Comment by bigiain
12 years ago
Yes and no.
As the open letter makes very clear - it was bad behaviour on the part of the agency, and Spike most likely didn't know it was going on (and the letter even suggests the agency was actively lying to him about it).
But - Spike is ultimately the one in control of the money-tap the agency is drinking from. While he had "absolutely nothing to do with this", it was no doubt done on his behalf, and he absolutely has the power to fix it. If he says "No, that's not how we do things", then it'll get fixed. (Arguably there are many other people below Spike who could also make that call, but I have some sympathy for the original poster - it would be a great deal of work if it's possible at all, to find out who in the middle management chain of command has sufficient authority to solve this problem and how to contact them directly.)
Unrealistic. He has the last word on the posters being choosen. He already chose these posters, but was told that the guy asked for money. It was his decision to rip him off. He is the producer also.
Given that the only information we've got to go on is the open letter - I'll point out this bit and take it at face value: "They forwarded me an email you sent them asking for an explanation but of course they lied to you and said they didn’t know who was responsible."
I think it's 100% plausible that the agency accepted Lee's decision on which poster design to use as "last word", while not fully disclosing (and perhaps even actively deceiving him about) the payment/negotiations/contracts/copyrights with the designer.