davidl@teklds.UUCP (David Levine) (10/18/85)
Can anyone point me to the people responsible for the Tenth Anniversary USENIX
T-Shirt and the people responsible for the DEC ULTRIX poster, both of which
feature the comical "pipes and demons" cartoon done ten years ago by Phil
Foglio? Neither of these features the artist's signature (prominent in the
original T-shirt), and I recently discovered that he has received no benefit
from these unauthorized reproductions of his work.
David D. Levine (...decvax!tektronix!teklds!davidl) [UUCP]
(teklds!davidl.tektronix@csnet-relay) [ARPA/CSNET]obrien@randvax.UUCP (Michael O'Brien) (10/27/85)
I'd better reply to this one right quick. I'm the one who got the original artwork from Phil, and he was compensated by barter. The original idea was to make only a couple of the original shirts (for Ken and Dennis). The explosive popularity of the image is a tribute to Phil, certainly. But I DID do him a (non-trivial) favor in return, commensurate with the effort he put into his work at that time, and commensurate with the expected use and popularity of the work. It's indeed a pity that he hasn't received compensation commensurate with the popularity of the work; had I known how popular it would become I would certainly have at least attempted some sort of royalty arrangement. I turned the artwork and all rights over to DEC at Armando Stettner's request, with the understanding that he was going to make more T-shirts. I had no idea they'd mount an ad campaign around it! I did specifically request that Phil's signature be included so that he would get proper credit. I confess to failure of vision on my part, and counsel artists never to relinquish copyright on a work (fat chance in today's market for commercial art, I bet), but Phil was NOT uncompensated no matter what he says. It's just that the early full payment was not commensurate with the work's later popularity. Remember, this was all back around 1976. Dickens didn't get much money either. I'm sorry, Phil, but I had no idea.