The Rise Of The Clipart Trolls

from the the-fun-of-copyright-law dept

There are so-called patent trolls, abusing patent law to basically force others to pay them cash for no good reason. And there are "sample trolls" who have abused copyright law to get musicians to pay them money (often despite the fact that the "trolls" probably really don't even own the copyrights in question, and the use is almost certainly "fair use" anyway). And... now... we can add to the list the "clipart troll." Slashdot has a post detailing the apparent campaign of one George Riddick, who apparently claims to hold the copyright on tons of common clipart, and is trying to use the recently enacted ProIP law to basically threaten tons of sites, who often were using clipart that they had licensed. Riddick may, in fact, own the copyright on some of these images, but rather than try to build an actual business around them, he seems to have focused solely on blaming others for his own failure to craft a reasonable business model -- and now it's moved on to suing others as well.

Filed Under: clipart, copyright, george riddick, trolls