Nerditorial: I call Bravo Sierra on Greg Kirsch

Greg Kirsch is a photoshoplifter.

Mr. Kirsch can't present himself as the Last Honest Man In Whatcom County while at the same time committing petty intellectual larceny.

I don't know what his beef is with the McShanes (did they run over this guy's dog or something?) and I've eaten gravy that has a thicker skin. But that's not the real problem here.

Mr. Kirsch seems to have a tenuous grasp, at best, on the concept of fair use.

His posts are accompanied by these lame-ass photoshop jobs that are the artistic equivalent of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. He is the British Petroleum of photographic editing.

It isn't that he's trying to make it look like Pete Kremen and Kelli Linville are shooting the worst Planned Parenthood ad campaign ever... it's that he isn't giving fair credit to the creator of the original photograph before he butchers it.

The whole point of fair use, particularly on the blogosphere, is to allow the limited use of intellectual property to drive home a point. It's alright to make limited use someone else work, or even make derivative use of that work, so long as you do one thing... give the original creator credit for the original work. If you use a source, even an image, you are supposed to cite that source. You should at least be able to clearly tell where the original work came from. That is the essence of fair use.

The McShanes, Mayor Pike, Executive Kremen, Kelli Linville, and the rest of the Whatcom County Democratic Party can defend themselves. The real victims here are the creators of the original artwork and photography that Mr. Kirsch has unfairly vandalized and neglectfully failed to cite properly.

I can sort of deduce some of the original sources of some of these acts of digital vandalism. But many of them could be mistaken for something that Mr. Kirsch created entirely himself.

Take for example this cartoon of Sam Crawford. Those colors really make his eyes pop, don't they? Very flattering.

But the problem here is that Mr. Kirsch didn't use a royalty free piece of clip art. He used an editorial cartoon that was making fun of Al Gore. I'm going to jump out on a limb and guess that this cartoon is not yet in the public domain, since it isn't old enough. Is there any way a person could expect to know this just from reading Mr. Kirsch's blog post? I stumbled onto this factoid by sheer chance. He even cropped out the signature of the original cartoonist. Nice brushwork there, Rembrandt.

Also, Mr. Kirsch pilfered my "zombie" narrative. (examples of my narrative include this... and this... and this.) And worst of all, he forgot the funny. He made two weak references to zombies and then just slapped together some photoslop of the McShanes as zombies... except they don't look like zombies. They look like they are being given a field sobriety test after leaving what must have been a really bitchin' kegger, and that Dan needs some eyedrops real bad. Has Greg Kirsch ever even seen a zombie movie?

Then there is this image that is supposed to represent Pete Kremen. What is he supposed to be doing... stealing Lake Whatcom? In a gunny sack? That doesn't even make sense as a political metaphor. There isn't even water dripping from the bag or anything.

Here's a little artwork for you Mr. Kirsch...

I didn't retouch it. I got it off the internet. That's fair use.

Try it sometime.

Oh, and one more thing, the truth is an absolute defense against libel and slander... so don't even go there, Oliver Wendell Homeslice.