 3:42 PM on February 2, 2021
Since Adam Ellis was also behind "Dear David" where he pretended* his apartment was haunted, I am also suspect of his current narrative. The movie rights sold and then nothing much happened with them.
*Yeah, it could've been that he never really meant people to believe it but he still wanted it to go viral.
posted by edencosmic at 3:42 PM on February 2, 2021
I think we may have lived in Mickey Mouse's world for so long that we all unquestioningly accept the legally enshrined notion that it is unethical to "steal" an idea. I'd like to be able to tell Adam to suck it up and deal with it, but I know it's not that easy for him, or for the people he "stole" from. Artists have to eat, and in this world, that means fencing off everything you can lay claim to and using whatever weapons you have to defend it from intruders who won't pay. We ought to abandon the fiction that art is either original, without influence or precedent, or plagiarized, ripped off from an original source. All art is plagiarism of more or fewer sources. The tragedy isn't that artists don't create new meaning out of thin air, it's that the market does not and cannot value art in general.
posted by jy4m at 4:12 PM on February 2, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by jy4m at 4:12 PM on February 2, 2021 [7 favorites]
Not to add to the pile on, but Adam Ellis has been accused of stealing art before, outside of that comic linked above. In 2017 he made an online store to sell t-shirts based on 80's and 90's anime fashion and was called out for it, after which he took down the store and deleted all traces of it from the internet.
So, yeah, even before seeing the incident detailed already I was side-eyeing any whining from Ellis, since he's already shown that he's happy to directly profit from someone else's creative ideas.
posted by fight or flight at 4:44 PM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
So, yeah, even before seeing the incident detailed already I was side-eyeing any whining from Ellis, since he's already shown that he's happy to directly profit from someone else's creative ideas.
posted by fight or flight at 4:44 PM on February 2, 2021 [4 favorites]
Is it fair use to sell a parody song made without authorization? Yes.
Well, this is a bit unlike the others. While the Orbison Estate couldn't prevent 2 Live Crew from "parodying" Pretty Woman as a result of the SCOTUS decision, since that is fair use, both parties still had to work out a licensing agreement, which was settled out of court.
In other words: While Roy's family couldn't decide who got to use the the song, they still got paid for its use.
posted by sideshow at 5:46 PM on February 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
Well, this is a bit unlike the others. While the Orbison Estate couldn't prevent 2 Live Crew from "parodying" Pretty Woman as a result of the SCOTUS decision, since that is fair use, both parties still had to work out a licensing agreement, which was settled out of court.
In other words: While Roy's family couldn't decide who got to use the the song, they still got paid for its use.
posted by sideshow at 5:46 PM on February 2, 2021 [6 favorites]
A land of whoever has better lawyers, more like.
No one will ever be able to convince me that "the Batmobile is a character protected by copyright" ruling is anything other than pure uncut horse shit. You're telling me that using your skill as a craftsperson to painstakingly recreate a prop from film or TV is not a transformative work? That the Batmobile, which never looks the same way twice and whose only fixed characteristic is "the cool ass car Batman drives" is a character? Get the fuck out of here.
Gotham Garage still sells the exact same products, but now they have to call them the "1966 Cruiser" and "1989 Cruiser." Congratulations, I hope getting them to stop using one specific word to describe their creations was worth it. It really drives home the fact that despite ostensibly ruling on copyright, all the court really did was uphold DC's trademark.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:50 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
No one will ever be able to convince me that "the Batmobile is a character protected by copyright" ruling is anything other than pure uncut horse shit. You're telling me that using your skill as a craftsperson to painstakingly recreate a prop from film or TV is not a transformative work? That the Batmobile, which never looks the same way twice and whose only fixed characteristic is "the cool ass car Batman drives" is a character? Get the fuck out of here.
Gotham Garage still sells the exact same products, but now they have to call them the "1966 Cruiser" and "1989 Cruiser." Congratulations, I hope getting them to stop using one specific word to describe their creations was worth it. It really drives home the fact that despite ostensibly ruling on copyright, all the court really did was uphold DC's trademark.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:50 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
It really drives home the fact that despite ostensibly ruling on copyright, all the court really did was uphold DC's trademark.
Perhaps. Ok, now I'm going to unwrap this cellophane from this package of styrofoam, right after I go to the store to pick up some aspirin and xerox some copies.
Also, no one should be making any money off of Adam West era Batmobiles besides the family of George Barris.
posted by sideshow at 6:05 PM on February 2, 2021
Perhaps. Ok, now I'm going to unwrap this cellophane from this package of styrofoam, right after I go to the store to pick up some aspirin and xerox some copies.
Also, no one should be making any money off of Adam West era Batmobiles besides the family of George Barris.
posted by sideshow at 6:05 PM on February 2, 2021
Even if Adam Ellis were clearly and obviously ripped off, seems like he's still likely be SOL.
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posted by MrJM at 6:22 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
‘Gravity’ Lawsuit: Tess Gerritsen Dropping Case Against Warner Bros.
posted by MrJM at 6:22 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oh man, this level of webcomic drama really takes me back to the halcyon days of 2000-2005. Next, someone is gonna take this comic and make it smutty. Or like 30 artists are gonna make their own versions. Let chaos reign once more!
posted by Leeway at 8:10 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Leeway at 8:10 PM on February 2, 2021 [3 favorites]
So it's a sketch sketch?
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:26 AM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:26 AM on February 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
it’s not proper early 2000s webcomic drama unless the comics are made with slightly modified video game sprites
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:28 AM on February 3, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:28 AM on February 3, 2021 [4 favorites]
lmao:
The comic that @moby_dickhead made, which was plagiarized by the short film Karatin, was actually plagiarized from a comic made by us, at Powerup Comics. We made it first, check the time stamp. it says 2008 right on it.posted by Rhaomi at 9:51 PM on February 3, 2021
How does it feel to have something so personal ripped off and stolen by a more popular cartoonist, and then by some short film makers? Well, it's like having a baby stolen from me, thanks for asking.
Funny you all should be so smug, when I wrote this thread word-for-word back in 1997.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:04 AM on February 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:04 AM on February 4, 2021 [5 favorites]
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