Strange Things Are Afoot At the Circle-C

As awareness of Pilfered Magazine’s diabolical position (regarding the copyright ownership of the work it distributes) continues to grow, I keep hearing of other websites that are flouting copyright laws and stealing creative work from the web.  The latest:  ShootForYourLife.  As I visit the sites, hoping to find my own work or the work of someone I know, so that my ire can be further affirmed, I keep getting the feeling that I’m being played for a fool.

Out of the corner of my eye, I keep thinking I can see someone sneaking away to the bank with a load of cash to deposit; I know they’re there, I just can’t quite lay eyes on them.  To my knowledge, Pilfered and ShootForYourLife are not presently making money from their sites, though how could anyone really know that without a law suit?  All will become clear.

So far, the content of the artwork being infringed has not been the primary issue, but rather the infringing itself.  There is a conspicuous presence of naked bodies – a lot of skin is being shown, and, exactly as you’d expect, most of it belongs to young women.  The sites in question are doing everything they can to get and hold viewers, and we all know that showing a lot of skin can help with that.  We know, too, that consequences must follow.  As the threats of lawsuits and DMCA takedown notices pile up, I keep thinking about artist Barbara Kruger:  ”Your body is a battleground.”  I predict there will be a battle.  At the very least there will be a kerfuffle.  I hope that in the process all of the battlegrounds will be walked carefully.

Maybe it will all just get settled before there are any actual lawsuits.  See, I keep getting the feeling that the sites are nothing more than star vehicles for the editors.  That is, the sites are essentially portfolio pieces for people looking to get jobs as art buyers, editors, agents, what have you.  They woke up one day to find they had just been laid off, or had just come out of school fully prepared to enter a career in an industry that was in the midst of a major downturn, and they said “I know!  Let’s just start an online publication.  It’ll cost us very little and we can show whatever we want.  We’ll have no advertisers telling us how to lay out our pages, and we can sidle around all the copyright stuff long enough for there to be a lot of hoopla.  In the end we’ll just drop it all, cash in on our new reputations, and get great jobs.  Win-win!”

Maybe the editors of Pilfered and ShootForYourLife are just using copyright infringement as a tool to get some attention, with no thought for the lives and livelihoods of those artists they are claiming to honor and admire.