Intellectual Property Law

Get Your War On, Cartoonists

By Posted by Alan Wexelblat

A friend of mine blogged about a talk by David Wallis, whose book "Killed Cartoon" catalogs political cartoons and photographs that have been killed by newspaper and other print publication editors because of being anti-war.

The logical question, not answered by Mr. Wallis, is why not take this material on line? For me the definitive online anti-war cartoon was always "Get Your War On" which never pulled any punches. On the other hand, it never made any money that I'm aware of - according to Wikipedia, the print book version's royalties were donated to landmine clearing organizations.

Could it just be that there's no established revenue model for taking independent cartoon work online and getting paid for it? I certainly read a lot of Web comics but beyond the occasional Paypal or donation drive by the cartoonist I don't pay for any of them. Like e-zines, about which I blogged earlier this month, online comics have been around for enough years that one would expect a reasonable set of business models to have emerged.

What's holding things back?

Full post as published by Copyfight - The Politics of IP on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).