12.17.2007



Great post title, and I totally ripped it off the blog of the same name!

Thats the subject of today's post: Plagiarism in the classroom. Earlier this year, I posted some comments about this great article by Jonathan Letham, and discussed the necessity of talking about plagiarism and appropriation in the digital age.

You Thought We Wouldn't Notice is an open forum for artists and art appreciators to post incidences of stolen images. This would be a great place to start the conversation about appropriation and art with your students, because in every entry you can read and identify the frustration that artists have found seeing their work stolen to promote other products or sold in another form. One recent case that got a lot of attention was the issue of Todd Goldman's rampant theft of images for his David & Goliath clothing line (of "Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" fame).

However, other examples abound. Compare the images above, for example. These are from a posting about a t-shirt company that may have ripped off a Banksy design.

Finally, this case has been widely circulated on the internet- a 14 year old girl's self portrait that she posted online was stolen by a pornography company as a cover for their DVD.

These cases are each unique, and raise important issues about safety in both taking and placing images online.

2 Comments:

  1. Charleston Catholic / Clay Center Project said...
    Re: the 14 year old girl

    Holy crap! And the company's responses are so pathetic!

    Also a good example of why you should be really careful what you put online. Once it's out there, it's really hard to track where it ends up. Your drunken myspace picture could be the cover of the next porn top seller.
    dsgran said...
    Exactly- and the drunken myspace picture is just the tip of the iceberg- the 14 year old was just putting up a simple self portrait. Jeff Utecht, a friend and coworker, gave an interesting presentation about online responsibility to the student body on our other campus. Its a huge issue, as students are not thinking twice about putting all kinds of digital information about themselves online.

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