Serious situation
A cartoon that was recently published and poignantly pays tribute to the Humboldt Broncos was found to be depicted on a T-shirt without permission.
Bruce Mackinnon was pleased with how the country had responded to the compelling cartoon he drew in response to the Humboldt tragedy, until he was alerted to the $42.63 T-shirt.
The Herald cartoonist was directed to a website with his work for sale. Except, someone had simply stolen his art, which had appeared in The Chronicle Herald last week, and plastered an enlarged version of it across the front of a plain white T-shirt.
As of Monday evening, the Tshirt was still available on Redbubble.com, which allows users to upload their own designs and pays them a portion of the profits.
“They’re profiting off this tragedy in a really crass way,” said Mackinnon.
“You see examples of cartoons being illegally reproduced, copyright breaches on a daily basis and it’s unfortunate. It’s difficult to police but it’s very difficult to stay silent about this one. It’s such a major breach like this when people are trying to make money off of a tragedy of this magnitude.”
A fan of the cartoon living in Saskatchewan directed Mackinnon to the website over the weekend. The Chronicle Herald has written the company instructing that the item is in breach of copyright laws and that it be removed from the website.
The newspaper contacted the website seeking comment but did not receive a response.
“My first reaction was maybe the only power we have is to embarrass these people,” said the longtime Herald cartoonist.
“I liken it to someone pretending to have cancer and raising money for themselves. That rightfully gets people very ticked off, for these guys to be out there stealing copyright material is hard to take. The Herald is selling prints of the cartoon and the pro- ceeds are going to the Humboldt fundraising campaign. It’s very frustrating to see people stealing our content from right underneath your nose.”
Officials with the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team, which lost 16 players and staff in a horrific bus crash earlier this month, were expected to release details Monday on how they plan to use the nearly $12 million raised through crowdfunding.
Mackinnon joins a chorus of people concerned about the sale of unauthorized merchandise that uses the team’s name, logo, or the slogan “Humboldt Strong” without donating any of the funds to the victims or their families.
Other websites like Teepublic and Teezily, which also allow users to upload their own work, similarly offer many Humboldt Broncos products, most of which don’t mention a donation, although some products do link to the Gofundme page.
It’s common for people to want to buy items that will allow them to show their support after a tragic event, says Timothy Dewhirst, a marketing and consumer studies professor at the University of Guelph.
“There’s often, after a tragedy like this, different displays of sup- port and solidarity that we might see,” he said.
“We’ve seen a lot of people displaying green ribbons and displaying hockey sticks at their front door.”
But the potential problem with unauthorized merchandise is that consumers may assume that any sale connected to an event like the bus crash includes a donation, when not all of them do.
This isn’t first time Redbubble, which is based in Australia, has been confronted with a copyright dispute.
Last December, Pokemon Company International won a copyright infringement suit against the company after Redbubble was found to have illegally reproduced thousands of characters from the game and included them on items available for sale on the website.
The website instructs its users to ensure the artwork submitted is their own or that they have been granted permission from copyright owners, but it appears not to have a system in place that prevents illegally reproduced work from being sold on the site. It states that items would be removed after a valid copyright complaint is received by the company.