I've been making images based on The Far Side with Poser models since 2001. In January 2016, I received an e-mail from Anne Unckles of Perkins Coie LLP, representing Gary Larson's FarWorks, Inc saying I was infringing on their works. As a quick note: I made sure to include a line in the description of my images giving Gary Larson full credit so people would know I wasn't stealing his idea. I wonder if the lawyers would have found me if I did not include this text and uploaded the images as my own original idea?

They first said that the infringing works were "too numerous to mention" and they sent me a screen shot of my entire Humor Gallery, which included a large number of images that are not based on The Far Side! (Aren't takedown notices supposed to list the exact item and URL that's infringing?) They also complained that I was selling the images without authorization, which I wasn't doing.

Since I assumed they wanted the images to be clearly marked as "not for sale", I changed the code on my site so no images were available for sale at all, even my own artwork.

I didn't hear from them again until almost 3 months later, on April 4. Their new letter said they wanted the images removed from my site completely. They also said they found copies of my images at DeviantArt and that this could "constitute ongoing infringement" even though the images at DeviantArt were uploaded at the same time I uploaded the images on my site, sometimes as far back as 2007 or 2008. How was I supposed to know they wanted me to remove the images from DeviantArt when this is the first time they mentioned it? And this letter included the phrase: "[remove] from the Internet", which now means every single site I ever uploaded my images to, over the past 15 years. I then deleted my images from DeviantArt, Renderosity, Facebook, and FlickR... even though, again, I thought the issue was that they didn't want me selling the images.

I didn't hear from them again until a month later, on May 6. This time, they sent me a list of 10 URL's on my site to jpg images which I had deleted back in April. They didn't give any details, so I don't know if they're seeing a cached version from a Google Image search and then copying and pasting the URL. They also sent me links to 2 images at ArtWanted (which had been there since September 2010), which I forgot about. I deleted the images at ArtWanted as they requested.

On May 9, they sent another e-mail confirming that the 10 images on my site and the 2 images on ArtWanted had been deleted, but that they found another 5 URL's on my site. I again told them that these images had already been deleted, but they didn't tell me how they found these images.

I always believed my images would be considered transformative fan art since I wasn't selling the images, I was giving the original artist full credit, and I was turning a hand-drawn cartoon into a fully rendered image. But I don't have the money to hire a lawyer to argue this issue and I don't know if the issue is even worth fighting over.

So, anyway, if anyone else is making their own versions of The Far Side images, I recommend you delete all of them, even ones that have a different title.

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