IDW is extremely upset with me. Chris, the
Editor-and-Chief of IDW, has asked that because I have now put up on our site
his “personal” emails to us, and because I am refusing to take them down against
his requests, that we should then also post the ones in which he says I am a
hypocrite and a cad.

My response is - sure, why the hell not. So
because Chris has asked, here is his email in which he calls me a hypocrite and
a cad:

From: Chris XXXX
To: Wooster Collective
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004
4:57 PM
Subject: Re: FW: Re: Smoke covers/Banksy

You posted my responses there already and THEN asked if it was okay?

And you’re selling “art” from people who’ve cut up or otherwise altered Hollywood movie posters without crediting the original artist/photographer? You’re a hypocrite and a cad. Leave me alone.

THIS response, feel free to post.


Chris

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So, to grant Chris his wish, we’ve posted his
email. But please know that what Chris writes to us is not true. I posted his
emails to me and

asked him if he wanted me to stop posting

emails so that he could think more about what he was trying to
convince me of before I shared his explanation of the events with everyone else.
In terms of the art on our site ripping off other artists, this is brought up by
him only to divert the issue away from what they did. We can address why art is
art later on, but not now.

If you’ve read the Wooster site for long
then you know that we’ve never used this site to attack anyone. So why IDW? As
Chris asks - Why are we so mad?

Here’s why we are so angry:

/>Far too many “creative directors” at agencies have no fucking creativity at
all. They are on deadline, they are paid huge sums of money to be “brilliant”,
and then because they can’t come up with anything original with the pressure on,
they resort to stealing from young artists who are most often defenseless
because they have no money to fight the theft. They don’t tell their boses that
their designs are not original, and so the stolen art get’s put into the
marketplace. This happens time and time again. And it needs to
stop. Agencies should fire anyone who steals as blatently as Igor did.
End of story.

So in reading Chris’s emails to us today, we believed
(and still do) that this is exactly what happened. Igor never told Chris that he
bit Banksy’s ass and Chris was suddenly blindsided by what we put up on the
Wooster site. He quickly fired off emails to us that he now regrets because it
makes him look worse, not better. He sent us the emails because he was upset.
But again, by being upset and not thinking this through his emails only made it
worse. Why? Because he tries to defend the act of stealing by thinking that we
should agree that a crap rip off of Banksy is actually promoting Banksy. Anyone
who believes this should go work for IDW. Any sane person knows that this is
ridiculous. Think about this, and try to follow:

Here’s what IDW
wants us to believe—A shit copy of something really good is created to
promote the thing that is really good. But to promote the thing that is really
good you don’t actually show the really good piece, you show the shit rip off.
Why? Because you can’t use the really good piece. You don’t have the rights to
it. So to get away with creating a shit rip off of the really good piece you
justify it by saying that you will credit the artist who created the really good
piece. But you never contact the artist. You feel you don’t need to contact him
because you believe that you’ve done an amazing thing for him. You’re promoting
him! Your helping him get more awareness. You’ve credited him and he should be
very very thankful for what you have done. He should love you, not hate you.
(Even though he had no choice in the matter) But again in all of this you never
show the really good piece to anyone. In fact, nobody knows that the really good
piece exists at all because you never acknowledged it. Again, you tell people
that the artist should thank you because you’ve now shown a really crap version
of his really good piece. To us, this is IDW’s logic, plain and sime. But is
there any logic to this???? Hell no.

And so why did we post the
emails? Because if you read the Wooster site then you know that we always post
emails from people exactly as they are written because this site is supposed to
be a morror not an editor. To me, I never saw Chris’ emails as being written
solely to me. Because they are about this issue, and not about me, I think that
they should be read by everyone who cares about this issue. Why are they
“personal” to me? What’s so “personal” in those emails? Should I have
paraphrased Chris and then been told that I misstated what he said? So instead,
I posted them exactlly as written so that he can explain to all of you what
happened exactly in the manner that he explained it to me. Not one word has been
changed.

And because IDW never waivered from the stance of they being
“right” to bite Banksy, we decided to post the info exactly as is. We did it not
because we wanted to protect Banksy, but because we want to protect

of our friends who constantly get ripped off by creative directors and art
directors who have no talent except to steal from those that do.

What
should happen when sites like ours expose this shit is that guys like Chris
should send us one email and one email only. Chris’ email should have said very
simply - “We fucked up. Igor has been fired and we’re sorry that this happened.
We’ve decided not to use those covers.” Or if he hadn’t yet understood entirely
what went on, he could have sent us an email that said something like - “I’m not
sure what happened here. Let me look into this because it doesn’t look good.”
/>
But instead Chris sends us emails very quickly thinking we are morons
and that we’d agree with him when he tries to support Igor’s theft and the
attack on his company. He asks us to believe the exuse in justifying stealing.
And because he get’s involved it moves from being Igor’s stealing to it being
IDW’s. This is not our fault it is Chris’.

But all of this is not our
fault, it is IDW’s. Again, all they needed to do was to say that they were
considering not using the Banksy images and we would have applauded them. But
they never did and because of that we have used this example to try to show
people that this type of stealing, which happens all the time, must be stopped.
“Creatives” at agencies must be held accountable for stealing. They need to be
fired, but instead they win awards. Enough is enough. This is for Freaklub and
all of the artists who have continued to do their art even after being kicked in
the teeth by asshole “creatives”. Banksy doesn’t need our help. Unfortunately
many artists do. By bringing this to the forefront maybe brands will hopefully
think twice. Bravo to those that reach out to the artists before using their
work. To those that don’t - we have no sympathy for you.