Gizmodo and iphone cartoon

I was interested in the news about Gizmodo and the iPhone last week, even though I don’t read/have either one, just because I like tech news.  It took me a couple of days before I had time to read the details.

Gawker Media’s Gizmodo blog dropped a bomb on technology enthusiasts Monday with information and pictures of what looks like a prototype for Apple’s next iPhone. Gawker paid for access to the device from a person who found it at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., Gizmodo editor Jason Chen said. Gawker founder Nick Denton coyly acknowledged in a tweet Monday that his company has paid for exclusives before.

I was outraged at this! And happy to find this article from Daily Finance on how Apple could easily sue Gizmodo for knowingly buying the stolen iPhone. The author actually talked with Nick Denton.

Gawker Media has admitted — boasted, really — that it paid $5,000 to get its hands on a prototype of a fourth-generation iPhone for its gadget blog, Gizmodo.

Now that I’ve had a few hours to digest all this, I am somewhat scandalized, even outraged. Put simply, Gawker Media brazenly, publicly flouted the law. It subsidized a crime: the selling of stolen merchandise.

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/aGnF2V

What Jeff  Bercovici doesn’t bring up, however, is how Gizmodo also stole and used intellectual property, known as trade secrets.

Business Insider says that Denton now claims he LOST money because of this big scoop! 

With characteristic humility, Gawker Media owner Nick Denton describes his company’s acquisition of an iPhone 4Q — two months before Apple (AAPL) was set to unveil it — as “pretty much the biggest tech scoop ever.” But while there’s no question the story brought Gawker millions of page views, what it hasn’t brought so far, Denton says, is money…

Today the LA Times says the police raided the house of the blogger who wrote on Gizmodo. ‘Bout time. Not exactly police, it was a REACT task force.

Wiki describes Nick Denton, owner of Gawker Media, as British and openly gay. Well, he’s openly bitchy, that’s for sure. He has a bunch of blogs, some worse than others. Defamer is his most famous. Nice graphics, boring gossip. (I guess sites like this are for people who don’t live in Hollywood and are jealous.)

But the first blog of his I even noticed was Wonkette, which is supposedly Washington DC gossip. Well…I guess. Lots of slurs, sexual innuendo, and just plain swearing. Reading the comments and the ad demographics, when I had to, which I’ll explain, I think the average reader is a college-educated 25 year old male who is pretty sure he knows everything and is the center of everyone’s world. If this is not your favorite demo group, stay away.

Anyway, there is a blogger on Wonkette who calls himself the Comics Curmudgeon. He reviews (says hateful things about) editorial cartoons each week, and his posts get about 15,000 views. That’s popular, in my little world. Mean comments follow his posts. I would never have found him, but he included my cartoons in his roundup the first week I went on Slate. The 4th time he posted a cartoon of mine he called me “the mysterious D. Barstow.” Well, mysterious would be a good description if one had never learned to use google, I guess, or read what Slate says about me ON THEIR SITE.

I got hundreds and hundreds of hits on my blogs, but it took me half a day to figure out where they came from. Because he didn’t bother to link to me. Not to Slate, Gocomics, or any of my blogs. In fact, Wonkette hardly ever links to any place, I noticed. Bad online etiquette and extremely greedy. (also bad self-esteem, worried someone will leave Wonkette and never go back.)

At first I thought it wasn’t Fair Use, for him to be using all of our cartoons without pay. I changed my mind on that. Even though he doesn’t actually review them, or even mention any of the cartoonists by name (except for me that one time – on purpose, I suspect), he does at least refer to the cartoons.

But then there’s his hotlinking. Yes, illegally. Cartoonists on Slate don’t get paid at all. We get paid only by hits. So because he hotlinks (making Uclick/Slate’s server pay the bill for 15,000 looks at each cartoon), we don’t get paid a penny for all those views. Wonkette uses the Uclick servers, and doesn’t give us one gold-darned penny for the creators or eyeballs for advertising.

The Comics Curmudgeon did agree to stop using my cartoons, at my request. A small example of grace from a low-class thieving company.

You can also view this cartoon on Yahoo or read comments on Gocomics.

Oh, and Dooce? I hate that blog, don’t you? I think she got pregnant again just for the hits – have no idea if she ever birthed it. As soon as I read her introduction of herself  – “I’m always constipated” – I knew we would never be friends. And she used to live near me, too!

Captions for blind Google: Gizmodo Nerd:“Yeah, I bought stolen merchandise, and sold trade secrets. So?” Lawyer:“Your honor, my client was practicing his religion – worship of iPhones.” JUDGE: “GUILTY!!! I sentence you to unusual punishment online, reading only Dooce!”

More cartoons:

1. Editorial cartoons for LA Times, April 2010.
2. Funniest dog video of 2011!