Wired Theft Page

Go to your library, or hang out in the bookstore espresso bar, and take a look at the latest Wired magazine. (3.03, March 1995) On the lower right corner of page 156, there's a reproduction of an image of mine, in collaboration with Harlan Wallach. Next to it on p. 157 are a couple of images by my net-buddies Harlan and Brett Wagner, which include some of my work. That's pretty cool, to see my stuff in a trendy mag, but they sort of neglected to ask permission or to give credit. In technical jargon, this is known as "theft." [They gave credit two months later. See below. -- 4/20/95]

I used someone else's images in creating mine, and others used mine in turn. You can see it happen, across the bottom of pages 156 and 157, or here. But I, and they, had permission to do it. That's how the PANIC project works. It doesn't seem the same, though, when a rich, glossy advertising vehicle like Wired just takes our work, without asking.

But what do you think? Please write to me at ranjit@gradient.cis.upenn.edu and I'll make a page for your responses. Include your email address and home page, or let me know if you don't want them revealed here.
Image by Ed Stastny

Credit

In their current issue (3.05, May 1995), Wired has given credit for the "borrowed" images. I'm sure they won't mind if I reproduce this paragraph from page 199:

Wipeout!

We unfortunately neglected to credit a few digital artistes extraordinaires in our March issue (pages 156 and 157). From left to right, the first two images were created by Brett Wagner, the third image by Ranjit Bhatnagar, and the fourth by Harlan Wallach. To get to their site (Arthole), travel to http://www.mcs.net/~wallach/paris/panic1.html. Great work, guys!

• I don't think that the credits are quite accurate about who is most responsible for each image, but suffice it to say that all of us contributed to each of the images. The basic images of the Eiffel Tower and the skulls from the catacombs of Paris were from pinhole photographs by Harlan. The sign (ARRÊTE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT!) is from my own photograph of the entrance to the catacombs, and the snails are from my photographs of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The third image has some of my contributions ("l'aurore de Paris" and the wavy lines around the edges), but I wasn't the last person to mess with it. Now that I've looked at it more closely, I think that the final person to mess with each of the images was, from left to right, Ranjit, Brett, Harlan, Harlan.
• Arthole is Harlan Wallach's own web space. You can visit it at http://www.mcs.net/~wallach/arthole.html or, better, http://arthole.com/.
• I do wish, too, that Wired had mentioned OTIS, the force behind these collaborations.

Non-update

A Thought on Wired's Cover Photos

White Intelligent Rich Educated Dudes

Feedback

Jed Hartman, December 2, 1997:

Another reason to dislike Wired:

http://www.thuntek.net/~walter/war.htm

(In which Walter Jon Williams, author of _Hardwired_, describes _Wired_ magazine's attempt to prevent him from using the title of a book he wrote before the magazine existed.)

mnagy (mnagy@ShellUS.com) Thu, 4 Jan 1996 15:50:

the trail's a bit cold, but so it goes...I stopped getting WIRED(tm)(r)(c)(?) after my initial sub ran out, because as so many have said, "they had such promise."(c)(?)...Yes they should give you PROPER recognition...No, I doubt they will...Yes, they are corporate shitbags dragging on the heels of that which we call "The Bleeding Edge". They don't know fuck-all about puiblishing a quality magazine. If they did, it wouldn't make my head hurt trying to read it.

In short, your going to have to do what the rest of us in the "Art-because-we-like-doing-it-and-stand- damn-little-chance-of-getting-to-do-it-for-a-living" catagory. That is, be secure in the fact that what your is good and just, and know that karma is a motherfucker. Sometimes it takes a little time...

Susan Druding (drudings@delphi.com) Mon, 9 Oct 1995 02:18:

It just hit me when I got the "special issue" last week that there are very, very, very few women in WIRED - barely a nod. So, yes you are right - White Males. (and with a woman as a partner-owner she should be ashamed!
Susan (in Berkeley)

Paul Reiber (reiber@netaxis.com) Tue, 18 Jul 1995 23:47:

The credits you eventually received from wIrEd don't in any way end their obligation to you. They published copyrighted works which they didn't have permission to use. I'd hit them for $25,000 PER PICTURE if I were you. I mean, these pictures were manipulated with expensive computing equipment, and that cost has to be defrayed somehow, right? I agree with Scott Boyd - way down at the bottom of this list of responses - "Stick it to 'em!"

You'll not be doing any damage to our current "freedom of information" situation - personal and private viewing of an image or other information is one thing, while reproducing it in a for-profit publication is quite another.

Grim (mtortore@carleton.edu) Fri, 2 Jun 1995 12:43:

1. The usual apologies and disclaimers apply: I'm a ham head with half-baked ideas and less cooked subject expertise. But, this seems to be something of a lovefest at Wired's expense (although with their ad revenues they can damn well afford it...as they could have afforded to slip you a few ten spots for your effort)... so, as R. Schroeder would say: here's one to grow on...
2. How do we want it when it comes to intellectual property? I remember cheering from the sidelines when De La Soul went to war against the Turtles back when Yo MTV Raps thrilled me dizzy. I held pom poms for Kathy Acker when she sliced and diced some cauliflower-faced British square, incorporating his words into her own. And, let's be honest, the artistic thrill of rap dissipated as soon as the credits started appearing next to the interminable littany of thank you's, when US3 were officially appointed graverobbers of the Blue Note catalogue...etc...I'm talking about that feeling we once had, that rap artists were at the cutting edge of what (gag) post modernism was about..., gone now, gone.
3. And I didn't hear anyone standing up for U2 or Island Records (or Casey "Fuck 'em" Casem, for that matter,) when Negativeland skewered them (and sunk SST for good).
4. Do I support bombing/tagging bill boards, fighting the corporate leviathan when it rears its ugly head on our streets, our municipal buses, etc.--absolutely. We call that subversion, or some such word.
5. What I'm trying to get at--obviously the long and obtuse way--is this: The middle ground of intellectual property apporpriation is an unstable place to live. If you support a war against corporate profiteering and corporate protected property, it follows that you lose rights to profit off your own ideas. I see no way around this. I create product too, and, while I dig zine culture and guerilla art tactics, I also dig receiving real money for it. And I do. Which puts me on the center of that see saw too, trying to conjure a theorem by which I can savage capitalistic mind-theft/mind control, and still find a justification for getting good and righteous when my work appears on a Coca Cola can. What gives?
6. You raise some provocative issues in this forum, and while people seem happy to chip away at Wired (and why not?), the debate here is sort of a surface tap-dance over the future of books & disco tunes & flicks...and all that stuff that should be debated before ATT has formulated some "working paper" that will be written, by lobbbyists of course, as law itself under the new National Socialist Party Phil Graham/Tim McVeigh ticket in January '97.
7. Any answers ('cause I'm intellectually bankrupt)...

Thanks a lot for your feedback. You raised a lot of good points there, which I don't have time to think about right now (leaving on vacation in a few hours!).

But what strikes me is that just about all your concrete examples, examples where "we" all cheer the copyright choppers, are instances of the underdog taking a tiny bite out of the big cheese. (Gads, my metaphors are getting foul indeed.) It's harder to cheer for a big profitable mag grabbing random intellectual property to decorate their already cluttered pages.

You're right, there's something going on here about the future of books & tunes & intellectual property. But, frankly, what bugged me most about Wired, and I've tried to express that here, is that they just got bad manners. Hey Jane, Louis! Didn't your mommies tell you: Ask permission! Say please! Say thankyou!

-ranjit

Miles O'Neal (meo@rru.com) Wed, 24 May 1995 16:14:

Like much of the Internet, Wired held a lot of promise, and failed to deliver. Sad, but not unusual or unforgivable. Also, unfortunately, like a non-trivial section of the net, they seem to live by the dictum:

"Information wants to be free!"

Barring discovery of something hitherto generally unknown in an AI lab, information doesn't "want" anything. And even if it did want to be free, it would still be bound by the laws that govern intercourse betwen individuals, companies and governments, or face the consequences.

Perhaps we need an analogue of the EFF to protect the rights of artists on the net, complete with a watchdog group, etc. Hopefully not. On the other hand, it may be time for a class action suit, if you can scare up enough other people who have been ripped off. It would help a great deal if Wired were shredded by their subscriber base: "Straighten up or we drop our subs and go back to the net."

Which, despite the net's faults, isn't a bad idea anyway.

Michael Flinn (aa379@freenet.buffalo.edu) Sat, 20 May 1995 17:50:

Very interesting issue. I noticed many folks had much to say. I think: sue 'em. They stole from yo oughta be nailed for it. Otherwise they'll keep doing it.

John Callender (jbc@oimage.com) Sat, 20 May 1995 10:48:

It's true: They suck.

But it's compelling suckage, sometimes, which makes it hard to dismiss them out of hand.

When you get right down to it, though, their attitude seriously turns me off. "Amaze us!" Thbbt!

Matthew J Brown (mjb@sophos.com) Thu, 11 May 95 10:13:

WIRED: greedy unscrupulous bastards.

'cept I figure you already know that, so this wasn't the point of this mail -- rather, it was to congratulate you on just about the best use of background pixmaps I've yet seen. It's almost the only one I've seen that actually *adds* to the page, rather than being neutral or (mostly) making it worse -- "Hey look! I'm not only a loser, I'M A LOSER WITH NETSCAPE 1.1!!! YEAH!"

With respect,

-Matt

mykle (mykle@whim.com) Thu, 4 May 1995 18:47:

I struggle with this issue myself. really, it seems to me that all the media ever does is make money by discovering the interesting activities and endeavors of others, stripping them of context, and turning them into intellectual bait, luring us into advertising consumption. WIRED has done well for themselves by re-printing the works of internet artists and writers without credit, but they're not alone. most of the high-end glossies and quite a few local dalies and weeklies will reprint circulating bits of humor or other "tidbits" in the general belief that they are written by some anonymous person who doesn't want money for their work, or else they wouldn't have typed it in. i don't have to explain all of the false assumptions there.

but there was once this belief that the internet was free -- that the costs of maintaining it would continue to be provided out of the NSF's modest federal budget, and that schools would provide it to their students and to the rest of the community. a lot of artists and writers were attracted to the idea of a huge audience that didn't commoditize their work. now their work is "content." yours is, OTIS's is, etc. AOL makes money because *you* make the internet interesting. WIRED makes money because you and I write for them. so maybe we never asked to be paid ... surely we never gave permission to be strip-mined for hip.

if i were you, i would start using the accounting mechanisms of the HTTPD to make a log of the number of connections you get per month from AOL, from CompuServe, and from any other large for-profit net enterprise. do it for your own pages, for the OTIS pages, etc. and then provide some info to AOL about how much money you help them make, and ask them to give it to you. meanwhile, definitely find out WIRED's illustration rates and send them an invoice.

perhaps it's time for a General Web Strike. or at least a Union of Independent Content Providers, so that as a group we could demand our share of the money that WIRED, AOL, CompuServe, and various media monopolies are making off of us.

i used to think that this was all a game of recognition, of mutual flatter if you will. if i am a good writer, people will appreciate me and listen to my opinions, and i will make friends and improve my life, and the lives of others, and we can move closer to a perfect state. but now i realize that the relationship between the medium and the message has become an owner-slave relationship. as long as nobody else profits from my work, i don't mind letting it exist in a gentle world of floating ideas. but our work has become commoditized, and only by winning control of the profit can we take back the context that gives our work meaning.

geez, do i sound like marx 101 or what? but it's all true ... the more i think about it, the more it seems right. anyway, spread the word.

Hugh Stegman (driver8@netcom.com) Sat Apr 29 19:17:

Wired sux.

They had promise, but it went nowhere. It's the same old same old. I got their author's guidelines a while back. They made it clear that they didn't want anything by the likes of me. I didn't properly interface the Pepsi Generation, or something.

It's just business as usual, so I'm not surprised they didn't bother to credit your images.

Karen Whitehouse (kwhiteho@computer.org) Mon Apr 17 12:37:

As a magazine editor, I can't understand how the Wired staff gets away with this crap. Being pressed for time is the only thing I can think of, and that's a lousy excuse for the size staff Wired has. I work on a bimonthly with a staff of three, and though we get pretty desperate near deadline, plagiarism is not an option. Here's an example: In two weeks, I had to research and write 2-3 pages' worth of Shoemaker-Levy material. I cruised the Web, found some images, and *contacted the page administrator* to ask about reproduction rights. Then to do the story itself, I sent out a mass mailing to the various e-mail addresses I found on comet-related pages and ftp documents asking for help in putting my story together. I credited the images, quotes, and *ideas* in the final story, just as I learned to do in junior high school reports. Anything I couldn't get permission for in time, I cut.

But I ramble. The only reasons for Wired's actions seem to be a basic disrespect for both artists' rights and journalistic ethics. Now that you've asked them nicely to give you credit and they've ignored you, I would get a lawyer to send Wired a slightly more pointed follow-up letter. Good luck taking on The Man!

-Karen

I must clarify: they have not refused to give credit for the work. They apparently plan to credit it in the May issue of Wired. (They have done so.) However, I only learned this second-hand and through snide, off-the-record email from low-ranking Wired employees. I still haven't received an official response to the letter below, though it's been over 6 weeks as of today (April 17). -- Ranjit

Lile Elam Sun, 16 Apr 1995 04:02:

Hi Ranjit,

I think what WiReD did was not right and I think its great that you are asking people to express their opinions about what happened.

I myself just recently was surfing Sun's web site and to my surprise found them using some of my art on their web site without my knowledge. Even though I consider my art to be share art, I request that if poeple want to use it for commercial reasons, they contact me first.

I sent the webmasters at Sun a letter letting them know that what they did was not right and that if they would only credit the artist (myself) on their site by my painting, I would be happy. Apparently the images of my painting had already been up on their pages since Nov. 94. I don't surf their site that often... :)

Instead they deleted the art and days later sent me mail saying that they didn't realize there was a ownership issue with the art so they deleted it.

I think it's unfortunate that people feel that they can't give the original artist credit for their work no matter what their financial status is. The best way to educate such places/people as Sun and WiReD is to contact them when they cross our boundaries. Let them know that we are aware of what's right and expect our art and ourselves to be treated that way.

hugs,

-lile

AjD Thu, 13 Apr 1995 20:03:

i've noticed that wired exerts less effort to attribute incidental material than they used to. it's populated with net.quotes and soundbites that the magazine ascribes to 'anonymous'. while there is a great deal of circulation of work on the net, and much of it gets misattributed or anonymized, there is usually a means for people to respond or reclaim attribution; on the net, there is no hierarchy of status, and everybody can have their say and be heard by (potentially) the same number of people. in a magazine, the editors (and sometimes the advertisers) get to choose who gets heard and who doesn't, who are granted authorship and remuneration and who don't.

ascribing a quote, whether it's text or graphic, to 'anonymous' indicates that wired, which supposedly is hip to the net and supposedly is savvy enough to know how to track down sources, isn't even trying -- especially in the case of your graphic, whose creators could have been found with a question or two in the right place. or of 'anonymous' text the magazine claims to have spotted in a specific newsgroup, where authorship is explicitly ascribed.

if the magazine is going to promote itself as serving as the liaison between the still-mysterious and difficult-to-enter world of computers and the greater public, it has to have some measure of ethics instituted to ensure that those who contribute, knowingly or not, have fair attribution.

in short, you got screwed for sure.

AjD

Peter Fagan Tue Apr 11 21:39:

When Peter Gabriel (i hate peter gabriel) hears about piracy of his albums in the pacific rim, he just goes there and holds a concert.

I assume this page is your *own* method of getting the retribution you feel you deserve.

Rock on.

- Pierre des Theta-G

Jed Hartman Mon, 10 Apr 1995 22:51:

I was under the impression that Wired has always appropriated articles and items from the Net without permission. In fact, I had understood that to be the mainstay of the publication. Doesn't make it excusable, but I gather they've been doing essentially the same thing (usually with text) for years...

In case you haven't seen it, there's a brilliant, vicious article by someone named Keith White circulating on the Net. (I suspect the article was reproduced without permission; if anyone can tell me how to contact Mr. White for permission to redistribute I'd be most grateful. This appeared originally in The Baffler number 6, whatever that is.)

In describing a meeting with John Plunkett, White says, "Plunkett [...] divulged such secrets as why the first four pages of each edition are filled by extending a drop quote across computer generated art ('We originally did it to fill up some space'), along with the reason that so many of the magazine's articles are hard to read ('I sometimes have to sacrifice readability when I'm pushing the edge of the envelope on design')."

He later quotes the magazine itself: "We might think of life in cyberspace shaping up exactly as Thomas Jefferson would have wanted it: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and a commitment to pluralism, diversity and community." Uh-huh. And to stealing whatever's not locked down, too, it seems.

--jed

Gregory Cranz (gcranz@cmp.com) Mon, 10 Apr 1995:

It would appear that WIRED has, indeed, used your artwork without permission. Is it possible that 1 of their artists might have mis-represented themselves & claimed 2 have produced that material, all the while knowing that it was appropriated material, & not having the foresight 2 consider that U might actually READ this magazine?

I don't think this is the case. It appears that someone took the work off the net without thinking about the consequences, but they didn't attempt to pass it off as their own work. -- Ranjit

I'm not saying that this is the actual story, but hypothetically how would that change the legality of the situation?

It's enitrely possible that person has already lost their job.

On the other hand... That might not B the case at all.

Either way, it seems rather crass of them 2 ignore UR requests 4 a proper Xplanation. If I were in UR position, I would give them enough rope 2 hang themselves with. U have already given them a public 4um 2 use 2 publically apologize (which is by no means proper retribution), I assume that U have sent them the URL 2 this page. & yet, still no response? This seems as though U have been MORE THAN REASONABLE. I'd have 2 agree w/Scott Boyd. If they don't respond 2 UR satisfaction, within a reasonable time period... SUE THE BASTARDS.

As 4 my thoughts on the publication...

I find this entire episode shocking. I have been in the industry 4 over 18 years now & I no longer read the trades. WIRED was my last refuge 4 what I consider insightful writing concerning technology. It seemed 2 me that all of the other publications out there had fallen in2 2 categories: Parts catalog & hype machine... No insight. WIRED @ least was looking @ the SOCIAL ramifications of technology... But MAB their cyberpunk facade has gotten the best of them & their "true" pirate nature is shining through. I find that I'm attracted 2 their publication 4 that very reason, but if this is the price 2 pay (as I can sympathize, Bing a digital media artist/engineer myself) then the price is 2 high!

Smarasderagd Tue Mar 28 22:44:

They're lame. It's not too surprising, though. Any magazine tha prints an article on digital publishing imaging making casual reference to 'appropriation' of images from other sources is going to be pretty casual itself.

Actually, I'm not sure if the article I'm remembering was in Wired or Mondo 2000, but Wired's ineptitude and lack of respect don't surprise me in any case. This certainly fits the decontruction of Wired I read a few weeks ago, where it was pointed out that its target market is "...a paritcularly unscrupulous type of executive."

julie robichaux Wed Mar 22 14:53:

you'd think that with a subscription price of $40 a year, they could fund a simple phone call. i imagine miss manners frothing with rage, baring her wolverine-sharp teeth in a grimace, charging the offices of the photo editor at _wired_, demanding satisfaction. how flippin' rude can one slightly pretentious, self-conscious cyber-rag get?

Heather Champ 16 Mar 1995 10:29:

I am quite horrified by the Wired Theft. Just seems to confirm a feeling that I've had there are two sets of rules... one for "them" and another for the rest of "us".... I quite agree that they would go after anyone (and they have) that has done or would do something like this. It's an interesting issue that will somehow have to be resolved as the web grows and changes... hmmm...

Jesse Reynolds Thu, 16 Mar 1995 05:55:

Hi there Ranjit. Hey, nice use of backgrounds!

I can totally understand your annoyance, and your excitement. I think it is just bloody slack of wired not to contact the artists who constructed the works they printed. It is a lack of respect, I think. Reading wired recently gives me the feeling that they are trying to become far too commercially viable, to put it one way. Like the fetish pages these days, is that just 8 pages of probably very expensive advertising or what? I mean, cool products and all, but how much do they get for putting them in? Makes me more than a little sick, actually. I do read wired, though, and I do really like alot of the articles, so I'm not totally down on them.

I think we have to accept that when we put something on the net it becomes public domain. People will do what ever the fuck they want to do with it, you know. It sux, that there is no guarantee you will even know about it, but in some ways that's quite beautiful. You have to let the artwork go, as an idea or whatever, along it's merry way, and just hope that it provokes some people into thinking a bit. Hmmmm, fairly scatter-brained response, but there you go.

Bye now,

Jesse

I refuse to accept that. The law is very clear on what's public domain and what's not. Obviously, it's nearly impossible to enforce copyright law on the Net, and I really wouldn't mind, in general, if my stuff gets appropriated-- if they'd have the decency to ask first.

You're right, though: there is some good in just letting it go. It ain't easy!

---- Ranjit

Mike Mandel Tue, 14 Mar 1995 15:58:

Listen, the proliferation of imagery on the net makes it a foregone conclusion that this is going to happen. I think everything ought to be free unless it's used for commercial gain. That is the case with the wired theft. So go get 'em. But you're free to steal from me as long as you're putting it up on html! (And vice versa). Best, mikeman@pullman.com

I guess I agree with you, though if somebody wanted my work for noncommercial use, I'd generally want to know what they were going to do with it before I gave permission, and I'd want to be credited, just to satisfy my ego. And it's true that it's hard to control the distribution of stuff that one puts up on the web-- but the fact that it's easy to steal doesn't make it legal, or polite. Wired magazine printed hundreds of thousands of copies of their work, and scattered them all over the world! But if I were to re-use even a little bit of it, they'd be on me like bees on cheesecake.
------Ranjit

Alexandre Muñiz Thu, 9 Mar 95 08:45:49

I agree that what Wired did was unethical. The way it reprints so-called "net.memes," i.e. material that has been copied into someone's usenet sig, and of which Wired is too lazy to bother to track down the original source, is also irresponsible. This theft is especially ironic, considering that they stopped the Singapore group that scanned Wired photos in its unofficial Wired web-site (which was much less exasperating then HotWired, but I digress.)

Scott T. Boyd Sun, 05 Mar 95 00:36:58

Re: Wired ripping you off.

Send 'em a nice little letter which says something like:

Hey, I'm glad you liked my artwork, and have chosen to purchase a one-time, non-exclusive license to reproduce it in your fine publication. Consider this your invoice. If you have already sent your payment, please consider this your receipt.

Amount due: $25,000.

As the Editor of a publication myself, I've avoided printing materials without attribution and/or permission. Some wonderful items floating around the Net would have made excellent material for me to print, but I know the copyright laws well enough to know that my ignorance of the copyright holder's identity provides no refuge should I choose to abscond with their copyright.

Stick it to 'em!

Best regards,
scott t boyd
editor, mactech magazine

Let me know what you think!

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Open Letter to Wired

Dear WIRED,

Imagine my surprise when I turned to pages 156-157 of Wired 3.03 and found, at the bottom, a series of images created by Harlan Wallach, Brett Wagner, and myself. OK, it wasn't actually a surprise, as Mr Wallach was kind enough to alert me. It was certainly unpleasant. None of us gave permission to Wired Magazine to use our work, perhaps because Wired Magazine never thought to ask.

Please describe to me what would happen if, say, NewsWeek were to reprint an article from Wired, without permission, without credit. There would be trouble, yes? Of course, it's always safer to steal from people with a legal budget that's under 5 digits.

Don't get me wrong-- it would give me a thrill to see my work exposed in your magazine, if you were to take into account ordinary rules of politeness, or if not that, then at least Federal law.

Please let me know whether you plan to change your editorial policies in the future, or to try to steal from people who are less likely to notice. Also, please provide proper credit for the images in question. This is not a legal remedy, but it will make us feel better. Since it has been at least two weeks since you were first informed that we knew of your theft, I'm surprised that I haven't been contacted already.

I hope that I, and the OTIS collaboration group which made these images possible, will be able to contribute to Wired under more favorable circumstances in the future. Ed Stastny, founder of OTIS, has already sent you some suggestions in this regard. I'd like to suggest that Wired, some month, offer to OTIS the four pages of "art" that traditionally precede the table of contents. I have no doubt that OTIS could, in a weekend, spew out 187 square inches of interesting imagery over which you can layer your cleverly formatted quotes. Now, that would be fun.