26th February 2008

Is the internet stealing your thunder?

posted in Frustration, Pop Culture |

I like my blog.  It’s a nice, cozy place, where I get to rant and rave and philosophize about whatever I want, and inflict pictures of my darling dotter or other members of the family on The Public.  It skeeves me out that blog scrapers come by on a regular basis, grab a paragraph and a link, and then slap it up on a blog-ad-site (blad?) filled with AdSense ads, but it’s certainly better than folks who grab your entire blog, change some details, and publish it as their own (I’ve encountered this a few times, second- or third-hand).  It bothers me that there are people out there who will steal your pictures of your life, your child, and pretend the pictures are their own, illustrating their own life.

I can actually sort of understand it, though.  There are people out there who yearn after validation, who want to be seen as creative, as kind, as loving, as beautiful–whatever image it is that they are seeking, and stealing, they’ve got a serious self-image problem.  While I think plagiarizing like that sucks dead toads and should be the object of scorn and contumely, I also feel sorry for these folks.

But what the hell possesses people to start up an email with a lie?  You don’t know ahead of time that your email is going to go viral…

OmegaGranny recently sent me a forwarded email.  There were two lines of text, and 26 photos.  The text read: 

Entries for an art contest at the Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery in DC

The rule was that the artist could use only one sheet of paper.

The photos–the photos were awe-inspiring.  Fascinating.  Lovely.  Amazing.  Beautiful.  Quirky.  Sad.  Thought-provoking.

The photos were also very familiar to me.  I was dubious that these were the work of multiple people, because I could swear I had seen these very same pieces of artwork on one person’s website.  But I wasn’t sure.

So first I went off to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.  I couldn’t find anything that related to an "art contest".  I did an advanced Google search of the entire website, and didn’t find anything.

I went to Snopes, just to see if they had anything listed.  Nope. 

So then I googled "paper art".  Because I was sure I had seen these pictures before.

And lo and behold, the very first link that shows up when you google "paper art" is the site of Peter Callesen, a Scandinavian artist who has been creating paper art for years.  Every single one of those 26 photos is directly from his website.  He’s been published in books, he has had oodles of shows in Europe (none at the Hirshhorn, by the way), he has permanent art up on display in various corporate places.

He’s a "name".  It’s his work.

Why?  Why would someone send out an email claiming his artwork is the result of an anonymous collection of art contest entrants?  Why on earth didn’t they just say, "OMG.  You have to see this guy’s artwork!  He’s a genius!"?  There’s no need to actually copy the photos (a violation of copyright) and send them on in an email–just provide a link to his website.

What is the motivation in doing something like this?  The person who originally sent the very first email (first in a long chain, trust me, because googling the text pulled up a large number of hits) knew that what s/he was doing was telling an outright lie about the artwork.  Why deny the artist of his recognition?  This man has worked long and hard establishing a reputation in the art world.  Why steal it and apply it to no-one in particular?

Gah.  It’s frustrating to me.  Anyway, as a result of that email, I have a post for the day, and I have a website to point y’all to.  Go look at Peter’s website.  Enjoy his artwork.  It’s amazing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Frustration, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 8 responses to “Is the internet stealing your thunder?”

  1. 1 On February 26th, 2008, Blog Antatonist said:

    That really skeeves me out as well. But I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop scrapers and aggregators. I know, I tangled with one a while back. They did eventually remove my feed, but they put it back after they thought it had blown over.

    But stealing somebody’s art is really low. Good for you for calling them out. I took a look and his work really is amazing.

  2. 2 On February 26th, 2008, Sister Carrie said:

    I’ve never heard the term “blog scraper” before. Is this something we should be worried about?

    Did you send it to Snopes? Maybe they need to hear about it.

  3. 3 On February 27th, 2008, Mutha said:

    I’ve never heard of blog scraping either because, as you know, I’m an E! List blogger.

    I want to hear the story about someone stealing an entire blog and claiming it was their own. That is crazy but it doesn’t surprise me one bit.

    Maybe that’s why I have such a small audience. They’re all reading my work on Fake Mae’s site!

  4. 4 On February 27th, 2008, Julie Pippert said:

    I don’t mind the aggregate services. I mean, what’s the diff between those and places like Digg? It’s even pretty mainstream. I’ve been scraped by CNN and the Houston Chronicle. As long as it’s truncated and links back to me I call it a clip and smile. It drives traffic, as well.

    I’m not greedy or conniving, just hungry.

    But. Whole hog copying is inexcusable as is plagiarism.

    Has this artist been alerted?

    This is why I post very little to none of my art now and am HUGE on the copyright portion.

  5. 5 On February 27th, 2008, GrannyJ said:

    I’m quite amazed at the urge to pirate and to copy. I ran into that problem at a couple of outdoor art shows recently. I would show up with my camera & heads would shake, “no photos, no photos!” Sometimes “please.” I asked for the reason & was told that there are people who actually copy someone else’s painting! The only possibly legit use of copying may have been the strange lady who was hyped on James Jones’ novels — she ran one of those weird colonies for would be authors back in the 50s where she had her acolytes sit at their typewriters all day retyping pages from Jones and other authors. Her idea was that they were practicing the typing of good writing. I only knew one person who had attended her colony. He became a prof of lit and actually edited a little review out of the U of Chicago. Long, long ago.

  6. 6 On February 27th, 2008, GrannyJ said:

    BTW, his own writing schtick involved buxom counter waitresses at roadside diners, burly cops & not much else.

  7. 7 On February 27th, 2008, Jean Woodman said:

    What a marvelous artist. Too bad he hasn’t had a show at the Hirschorn.

    I agree with Sisiter Carrie (#2) that it might be a good idea to sent the email and your findings on to Snopes. From what I’ve seen of that sight that is how they get most of their alerts - from people alerting them to possible questionable items.

  8. 8 On March 9th, 2008, Dina said:

    Some people are just dickheads. End of story.

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