Ashleigh Brilliant

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Ashleigh Brilliant
Ashleigh Brilliant

Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant (born December 9, 1933 in London, England) is an author and syndicated cartoonist living in Santa Barbara, California. He is best known for Pot-Shots, a single-panel comic of illustrated one-liners, which began syndication in the United States in 1975.

The Wall Street Journal described him in a 1992 profile as "history's only full time, professional published epigrammatist."

In a copyright infringement suit filed by Brilliant, a U.S. federal judge has ruled that, while short phrases are not eligible for copyright, Brilliant's writings were epigrams and, therefore, copyrightable (Brilliant v. W.B. Productions Inc., 1979).

He employs a self-imposed limit of 17 words per epigram.

In 1999 he authored the famed (and often-copied-without-credit) "Y1K Crisis" article which parodies the "Y2K Crisis" (Year 2000 Crisis) of 1999.

Contents

[edit] Quotations

  • I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
  • Cheer up! The worst effects of what we're doing won't be felt until after we're all dead.
  • Be kind to unkind people; they probably need it the most.
  • Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn't all a dream?
  • It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others
  • The difference between friendship and love is how much you can hurt each other
  • I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem
  • Not being able to do everything is no excuse for not doing everything you can
  • The closest we will ever come to an orderly universe is a good library

[edit] Trivia

As far as I know, the name Brilliant is of Russian/Polish/Jewish origin, and is akin to other Jewish names related to precious metals and jewels, e.g. Gold, Silver, Diamond, Ruby, Pearl. (One meaning of brilliant is a kind of diamond.) These in turn relate to the kinds of trades in which many European Jews were engaged when, in the time of Napoleon, they were first required to take surnames.

  • He purposely employs a self imposed limit of 17 words per epigram. However, he forgot his own rule once but will not reveal his one mistake.

[edit] Criticism

In an essay entitled Against intellectual property, Brian Martin cites Ashleigh Brilliant as a "professional epigrammatist" who has been known to threaten legal action in order to display his market precedence over legally owned fragments of human language, thus managing to reveal one of the many absurdities behind "intellectual property," namely its ability to limit the free use and dissemination of human expression. When Brilliant finds someone who has "used" one of his epigrams, he contacts them demanding a payment for breach of copyright.

For instance, television journalist David Brinkley wrote a book, Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion, the title of which he attributed to a friend of his daughter. Brilliant contacted Brinkley about copyright violation. Random House, Brinkley's publisher, paid Brilliant $1000 without contesting the issue, perhaps because it would have cost more to contest it.

In a separate 1979 case, a company copied two of Brilliant's phrases -- "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent" and "I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy" -- and altered a third phrase, all for sale on t-shirt transfers. The district court acknowledged that the phrases were distinguished by conciseness, cleverness, and a pointed observation, and ruled that they were protected by copyright.

[edit] Books

All books published by Woodbridge Press (Santa Barbara, California)

[edit] References

  • Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924-1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1.

[edit] External links

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