Todd Goldman: Victim of hate, or art thief on a massive scale?

[ccoa]

Some of you are aware of the recent scandal(s) surrounding artist Todd "Goliath" Goldman, who founded a merchandise company David and Goliath which produces clothing and posters featuring his slogans and art.

Recently, Dave "Shmorky" Kelly of the Something Awful forums posted a thread on his forums titled "Holy Cow, Todd "Goliath" Goldman ripped me off!" In this thread, he showed a cell phone camera image of a painting for sale in a gallery by Goldman, one which bore a striking resemblance to a webcomic he had made years earlier.

http://shiva.no.sapo.pt/images/side-by- ... pussy2.png[/img]

Correcting the image for perspective, one might even say it looks traced.

http://shiva.no.sapo.pt/images/overlay/ ... rected.jpg[/img]

Early inquiries and flames by fans of Kelly to Goldman received an email with defamatory remarks about Kelly and links to furry porn (which Kelly drew, but this email still went out to minors). Later he issued an apology and offered to give Kelly the profits (not the sale price) of the painting and any merchandise.

Since then, more and more of his works are being brought forward as eerily similar to famous clipart and other artists (web and not). His lawyers have begun an aggressive campaign to shut those sites down and even those legitimate news sources which have fairly reported the case (including Wired.com).

Since most of these archives contain images of the email with links to the aforementioned porn, I won't be linking them here. Feel free to do some independent research, but please be careful when posting links in this discussion thread.

 

[Rhazdel]

If the publication dates are confirmed for the earlier works, then I think that Mr. Goldman should be sued, and sued hard

That would be plagerism at its worst: One man profiting off of another's work, and it sounds as if that is the case (since he agreed to give profits to the comic's original owner - sounds like the move of someone who's guilty).

If this is true, then I feel no sympathy for him.

 

[Roman Candle]

Seems like a fairly clear case. Does he really expect that if it comes down to it, he could win in a court case? Why doesn't he just settle it now, and try to keep it quiet? Although, if he's taken from lots of sources, that might not be a feasible option :p

 

[Rain]

I'm going to have to side with the majority of people and say he is an art thief.

A few of the links some sites are making seem a bit tenuous and a little vague but then when you see other items which are identical it does seem pretty obvious.

At this point he has made his bed, and must lie in it, no matter how uncomfortable the next few months may be for him

 

[holloway]

Hey, if the quantity that is claimed to have been stolen ARE stolen, he'll be bankrupted and probably facing a short jail sentence tbh.

Fact is, he's bringing it on himself by trying to shut down other legitimate sites.

 

[Fallofthetyrant]

The only thing that bothers me in this history is that I actually cannot believe someone could think Todd was innocent lol
Take a look
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/the-saga-of-todd-goldman

Really, that guy/girl (I don't know his/her gender) must be blind, because I can clearly see Todd's Artwork are just rips.

 

[Dopples]

Well, what do you expect? Of course he blames it on hate because he's a furry, so he tries to shut down legitimate web sites because people blame him of plagiarism. Which he misconstrues as hate because he draws furry porn.


More than half the furry fandom is like this. They try to avert the blame, and they accuse people of being racist.

 

[ccoa]

...Dopples the guy who was ripped off drew the furry porn. On commission, actually. Goldman than sent out images of that furry porn to everyone who sent him an email relating to his theft for Shmorky's work, as if the fact that an artist once drew furry porn somehow exonerated him (Goldman) from blatently ripping off his work.

The dates on the webcomic can be verified - it was very popular, and translated into multiple language (why, I don't know, I don't find it all that funny). The webcomic version was absolutely produced in 2001. The Goldman painting was "painted" in 2007. Open and shut if you ask me.

The funny thing is, if he'd just shut up and paid off Shmorky, things like this wouldn't be coming to light now:

http://www.miketyndall.com/todd_goldman ... dkitty.jpg[/img]

On the left, Goldman's tshirt "Bad Kitty." On the right, a character from a font created in 1997, for sale here.

Or this:

http://www.miketyndall.com/todd_goldman ... serock.jpg[/img]

A tshirt by Goldman and a DVD cover from a Disney movie.

And much, much more. Some more obvious than others.

 

[holloway]

(Shit, I just realised where that "Vagina Junction" clip came from)

 

[Dopples]

Oh....my bad. Ignore my post then.

 

[___]

Some of his stuff might actually fall under the fair use doctrine. The schoolhouse rock children on the T-Shirt could be argued as a cultural reference since those kids really weren't iconic characters but they do symbolize and call to mind a time period and culture; this would be different from using, say, Mickey Mouse, who is a well defined and living symbol and trademark of Disney. You could argue the same for the clipart, but less successfully. I'm not sure on the specific legalities. I'm not saying he'd be right mind you, just that he is defendable there.

The first example with the squirrels however is a clear cut work of plagiarism. There is no substantial difference in context, artistic intent, impact, design, style or anything else that you could possibly chose as a defining factor. The same goes for most of the rest of his body of work; even the quotes he uses are ripped off T-Shirts I've seen in Hot Topic since I was 14. Overall the guy is an art criminal and I can't imagine anyone who didn't have an ethical responsibility to give him a fair trial (i.e. his lawyer) would defend him as an artist. Every one of the examples above except arguably the schoolhouse one would be just as effective with original artwork if the rest of the idea was original.

On an entirely separate level of outrage, I can't believe he responded to the accusations by trying to shut down or discredit the original authors! That is so overtly disgusting the guy does more harm to himself than the authors by doing it.

Oh yeah, furries are bad IMO because they have a creepy cultish culture, not because of their relatively harmless anthropomorph fetishes.