Could I get into trouble for this?

[Danny H]

In no way could I describe myself as a cartoonist, the last time I got close to being one was the doodling I did in my school books decades ago. Despite my lack of expertise in the area I have an idea for a cartoon strip which I would post on my blog. The problem is it revolves around real people and the cartoon characters would (to the best of my ability) resemble them.

Could this cause problems? The subjects of this cartoon are a friendly bunch and I wouldn’t want to upset any of them by publishing anything they might take exception to.

[Matthew Brown]

Obviously, I am not a lawyer. All this is not legal advice. And other disclaimers.

The very short answer is: it depends but it might be okay.

My understanding is that Satire is always a safe harbour. After all, newspapers print political satire cartoons all the time. To an extent, it depends on if you are saying this is real and/or if you are portraying the person or persons in a negative light.

The other thing about basing characters on real people is that those real people have a hard time identifying themselves.

So my advice would be this – draw the cartoon and then imagine you are the people in question and try to see if you would be offended.

[jeffjohns]

Could you get written permission from the persons in question to use their likeness?

[Danny H]

There’s possibly a lot of people involved, and I suspect if I asked permission from each of them I’d be flooded with questions about it.  Probably won’t happen anyway, I’m lousy at any form of drawing.

[Matthew Brown]

If you do make it you could always bring it to a writers’ group that you trust (he says knowing we both attend the same one) and get some feedback in person.

[Jason Latnar]

From what I have been told stuff like satire is a safe harbour. It means that you can use satire as a defence in IP law cases. Does that help?

[Author]

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