Wednesday, February 07, 2007

plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery

earlier today, via the qeg blog, i heard about an english electro band called does it offend you, yeah?, which has apparenly been generating a lot of industry buzz. so i stopped by their myspace page to check out their tunes (which sound pretty good), and was surprised by a very familiar image: there, in their "about" section, was my design for the recycle your record collection t-shirt.

i'm a CC-minded fellow, so it doesn't bother me when people appropriate images i've created. (though that doesn't mean i appreciate people just linking to my shiz; if you're going to jack my designs, at least upload them to your own server.) this is hardly the first time my images—or even this particular image—have turned up on other sites, though it might be the most popular site to have posted an image i made. so it was kind of flattering to see it there, though the fact that DIOYY (or whoever they got it from) cropped it specifically to remove the attribution to AWIA is a little annoying.

but this got me wondering... if the design is so popular, why do i still have two boxes of unsold shirts laying around, three years after they first came out? by this point, i don't care about recouping my investment; i just want to get rid of the damn things, as they're taking up precious space in my living room. (i also feel similarly about the many copies of my true data 12" i have left.) i need to do something to get rid of these shirts, even if it means selling them at just above cost. (which would be about $5 each.)

update: hmm... according to this, DIOYY actually recorded a mix titled recycle your record collection and used this as the cover art! i think they're just confused, though. that's not really the title of the mix.

and here is someone trying to sell bootleg shirts on cafepress. it's listed for $20. considering i can't sell mine for $8, i have a feeling they're not generating too many sales.

4 comments:

arratik said...

as it turns out, i need to replace both my shirt and vinyl (one of them ended up getting warped somehow, and i think i left the other one at a hotel in tybee island, ga last year...). i don't mind paying full price for fine craftsmanship.

i get paid on friday... you'll hear from me before then.

Anonymous said...

Okay, time for an admission... I only listened to the music once and it really didn't do much for me. However, I am a HUGE fan of the blog. I'd pay $5 for a shirt that advertises you. :) If you still want to get rid of one, how do I get you the five bucks?

djempirical said...

dude!

i meant to mention that image to you, and totally spaced on it. gah.

and yeah, i need to replace my shirt as well; i've worn it out!

torporindy said...

hell, i'll buy a shirt too. Let me know.