Today I received a rude introduction to how easy it is to be caught on the wrong side of Copyright concerns. No, I didn't get sued or anything that bad. Instead, I am potentially facing a lot of work to redesign a shirt we were getting printed, and thereby possibly missing the timeframe we were aiming for. hmm.. that's not a good start. Let me back up and tell the full story.
DefCon. We are planning a trip to DefCon. A number of us went last year and wanted to show up with a clear "Canadian" presence this year. We thought it'd be fun to get some custom hockey jerseys made up that tied in a few Canadian themes with Linux and Technology. (cuz we are all members of the Calgary Linux Users Group). DefCon is at the end of July. We want the shirts before that, of course and began this process some time ago.
So, after a couple of drafts, we settled on this design (click it to see it full size):
As you can see, we tied in the idea of the Canadian icons of culture - Bob & Doug McKenzie, with Tux, a laptop, and even a "Canadian Pirate" flag (original here) on the laptop.
Every element of the front image was either taken from OpenClipart.org, or created by me with Inkscape. I pulled the elements together, tweaked them - sizing, skewing, etc - and placed them. Some of the elements - like the snowshoes had to be created from scratch.
Notice the beer bottles. The core of these is the image found at http://openclipart.org/people/jturner/jturner_A_nice_cold_one.png. Which is marked as being in the public domain. On this I slapped a white square to represent a label, put on the word "Canadian" and made some superficial additions to hint at Molsen Canadian bottles. Same with the "case of beer".
We are dealing with a small local dealer for the shirts. He in turn is dealing with AthleticKnit to order the shirts. The goal was to have the front image sublimated onto the shirt - a service AthleticKnit provides. However, AthleticKnit then requested to see our license to use the "Moslsen" images represented by the beer bottles. Apparently the bottles are "toooo" realistic. Ok, I can understand this. It's unfortunate, and we just don't have the time to track down the contacts at Molsen to get permission. So I changed the image.
This is what we ended up with next for the front of the shirt:
A nice generic beer bottle. But we had to give up some of the "Canadian" feel to do so.
These changes were submitted, and we assumed we were well on our way to having our shirts in time. Boy was I wrong.
Today I get word from the local shop that AthleticKnit has once again balked at our image. Their art department refuse to do this image because we now need a license or permission from the "Bob & Doug" franchise. I asked if removing the text "The great white north" would be sufficient. Nope - the entire theme is objectionable to them.
So here I sit, waiting to see if the local printer can work some magic and find another way to make this happen. Because the alternative of redesigning the shirt, going through the approval process, submitting THAT for printing, and possibly being rejected again by someone for representing anything that can be deemed Canadian "culture", well, that's not an option. Not with the time frame we have remaining. I did try to find who owns the copyright on Bob & Doug and it *seems* to be Dave Thomas. But just try to find any way to contact Dave Thomas directly - I have seen nothing (yet) that is helpful. As a celebrity, that's probably a good thing for Mr Thomas. Being the guy who has a legitimate need to contact him (or whoever owns the copyrights), that's not so great.
The shirts were supposed to be a fun Canadian take on being a "hacker". Instead, they have become a not-so fun introduction to how a simple fear of a copyright lawsuit can block artwork, freedom of expression, and something obviously not harmful to the original ideas.
Up until today, I agreed that copyrights were needed (though not to the extreme the current law dictates). That has changed. I now believe that copyrights are nothing more than a money grab arranged between the wealthy players. Us "average citizens" need not apply.