SOPA and PIPA

Notice that I didn’t reblog the image but instead linked back to the political cartoonist Daryl Cagle’s blog. I’m not making a statement here, I came close to reflagging the image with proper permission and attribution of course, but, I want Cagle to get the traffic, he’s the artist so best to just put in a link. It’s a great cartoon as you’ll see if you follow the link.

I saw this cartoon on the site Political Irony where the site’s author discusses his own reposting of the cartoon and goes on to discuss the difference between copyright infringement and stealing (they’re different).

My question is different and I posted it as a comment on Political Irony:

An interesting question is whether revenue generated by advertising at a site that has permission to reuse material ought to be shared with content providers, many of whom are traditional “analog” artists who may not know a referrer log from a lincoln log.

And, I think those of us who are consumers of reflagged content have an obligation to follow links when interested so that the content provider gets some traffic (and maybe a comment) too. Most of these folks draw these cartoons for their day jobs and while they may make money from newspaper syndication, as we all know, that medium of exchange is in trouble.