appropriation

i just wanted to say my 2 cents about appropriation. for me it is all about respect and ackowledgement. since i use other peoples designs and artwork in my collages i am always careful to alter the image enough so that it will not seem as though i am merely "stealing" the image and changing only the context. since the images i use are from published, public sources it is within my rights to appropriate them as an artist. however, if one of the artists of my source material were to approach me and say "hey, i don't like what you are doing with my work" i would gladly remove the piece from the web or whatever setting it was displayed in. of course i am not saying if marvel comics came to me and said "hey, you're making batman look bad", but if one of the painters who illustarted the marvel book i used images from did, then yes, i would hear them out. and i would hope other creative people would afford me the same courtesy. when we preach about stealing and how anarchistic it is, we forget that we ourselves are targets. and remeber, if you ever post images on myspace- or most other corporate sponsered web services- the site exercises the right to use the images in any way they see fit. newscorp owns myspace and theoretically, rupert murdoch could use your art to sell the ny post if he wanted to. that is if he has enough taste to appreciate what we do! hahaha