Illustration book plagiarizes dozens of artists

John Martz | April 18th, 2008

Yesterday illustrator Darren Di Lieto, who also runs the wonderful Little Chimp Society illustration site, discovered that the work of dozens of illustrators, along with the interviews he conducted with them for the LCS, have been unceremoniously plagiarized in a 350-page book being sold online for $100.

Our own Luc Latulippe is one of the illustrators whose interview and illustrations were ripped off, and he has posted a detailed write-up of the situation at his blog, and encourages everyone to spread the word about this, as the publisher and distributors of the book are elusive if not entirely impossible to contact.

Please also read Darren’s blog post about the situation where he also links to a gallery of photographs of the entire plagiarized book.

Please help spread the word!

Tags: , , , ,
  • A couple of things horrified me about this, one is the theft of the work itself, which is reprehensible.

    The second is that the response to the posts I made about it on the Cartoonist Club of Great Britain's forum and on the Wisenheimer board were pathetic. Hopefully one or two more people will have fully understood the implications by now. Last time I looked only Private Eye cartoonist Wilbur Dawbarn and US author/illustrator Stacy Curtis were remotely interested.

    On TCJ board, some people thought it was an opportunity not to get all hot and bothered about the small issue of copyright theft, but to debate the finer points of the copyright law itself, but you usually find those people are not authors or illustrators or cartoonists anyway.

    Overall the response to this act of piracy has been oddly muted and yet, if one of J.K Rowlings gibberish-filled post-it notes was ripped-off in this way there would be an outcry.

    Maybe the cartoonists (and bear in mind I am one) are not too bothered because they know their work will never be ripped off in this manner; nobody will be interested in making a collection of cartoons because nobody would want to buy it.
  • fabianfucci
    Maybe issuing a complaint at the IC3 may help.
    http://www.ic3.gov/
  • Lee
    It might be worth posting this on
    http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3/ to bring attention to the issue.
  • meggiecat
    Unfortunately, I think blogmining is becoming more common in many creative areas. The ease with which this is accomplished is astonishing with tools such as Blurb's free Blurb BookSmart tool that they say "Your blog. Automatically slurped into a real book". Here is a video showing how easy it is: How to Make a Blog Book Using Blurbf
    It requires knowing the password but that shouldn't be too hard for a criminal anyway. If Blurb can have this software then the creeps can have their versions too.

    The sad aspect of this is that more of us will think twice about the content and quality we post.
  • letile
    It's not an urban legend!
    Check out the Illustrators Partnership of America website:
    http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/
  • Speaking of copyrights...has anyone heard of the "Orphan Work Bill?" It could be a sweeping change to the concept of copyright towards a privatization of the the copyright process or it could be urban legend.
blog comments powered by Disqus