Friday Q&A

Questionable Reclamation

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to a very special edition of the Friday Q&A. Today, we're talking about an issue close to the heart of every Fark photoshopper. No, I'm not referring to the search for a herpes cure. I'm talking about copyrights, and how they affect our medium.

Q: What do you think of copyright infringement?

A: I spit on copyright law. I spit on a lot of things, but copyright law is definitely one of them. You probably do the same thing, if you're a photoshopper. Every one of these pictures we hack up has an owner, usually an arrogant twat who thinks you're stealing from him. You have to wonder about the thought process involved when a person makes a photograph publicly available, then complains when it gets used by the public.

Q: Why not just ask permission?

A: Asking is for pussies. It's pointless, since the picture's owner invariably says no, assuming you're able to get in contact with them. Even if they share your artistic vision, waiting for each source to say go kills any of the creative freedom that makes photoshopping so enjoyable.

Q: Why are we even talking about this?

A: There was a bit of a dust up recently. It turns out the photographer for a couple of Fark's contest pictures doesn't take kindly to what we've done with his work. The copyright holder for the originals featured in threads 3652847 and 3272197 is, by all rights, a complete fucking douchebag. He sent harassing emails to at least one photoshopper, and even created a Fark account so he could post this image:

Image credit: Some whiny prick who thinks taking pictures of a barn is an original idea.

What the text overlay shows us is that farradhim takes his work very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he never took time to master the delicate art of spelling and punctuation. His loss is our gain, however, as the insipid ranting in thread 3652847 is by far the most entertaining thing I've read in a while.

I find the fact that his Farkback went ignored to be excruciatingly hilarious. I had put off writing about this for a while, since there was a danger of both threads getting deleted. However, it appears that Drew and the gang have decided to give a resounding "fuck you" to this clown. Way to go, Drew. If this idiot didn't want people using his images, he should have tried watermarking them, or maybe not uploading the damn things onto a public server in the first place.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks for stopping by. I'd like to close out the post by apologizing to TheSniperZERO for not insulting him in this week's edition. I know he comes here expecting a certain level of animosity, and I'm sorry if I failed to deliver this time. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a load of stolen intellectual property that needs to be submitted to the Fark queue.

Stay tuned for more copyright violations from the Doctor!