There are many cases out there I could cite for that proposition, but I'm going to indulge in bias and cite the opinion written by the late United States District Judge Richard A. But to the extent sites are posting her cartoons in order to criticize them - for instance, by posting that cartoon to argue that it's an example of bad cartooning or racism - then that's almost certainly fair use. Now, each alleged violation would have to be viewed in its particular context. She's very, very wrong.įirst, she's wrong about copyright violations. But on the law, Donna Barstow is not right. That's obnoxious, juvenile, contemptible, and utterly predictable if you launch a broadside against a site like Something Awful.īut what about her legal claims? Barstow is right that Something Awful forum goons accused her of racism - largely on the strength of cartoons like this:ĭonna Barstow may be right that this cartoon is not racist. Also, pardon me for not being able to follow what she's saying in that last tweet about "targeting someone's political group."īarstow soon found herself the target of insults, abuse, and - she claims - tweeted or emailed obscene images. Pardon me for not linking to specific tweets on her Twitter account, but she blocked me as soon as I asked the defamation question. The steely dignity of her righteousness was perhaps diminished, just a little bit, by their Twitter handles:īarstow went on to accuse Something Awful of copyright violations and "defamation," scorning the idea that posting her comics in a thread criticizing bad comics constituted fair use. She began to lash out at Something Awful writers on Twitter. Barstow's complaint is that Something Awful forum goons posted and criticized her cartoons in a forum thread about bad cartoons. To be fair to her, it's not like she lashed out at 4chan or something, but that seems to be her pure dumb luck. This time, Barstow has turned her attention on a less compliant target - the denziens of the website Something Awful. Pandagon, Volcanista, The Faithful Penguin, Kick and Radgeek all accused Barstow of racism over the same strip-and all were sent takedown demands. Renee Martin of Womanist Musing, who criticized the "Mexico" strip reproduced above and described Barstow as a "racist pearl clutcher", removed it at her request the same year. In 2009, she emailed the ISP of Alas, a Blog in an effort to have two posts accusing her of racism (1, 2) taken down. It's not the first time Barstow has threatened critics who reproduce her single-panel cartoons. As Beschizza says (with supporting links in his post): Given her level of nuance, this is roughly akin to providing a listening guide to musak.īarstow also has a history of drawing cartoons that elicit criticism, and then of threatening bloggers who post those cartoons as part of a fair use critique. Barstow is a blogger (sort of), an author (technically), and, to my taste, an appallingly awful political cartoonist, gripped by some terrible compulsion to explain her cartoons in a caption when she posts them. I learned about political cartoonist Donna Barstow from Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. Donna Barstow apparently didn't know this before, but she's finding out. You should never get in a shit-throwing contest with a flock of flying monkeys.
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