
Spike Lee responds to 'stolen' poster designer - Amadou
http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/spike-lee-responds-to--stolen--posters-designer-072840512.html
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Amadou
Looks like Spike Lee has just made the mother of all hypocritical "its OK to
pirate my movie" responses:

 _“Why Should I Pay Someone Who I Never Met Nor Had Any Contact With Ever? He
Never Made Any Deal With Me. Why Don’t You Pay Me For Your Stupid Text On
Thanksgiving Day?”_

~~~
kmfrk
So you think the guy's an idiot, but you still want to see his movies?

~~~
coldtea
Someone can be both an idiot and a good cook/director/whatever...

Not to mention he doesn't think he's an idiot: just a jackass.

~~~
kmfrk
Rationalizing piracy is no trivial thing, although it seems to be popular in
places like Hacker News.

~~~
chris_wot
You miss the point. Spike Lee's argument is that he never employed the artist,
even though his film company ultimately decided on the agent who promoted the
film.

If he complains about piracy, all we have to do now is state on twitter:

"I Never Heard Of This Spike Lee,If He Has A Beef It's Not With Me.I Did Not
Buy Him,Do Not Know Him.Cheap Trick Writing To Me.YO"

Looks like, to me, that unless Lee backs down, he'll be being mocked for quite
some time to come :-)

~~~
kmfrk
It is still possible to respect intellectual property rights, authorship, be
against piracy, support the allegedly-wronged artist, AND find Spike Lee to be
an idiot.

The problem with piracy advocates is that they will seize any opportunity to
justify piracy, and this is sadly no different. Too many people unfortunately
see this as a black-and-white situation where you either support Spike Lee or
support pirating his work.

By all means mock him, that's completely deserved.

~~~
chris_wot
I'm not saying that you should commit piracy. I'm saying that Spike Lee has
put himself in an interesting position where he is now advocating piracy, and
this may well be the response he starts getting if he complains his work is
stolen in the future.

It's more ironic than right.

P.S. I've voted you up, I agree with you.

~~~
kmfrk
I am totally on board with you in terms of Spike Lee coming across as a total
knob, but, unfortunately, and as evidenced by this thread, there are people
who will never fail to latch on to these cases and use strawmen like Spike Lee
as an excuse for some eye-for-an-eye Internet justice by means of piracy.

As long as someone can get downvoted to -4 for making that very basic point on
Hacker News, the point apparently still has to be made, even though it's a
waste of time for people like you who see the nuance of it. :)

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brownbat
> Why Should I Pay Someone Who I Never Met Nor Had Any Contact With Ever? He
> Never Made Any Deal With Me.

So if you use an agent, no responsibility?

Comes off a bit like an "I didn't steal your bike, I'm just riding this nice
bike my friend found for me" excuse.

~~~
aspensmonster
Well, it _is_ Hollywood. When it comes to financial scheming they give Wall
Street a real run for their money.

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alexholehouse
It's not Spike's issue, but to be blunt this is a really stupid response. If
he really doesn't give a damn he could just say we're looking into it, and if
he wants to use this as an amazing opportunity for a bunch of free publicity
he could roll with this and take advantage.

~~~
graeme
How is it not his issue? You don't get to use something stolen just because
someone else stole it for you.

~~~
cududa
If the CMO steals someone's logo, do you blame the CTO?

~~~
skannamalai
If the CTO is the face of the company, then sure. it's not as if shaming the
ad agency is going have nearly the same impact. It's Spike Lee's movie, he's
the beneficiary, and he's not some fledgling director with no influence on the
studio.

------
egypturnash
I Wonder Why Spike Lee Writes His Tweets With So Many Capitals. Does
Everything He Writes Look Like This? Now I'm Imagining His Love Letters.

~~~
hkmurakami
Maybe he thinks everything he says is a headline :P

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coldtea
From somebody who hired the crammy agency AND used the end (STOLEN) result in
his poster, he comes of as a total jerk.

I don't care if some minion did the bad deed for him. When he employs someone
(I'm talking of the agency) he has to man up and take responsibility for what
they did in his name, especially if AFTER the wrongdoing happened and was
pointed to them, he still profits from it.

I'd sue his ass to oblivion if I was the designer.

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jpea
As a 10 year freelancer, doing a ton of agency work, it's not Spike's issue.
His production company hired an agency to do ad promotion for a movie he
"helped" make. The design guy was star struck and fairly new in the freelance
realm and didn't do a proper job with his business logistics.

It sucks, but it's not Spike Lee's issue. It's like blaming Obama for how a
vendor screwed some engineer over while setting up the version control system
during the build of the ACA site.

~~~
Amadou
The original letter didn't blame Spike, it asked him to intervene. You are
definitely correct in the technical sense, but Spike's responses have been
extremely tone-deaf. Instead of saying "not my problem" he should have said,
"I'll have someone look into it."

~~~
ams6110
I admire Spike Lee's movies, but from public appearances, he's never struck me
as the sort of person who gives much of a shit about what anybody but himself
thinks of anything.

~~~
chris_wot
I have to ask then, what informs his opinions?

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rafski
Spike Lee is very much the right addressee.

He posted Garcia's original comps (not the final poster) on his Facebook. The
images had "©2013 Spike Lee" slapped on them. These images are not in this
article, but were on JG's website yesterday.

Garcia kindly asked him for help, presenting both of themselves as victims of
a shady middleman, leaving plenty of room for Lee not only to come out on top
and save his face, but even to turn this into great publicity for the movie.

Apparently, Lee decided otherwise.

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logicallee
Um...here are _our_ top comments on that thread:

"

Seems weird he mentioned Spike Lee (who did nothing wrong, as far as I can
tell) so many times, but didn't name the agency. Seems to hurt the wrong
party's reputation.

Additionally, he has no apparent way to contact him."

and "... What! I think his post does no such thing. Spike Lee did nothing
wrong and the post shows nothing but respect for him." Source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6811060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6811060)

Spike Lee literally just said the same thing we said. but when we said, this
doesn't seem to have anything to do with spike lee, it's like, cool. But when
he says, "this has nothing to do with me" suddenly he's the bad guy.

Just goes to show, if someone accuses you of something, you should apologize
for it!! I guess he should have written "I've never met this person in my
life...but I'm really sorry about what happened!"

live and learn...

By the way. If anyone here has any problems with anyone...I'm really sorry!

~~~
graeme
I don't think the top comment says what you think it says. It is possible
that:

    
    
        1. Spike Lee did nothing wrong, AND
        2. Spike Lee bears responsibility
    

You can complain to a CEO that one of their employees did something wrong, in
the course of the employee's duties. The CEO then bears responsibility, even
though they may personally have had no part in it.

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sarreph
Ask HN: Why Does Spike Lee Like To Write Like This?

[Hint: Capitalising Every Word In A Sentence Shows Everyone How Cool And Big
You Are]

~~~
DanBC
buT you'vE neveR seeN iT donE backwardS, righT?

~~~
chris_wot
My eyes!

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WestCoastJustin
FYI -- this seems to be a response to the " _Dear Spike Lee_ " posting @
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6811060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6811060)

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11thEarlOfMar
Never was much for boycotts, but Spike is making me reconsider.

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scrapcode
Can someone quote this response for those of us that have an overly protective
firewall at work?

~~~
hkmurakami
"I Never Heard Of This Guy Juan Luis Garcia,If He Has A Beef It's Not With
Me.I Did Not Hire Him,Do Not Know Him.Cheap Trick Writing To Me.YO"

“Why Should I Pay Someone Who I Never Met Nor Had Any Contact With Ever? He
Never Made Any Deal With Me. Why Don’t You Pay Me For Your Stupid Text On
Thanksgiving Day?”

------
leephillips
Am I missing something? The two posters don't look much alike, aside from
having a fairly similar trunk in the foreground at the same angle - and I'm
guessing that this has something to do with the imagery in the movie.

~~~
corny
Yes, the designer's site is down right now but the issue wasn't that the two
posters looked alike. It was that Spike Lee posted the actual, unpaid for
comps to his Facebook page. Without a contract or even payment the designer
should still have exclusive rights to those designs. The Yahoo news article
got that part of the story wrong.

~~~
leephillips
Thanks for explaining that. So it's a clear-cut copyright violation.

I hesitate to pile on, but Spike Lee has consistentlty been an ass in public -
something I first noticed in an interview many years ago when he was
expressing revulsion at the idea that his sister might marry a white man,
because black-white marriages were such a terrible idea, in his opinion. Very
sad, because I think he's very talented as a filmmaker.

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trekky1700
The least he could do is look into what happened, he has the power to easily
do so.

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powertower
Whatever you might think Spike Lee is, he's certainly predictable.

