Reading “To Cite or to Steal?…” made me feel frustrated for Kevin Ferguson. The beginning was so exciting, when he said his work was being circulated and he felt like, for a moment, that he had “arrived.” And then to see someone else blatantly stealing his work, and an art gallery that wouldn’t accept what was going on, was just the worst. I know I would’ve done the same thing he did in that situation and written to the art gallery. He says he was naïve to expect a response and embarrassed by what he did to try to rectify it, but I’m glad he gave it a shot.

Unfortunately, it gave me a bad impression about the Cob Gallery (which I’ve never been to, so this was my first impression of them) and I was left with the thought, “They did it for the money.” Isn’t that what most people are in it for today, the money? (Even my sweet husband said to me when we were engaged, “You know I’m not rich. I don’t have a lot of money.” And, of course, I told him I didn’t care because I love him and that’s what matters.)

I guess I should backtrack because billions of people throughout history, not just today, have wanted what will give them the most money. I’m not innocent of that – I had two job offers at the beginning of this past summer, and I took the one that would pay better. But in terms of copyright and stealing someone’s work, doing it for the money is downright immoral. The gall that this gallerist had to tell Kevin Ferguson that because the “process was different,” it wasn’t copyright. And then for Jason Shulman to be so mysterious about his process (my guess is that he used the same process that Kevin Ferguson detailed in his blog posts and he didn’t want to let that cat out of the bag).

The great part is that Kevin Ferguson is still sharing his work and his processes. I loved that the article ended with him telling people how to use the tools that he uses. It is so inspiring to see people standing up for what’s right. And if he weren’t still sharing his work, I wouldn’t have been able to read that other interesting article about the Disney frames and colors. As someone who is still learning what a digital humanist is and does, I am glad to see that there are people in the field who are good.