Ninja-Bot, you’re mistaken, transforming an original work into something new is allowed under fair use in many instances. Are you from 1970, perhaps? I know hip-hop was not around then, you may not be aware of it.

Here’s a small bit that explains transformative use, I snagged it from here:

Courts also favor uses that are “transformative,” or that are not mere reproductions. Fair use is more likely when the copyrighted work is “transformed” into something new or of new utility, such as quotations incorporated into a paper, and perhaps pieces of a work mixed into a multimedia product for your own teaching needs or included in commentary or criticism of the original.

If you have some reason to believe that what you said was true, please, back it up with some actual law? I would love to be educated if I am mistaken about this.

Ninja-Bot, there is a difference between simply altering an image, and redrawing a small part of it (which is what I’m assuming Rowland did).

Honestly though, everything I’ve learned about appropriation and so on makes me think Jeff is on pretty safe ground. It’s a changed image, being a drawing, and it could be easily construed as a parody.

That, my good friend, would be total bullshit. At least Rowland’s being relatively big on the matter, admitting wrong about something that almost no one would’ve thought twice about from the start.

Congratulations on owning that guy. I would point and laugh at him but this is the internet and I really don’t know how to effectively do that. I don’t know how to convey to him the amount of shame he should be feeling without making eye contact and then finding myself awkwardly unable to meet his gaze, thereby expressing that his shame has in fact passed on like a terrible virus to all people around him.

Also, in regards to a much earlier comment, big corporations suck. That is why we hate them. Jeffrey Rowland does not suck. In fact, he is awesome. We do not hate him. He is not thoughtraping poor struggling artists. He made a mousepad. No one is very sad about this except for one dude, and that dude is not very cool. Therefore, we should all have cake.

CLEARLY.

Thank you.

Or maybe you’ve overlooked the definition in your rush to condemn a Dumbrella member! I know that you are a bitter, lonely, jealous man isolated in a far-away country but even you must recognize that the work is a) transformative, in that it does not use the original photograph, b) passes the amount and substantiality test, int hat it only resembles a portion of the original photograph, and does not use it in its entirety, and c)has zero effect on the value of the original work. In addition jeff’s work could easily be considered parody.

Basically this would be up to a judge to decide, it is not as clear cut as you make it to be and I personally think Jeff is within his rights here.

I have learned that anything you say about Dumbrella should not be taken seriously either. You are a troll who would do better to spend time working on your comics than attacking your fellow cartoonists on the internet. I dare you to come and meet any of the people you talk trash about at a convention and spend five minutes talking with them and see if your perspective is not changed.