May 30, 2008

Maxime Bernier is now the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and for good reason. Mr. Bernier was dating a woman, whose past included dating at least one person with ties to organized crime. It's no crime to have a past and we all have those, however, the real problem was when Bernier left confidential government briefs at the woman's house -- not just overnight -- but for five weeks. There also appears to be some issue regarding the government's delay in releasing this information to the public, which, of course, has the opposition parties howling "cover-up." ____________________________________________________ Some of you know by now that I have returned to Cagle Cartoons. Others are probably wondering why I left in the first place. The reason I left had nothing to do with Daryl Cagle, whom I consider a friend, disputes over pay, or anthing to do with Cagle Cartoons. As I alluded to a couple of weeks ago, there is a cartoonist who finds great inspiration in my work. He is a master of twisting the drawing and changing the cartoon enough to avoid blatant accusations of plagiarism, but his cartoons, particularly the basic editorial comment and set-up, closely resemble my own. It's not a matter of one or two isolated events, but a consistent and predictable pattern of theft. When I left Cagle and had this site set up, I specifically blocked this rogue cartoonist's IP address. In addition, I told the cartoonist that the next time this issue occurred, I would be speaking to his editor. Sure enough, seven months went by without a single infraction, removing all doubt that somehow this person thinks like me and that we are somehow magically on the same wavelenght. That was before a couple of weeks ago. An editor alerted me that she would be publishing my Clinton hanging onto Obama's leg cartoon the next day. It just so happens this cartoonist lives in the same city the cartoon was publsihed and sure enough, the following day he posted his own rendition of this same concept. He didn't stop there, however, as he posted an even closer duplicate cartoon in the following days, as well as a literal rip-off of another one of my cartoons. I guess I had found myself on his radar screen once again, for to go from a seven month hiatus to three in one week seems a little too obvious. So, now it's is my time to return to Cagle. I have proved what I needed to. Now you may ask yourself: what's the big deal?  Isn't citing one editorial cartoonist for plagiarism like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500, especially in this Internet age? And you're right -- the truth is, plagiarism, in all its forms, is an epidemic on the Web. My argument is, when one guy does it over and over again and is a part of the same group, syndicating to the same editors, it has a diminishing effect on the quality and uniqueness of your work. When that happens, your work is devalued by perception that you are just "one of many" doing the exact same work. Eventually, your work is no longer worth anything because it has been done and redone to the point where no one knows where it originated. Therefore, there is a real need in this business to protect one's reputation from unscrupulous charlatans, whose existence seems to be based on parasitical dependence of someone else's creativity.

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[Syndicam.com » June 6, 2]

[...] lead me to speculate what the music might be. A few hours after posting this, my “fan” posted his with the same sort of speculation. It’s amazing how much he thinks like me. [...]