Todd Goldman, Plagiarism, and the Creative Commons

Mark Frauendfelder at Boing Boing has written a series of posts about artist Todd Goldman, who is attracting a lot of attention for very strong resemblances between his cartoony work and the work of many other people.

A preponderance of evidence exists that demonstrates quite how much Todd Goldman has copied other people's work. Frauenfelder links to a page that provides a compellingly comprehensive set of side-by-side samples of Goldman's work and purported originals. Frauendfelder points out where the assembled multitudes of Boing Boing's readers have found one design of Goldman's that has features recognizably taken from three different sources.

Goldman is purportedly responding to the charges of plagiarism by threatening to sue the people making the charges and publishing the evidence. He gives every indication of being a major-league asshole whose shield of deniability cannot withstand the blows of fact raining down upon him.

The evidence I have seen is crystal-clear: by my basic standards of artistic integrity, Todd Goldman is a plagiarist.

Nonetheless, this is a strange bandwagon for Boing Boing, the champion for digital freedom and against copy protection, for file-sharing and against the RIAA, for the creative commons and against a draconian intellectual-property
police state.

These are interesting times. The meaning of intellectual property is changing in ways that are not easy to comprehend. For example, one of the difficulties that white American sensibility has in accepting hip-hop music and culture is the vital role that sampling plays in the making of hip-hop music. Hip-hop depends on the evocation of the familiar to create the new. To the pre-digital sensibility, though, hip-hop sampling is theft, unless the artist goes through an elaborate procedure of securing and paying for permissions for the samples used.

My basic standards of artistic integrity are not well-suited to cope with Jonathan Lethem's essay collage, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." The essay is by construction not just an act of theft, but a compilation of many acts of theft. Aside from the obvious fact that Lethem's work is an assembly of words and Goldman's is of drawings, what distinguishes Lethem's thefts from Goldman's?

I consider Lethem's essay a masterpiece in its own right. Goldman's work is shoddy. Nonetheless, the litmus-test of acceptability of artistic theft cannot be the skill with which the theft is executed.

Lethem acknowledges his sources, is completely forthright about what he has done -- which is the point. Lethem says that all art is to some degree plagiarism, that art cannot be made without plagiarism, that the draconian intellectual-property police state is by its nature anti-creative.

How can we reconcile our admiration and approval of Jonathan Lethem with our contempt and vituperation of Todd Goldman?

Is it that Lethem is a nice guy and Goldman is an asshole? But many artists are assholes, including some great ones.

Lethem is (as far as I know) honest, and Goldman is giving all the appearance of being a liar, trying to cover his tracks, trying to suppress the knowledge that his work is largely copies of the work of others.

All art comes from other art. Imitation is a part of art, and so is outright copying, sampling, parodying, paying homage, quoting, evoking, alluding, et cetera. The ethical plagiarist cops to it immediately: Yes, I did copy that. Look at the new ways I am using it! And even: Yes, this is stolen, but look what I stole this from — I think it is wonderful and deserves your attention.

Todd Goldman does none of this. Goldman's plagiarism falls outside its purview. of ethical plagiarism.