David Scheve Caricature Contest
David Scheve’s lawyers at The Deep Archives sent us a DMCA takedown notice today demanding our webhost Webintellects remove the photo of him. The letter from his lawyers has been reprinted on the original post. (If you can help us out legally with the DMCA counter-notice, please contact us). In the comments of that post, director and story artist John Sanford recommended that we hold a caricature contest. Now, with the prospect of having to replace the picture of him with something else, we actually have a valid reason to do this.
So here’s the deal. Everybody is invited to draw their interpretation of David Scheve. Links to the images can be emailed to me here. Deadline is the end of Monday, February 15. I’ll choose an image that I like and send the winner a signed copy of one of my books (your choice): Cartoon Modern, The Art of Pixar Short Films or A Sketchy Past: The Art of Peter de Seve.
UPDATE: I’ve looked through all the entries and chosen David de Rooij from The Netherlands as the winner of the David Scheve Caricature Contest. There were a bunch more terrific entries and I’d love to share them, but I’ve decided to be nice and give David Scheve another chance to prove himself as a decent guy.
Following his falsely filed DMCA notice of copyright infringement, Cartoon Brew filed a counter-notification. For now, the photo of him can remain on this site. Should he choose to pursue further frivolous legal action forcing us to remove the photo, then I will have no choice but to replace his photo with David de Rooij’s drawing and share all of the other entries.
However, I’m hoping that he’s had a chance to study up on fair use laws and recognize that Cartoon Brew is fully within its legal rights to use his photo. Fair use “allows for limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.” The ball is in his court now. If he’s willing to be an adult about the situation, so am I.