8.09.2007

Stark Lane of Dutiful Bounties





That day has arrived. Starting right now, you can click on over to the FreeDarko Imperial Market and pre-order two of those SI-inspired shirts we promised. They should be ready shortly, we are printing more than ten of each, and the finished product will have "FreeDarko" emblazoned on the sleeve for branding purposes. But for now, you can be the first on your block to say you copped one. Cost is $25 plus shipping, and they're on American Apparel. The Recluse is en route to a wedding and I've had to put them up myself, so apologies for anything that seems horribly awry. And by all means email us with any questions or concerns.

Two other shirt bits of note:

-If you gave $30 or more to the pledge drive, you're getting one of these for free. We know who you are and will be in touch soon. This stealth offer is officially over.

-SWAG shirts at a cut rate to celebrate our low sales on them. They're now $10 each, and something tells me Arenas isn't quite done with that concept yet.

Also, I'm working on some heady posts for next week. Seriously, once I have my own apartment I am going to grind like no one's business.

35 Comments:

At 8/09/2007 5:21 PM, Blogger badly drawn boykins said...

Humble request to the purveyors of FreeDarkoness - this post seriously needs to be a series of t-shirts.

WV: lvczev = Lazy Vince Carter, Zeke envies his vagina

 
At 8/09/2007 5:29 PM, Blogger Nate Jones said...

Grind on, my man...grind on...

 
At 8/09/2007 5:44 PM, Blogger Ben Q. Rock said...

I'm almost glad Threadless canceled my order now. I'm tempted to buy the red one.

Boykins -- thanks for linking to that post. Fucking brilliant, that is. If I didn't love my girlfriend so much, the Arenas one would be my wallpaper.

 
At 8/09/2007 5:45 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Other divisions coming, or no?

 
At 8/09/2007 5:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Am I the only one not smart enough to know why the Kings are in the Midwest?

Regardless, these shirts are where it's at. Nice work.

 
At 8/09/2007 5:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Let me rephrase: nice work!

Other divisions coming, or no?

Kansas City Kings.

 
At 8/09/2007 6:19 PM, Blogger Mr. Six said...

If you hadn't made the $1/month suggestion, I would have given more. But I'm buying the Atlantic (or whatever) anyway.

And the lawyer in me has to ask: you guys did your copyright due diligence, yes?

 
At 8/09/2007 6:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr. Six - if they ask you to take em down, you do. Otherwise, fuck it.

 
At 8/09/2007 6:24 PM, Blogger salt_bagel said...

Wait: Cincy Royals moved and became the KC Kings. Which is it?

 
At 8/09/2007 6:28 PM, Blogger Mr. Six said...

I'm not an intellectual property attorney, but I don't know that taking them down upon request limits the potential copyright violation liability.

And the first part of that last post came off sounding petty. Please ignore.

 
At 8/09/2007 7:28 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Unrelated, but:

Shaq, Penny, Wade. Heat: Eastern Champs '08.

 
At 8/09/2007 7:50 PM, Blogger Garrett said...

Glad to see these shirts added. Will you be doing one for the Pacific?

 
At 8/09/2007 7:59 PM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

depending on how these sell, we may do a few more of them, or maybe even all of them. but this is it for the foreseeable future.

i wanted to do the one with the turkey, bullet, and rocket in it, but there's no basketball signifier in so we decided it was a poor first wave option.

 
At 8/09/2007 8:07 PM, Blogger Ben Q. Rock said...

I wish I came up with this first, but the Heat have to be favored to win the East in 1995/1996, right?

 
At 8/09/2007 9:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ben Q. Rock:

Flash would've been 13.. somehow I don't think he'd be quite as spectacular a presence!

 
At 8/09/2007 9:15 PM, Blogger Spencer said...

Mr. Six: I can't speak for the Shoals, et al, but I did my best to track down the artist, John Huehnergarth. He did most of his work in the 50s and 60s and then slowed down, so he may not even be alive. He did some great work for features in the New York Times, TIME magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, among others.

I found a phone number in North Carolina and I'm going to give it a call tomorrow and try to have a conversation with him.

As for SI's feelings on the matter, I'll leave that up to those who know. And following the theme, the Orlando Magic should sue the Heat for plagiarizing the mid 90s.

 
At 8/09/2007 11:44 PM, Blogger Mr. Six said...

PCA:

Cool. As I said, I'm not an intellectual property attorney (I practice in another area), and I know you've got an on-staff Esq., but if I can help, let me know.

 
At 8/10/2007 1:29 AM, Blogger Mr. Six said...

And for you Wire and Corner fans who missed it: Omar and Fran

 
At 8/10/2007 3:20 AM, Blogger Ben Q. Rock said...

Gong: D-Wade at 13 > any two-guard currently on Orlando's roster.

 
At 8/10/2007 10:45 AM, Blogger Loren said...

@Ben Q. Rock

Heat in 1995/1996... Orlando Magic?

I'd say they could win the East.

 
At 8/10/2007 11:18 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

F*ck Dwyane Wade... bring back Nick Anderson. NOW.

 
At 8/10/2007 11:49 AM, Blogger personalmathgenius said...

Fsck Nick Anderson, I'm sure Dennis Scott's not eating anything he can't finish quickly.

 
At 8/10/2007 1:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Darkofan: To Mr.Six; Once you start selling for dollars , as opposed to the creative ("fair use") uses of art work of others in jouranlism , an issue arises.

I am not sure you are helping reaching out for the artist, or his heirs ,if he is deceased and his heirs continued to make commercial use of his work.

(It is possbile that the magazine publisher may hold the rights ot works done by it hirer, the artist. )

It is all de minimus in any event, both in terms of numbers sold , and value , since the Freedarko mark is also marketing the shirts.

A further equitable consideration is that Freedarko is not actually profiting, by all appearances.

It is fund raising, in advancement of a unique sports journalism enterprise that is attempting to perpertuate appreciation, among a relaltively small number of connoisseurs, of such obscuirities such as extinct ABA logos.

A more intriguing issue is the trademark registrablity by Freedarko of the Freedarko trade name , vis a vis , Mr. Darko M.'s rights of publicity regarding his own name.

This question pertains only to mercahndizing ,not to the use of a derivative of his name to identify the electronic journal itself, because parody is fair use of public figures such as NBA players, for non-profit , expression.

Darko has admitted he is aware of the website. He arguably assents to it for percieved advatages of personal publicity and name recognition.

As has been said , Freedarko ought get a percetage of Darko's new contract.



There

 
At 8/10/2007 1:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Those t-shirts are so cool, and I am not a merch-table kid at all. I am going to order one today.

 
At 8/10/2007 2:29 PM, Blogger Spencer said...

I just spoke with the artist and arrangements for proper compensation were made for us to use these images, so buy with confidence.

He did more than 200 projects for SI alone, with less than a week of turnaround time on most of them. It was great to talk to him and he seemed pleased and a bit taken aback that we were so into these illustrations.

Anyway, many thanks to him for the fine work.

 
At 8/10/2007 2:43 PM, Blogger Spencer said...

Also, he mentioned that the freelance contract he worked under with most of his clients released the work back to him immediately after it ran in the magazine or newspaper or whatever. Which seems like a pretty good arrangement for an artist. Could some of you law kids comment on whether that's a common arrangement?

Also, at what point does something like this enter public domain? This was printed in like 1975, if I'm not mistaken (because of the presence of the Baltimore Claws)so this is more than 30 years old.

P.S. I just spent 30 minutes at remembertheaba.com and remembered how much I love that site.

 
At 8/10/2007 3:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Darkofan: Congratulations on reaching an agreement in principal with the artist. If he has a release back from the magazine , Freedarko would not have to deal with the magazine publisher.

The suggestion above, that Freedarko first consider non-infirnging use defenses, rather than immediately negotiate with the artist, after having launched the campaign, was mistaken.

The public domain concept would not applay agaisnt the artist himself who would have the right to reserve other, different uses of any copyrightable creation, i.e , use on t-shirts.

 
At 8/10/2007 4:03 PM, Blogger Mr. Six said...

I don't know that it's common or uncommon for work-for-hire like that to revert to the author after publication. The possibility that SI or its corporate parent still held the copyright was part of my concern, since they seemed less likely to be flexible about the thing.

Works that were copyrighted before 1978 are a little tricky to figure out sometimes. It's possible that the copyright on these illustrations will last for the life of the artist plus 70 years, and it's unlikely that the copyright has expired.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law#Duration_of_copyright

Glad it's all straightened out.

@Darkofan: Unless it's within one of the exceptions (such as fair use), duplication (use of the work) itself is a copyright violation. Use of a copyrighted work for noncommercial or minimally commercial purposes is a factor in determining fair use, but not dispositive. If the use is de minimus or only results in small profits, then the copyright holder might be less interested in pursuing remedies, but when actual damages/lost profits are small, statutory damages are available. As I've said, though, this isn't my area, but those are the reasons that I was concerned.

 
At 8/10/2007 5:04 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Darkofan: Well summarized Mr. Six.( A specialist would have been unable to put it so concisley.)

As said, the good faith, direct negotiations are worth a lot more than my stab at eqitable, fair use defenses.

All this has somnething to do with why we see NBA stars in TV commercials wearing those bad blank shirts that vaguley suggest their team's uniform.

The site will be spared the true story/analogy about Clayton More , the actor who played the Long Ranger, having to go to conventions wearing wrap around sun glasses, rather than the Rangers' mask.

 
At 8/10/2007 5:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I feel a bit anti-FD for requesting it, but I would definitely pay $25+ for a T-shirt with the comic Darko and his various "moods" (e.g. inquistive, amorous).

It may not be phenomenal swag, but I'd wear it.

 
At 8/10/2007 8:04 PM, Blogger Bethlehem Shoals said...

in response to something mr. six said waaaaay up at the top: i don't think i ever meant literally give $1 at the top of each month. that would be tedious and confusing. my thinking was that $12 (which will still get you something we're working on) was equivalent to that. so anyone donating $30 believed in freedarko enough to invest two and a half years into the future.

 
At 8/10/2007 9:44 PM, Blogger Nathaniel Jones said...

You never know what you're going to get with the FD comment section. One day it's copyright law, before that it's HC icons, and before that it's defunct video games.

I just wanted to say how awesome I think that is.

 
At 8/11/2007 2:21 AM, Blogger EL MIZ said...

copyright laws are pretty anti-free darko, however, the fact that they were discussed is free darko.

does that irony make the entire situation free darko or anti-free darko?

justice was served today, eddy curry and antoine walker sleep easily tonight.

 
At 8/11/2007 5:32 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

SWAG on Campus

 
At 8/17/2007 2:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Plsplspls make shirts outta the "style guide" post. I would pay so much fkn money for the Gilbert one.

 

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