Looking at this collage once more, it's hard for me to believe it has caused so much contraversy. The problem is that it's a portrait of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology. It was inspired by a photograph that belongs to them, and they tend to be a little legal-happy when it comes to their property.

I took paint samples -- little cardboard squares of colour -- from hardware stores, tore them up, and assembled them into Ron. I liked the work a lot. I had it professionally framed, and then auctioned off on Ebay.

Using photographs of my work, I offered T-shirts for sale with the portrait on it. There's a website called Cafepress that will put any image on a T-shirt and sell them for you. Great! Except the Church of Scientology had a lawyer send a letter to Cafepress, stating that I was violating one of their copyrighted images. Cafepress shut me down.

To make matters more interesting, a Scientology lawyer wrote me email and asked me to:

• hand over the original copy of the work.
• hand over all copies of the work.
• give them an accounting of all profit made from the work.
• give them all the money I made from the work.

They then set an extremely dramatic deadline -- do it by the end of next month or face the consequences!

I said, "Let me talk to a lawyer."

The lawyer I spoke to asked me if my art work was inspired by the photograph. Yes. She asked me if the art work looked anything like the original photograph. Sort of, but not really.

"In that case," she said, "they have no case."

She explained that an artwork inspired by another artwork is legal, but that an artwork that copies the original is a violation of the copyright.

So I wrote the Scientology lawyer some email and said, "Uh, no, to all of your ridiculous demands. So sorry. Thanks muchly."

But meanwhile my site at Cafepress has been shut down. I do still have some high quality photographs of the portrait, however, both on CD and on a transparency. I could always make my own posters and t-shirts and put them up for sale. But do I really want to put up with more idiotic Scientology harassment?

So for now, I'm just considering my options.