Dave (et al) v. Goliath

You guys know who Todd Goldman is? He's the guy behind this knee-slapping slogan. You've probably seen his work floating around various teen-happy stores.

His company's name is David and Goliath Inc. You can get a complete character list here.

And now that you've acquainted yourselves with his art, let me in on a little secret: Most of it isn't his at all. He's making good money off other people's work. I've been following this story for about a week now, and it's got me so steamed that I wanted everyone else to get steamed too. :)

Take, for example, the overlay at left. The black-and-white portion is a 2004 sketch by former KeenSpot artist Dave Kelly. The color portion is a subsequent TG painting. It looks (gasp!) traced! "No, no -- surely a mistake," I said. A misunderstanding. I mean, plagiarists can be stupid, but certainly the head of a giant corporation knows better than to trace somebody else's art, right?

And then I saw this list of all the properties TG has ripped off, including -- but not limited to -- various online clip art, the fantastic Roman Dirge's Lenore, and Windows 3.1 sprite Neko. If you only visit one of these hyperlinks, it needs to be the list of copied art. Some of the pieces are simply stolen slogans and concepts, which might be excusable if it were occasional (and thus "by mistake"), but several others are completely traced or only slightly modified.

The Las Vegas Sun covered this a few days ago. And Publisher's Weekly blog PW: The Beat has weighed in too, first with a story about the scandal, then with a second post about TG's online apology. In the apology-related press release, TG's publicist says Todd and his team make and receive thousands of submissions a month, adding, "I made a judgment error and didn’t research the background of this particular submission. My intention was not to copy Mr. Kelly. I have never seen his work before and would never intentionally knock-off someone else’s idea."

Sounds sincere, right? Too bad that before TG's publicists wrote that drivel, TG himself had sabotaged the apology. When fans saw the strong, err, resemblance between TG's and Kelly's pieces, there was a huge backlash online -- including more than a few e-mails sent directly to Todd. Multiple people reported receiving auto-replies from TG's account that said, in part, "Here’s my inspiration! Every month I paint the works of a pedophile. This week, I chose the work of Dave Kelly..." (I'd go on, but it gets nastier. You can read the rest at PW: The Beat.)

And it rubs me the wrong way that TG makes so much money from his work: Fascination St. Gallery sells his originals in the $4,000-$5,000 range; lithographs are largely in the $600-$1,000 range. If I had to guess, more than a few are rips -- of both the directly traced and slightly modified varieties -- that have not been discovered yet. I'm sure many artists (especially Web artists) lack the money to fight a multimillion-dollar corporation, so chances are TG & co. will continue to dodge the bullet.

Roman Dirge said his attorneys have sent a cease-and-desist and that TG's legal team "basically gave me a middle finger in the form of words." Now, both Dirge and Dave Kelly say they're considering formal legal action.

I've heard a whole lot of anti-Todd sentiment in the past week, and very little in his defense. It seems to be a nearly universal concept that anyone -- much less a corporation -- should be able to profit from others' intellectual property. I hope TG gets what he deserves in court. But even more than that, I hope David and Goliath Inc. faces some backlash in the court of public opinion.