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Review: Illegal Art
The reader continues:
The exhibit is of artwork on the legal fringes of intellectual property, litigation clouds loom over many of the pieces. (Buy now! This is a limited time offer! ;-) Even to an artistic ignoramus such as myself, it's clear the exhibit contains classic works of the genre. In this category are such items as the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" (Poster, 1967) by the Mad Magazine artist Wally Wood, and the trademark certificate which certifies Professor Kembrew McLeod's ownership of the phrase "Freedom of Expression" (Conceptual, 1998). I also particularly enjoyed the finely detailed Spiderman quilt (Untitled) (Commercial fabric and recycled materials, 2002) by Ai Kijima and the counterfeit postage stamps, including "Prozac" (Computer generated laser print, 1996), of Michael Hernandez de Luna. De Luna creates stamps good enough to fool postal workers, as attested to by successfully delivered letters complete with postmarks. (Sorry, I cannot find any contact info for this Chicago artist on the web.)
An exhibition like this is innately political and nowhere is this more apparent than in the exhibition's video accompaniment, much of which is strongly anti-war and anti-corporate. Like the visual artwork, the borderline legality of the video work is due to its appropriation of corporate trademarks and sampling of copyrighted work. What makes it interesting as well as sometimes funny, regardless of your politics, is how the material reveals the manipulative techniques of everyday media and thereby turns the content against its owners. The very strength of the alternative message the videos present is often due to the strength of the original images.
Audio works are also included in the exhibit but I have not had the time to sample the wares.
Those who can't physically visit the exhibition in Chicago can experience many of the works via the Illegal Art web site. Video, audio, and visual art is available for download. A number of works have been added to the exhibit since it has come from New York. Images of the Chicago artists' work should be added to the web site as soon as the organizers get around to it. FWIW, rumor has the exhibit traveling to San Francisco.
What, is there something good on TV or something?
Sigs are like bumper stickers.
why do people feel the need to comment on this fact? *sigh* oh well. Guess I should just get over it and continue ignoring it...
I found this article interesting as soon as I spotted the word "illegal". Does it mean I'm a very very naughty boy?
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
It is good to see that in this age of major corporatism and restrictive copyright laws that there is at least some vestige of free expression. Too bad it is not showing in my area.
The ascii-art version of the CSS-auth code: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/Pooshee bla-dvd.html
Repeal the DMCA!
....to those of us who are reading /. instead of being out at a themed party *cough* might be the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" link.
(yeah, I'm one of the above mentioned too...go figure)
Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
This kind of stuff has been on the Internet for years but Disney seems to pretend it doesn't exist. Anyone ever hear of any lawsuits coming out of this sort of fan art/fiction (other than Star Trek, which has gotten a lot of press here :).
:)
(Note: I know the piece I am talking about is from the 60's, not implying it's unoriginal
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Now that stuff is definitely illegal .. or at least painful!
Well they must be talking about child porn.
Slavery is Freedom.
Ignarance is Strength.
And now: Rubbish is Art.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
What would happen if I copied their site and put it online on a Geocities page? Think they'd sue?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
...They'd probably call it art ;-)
[/end_joke]
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
It's call "parody", and when done with enough wit, are far more original and artistic than the work they derived from.
What would happen is that the artist, Boggs, would go into a shop and ask to buy something. He would try to convince the person at the checkout to accept a Boggs note rather than a normal one. So, he might offer you a £5 Boggs note in exchange for £5 worth of goods. If you felt that his art was worth £5, you would accept.
If you did accept, you were about to become very rich. He would tip off the people who collected his art that a note had been "spent", and the lucky shop assistant would be offered thousands of pounds for the note.
Of course, Boggs was charged with counterfeiting currency, because the people who govern us don't have a sense of humour. In due course Boggs appeared in court, represented by pro bono counsel. It seems that Boggs offered to paint his fee, but, not wanting to get struck off, his lawyer said that he would rather work for free!
After one of the most wacky trials I can remember, the jury voted to let Boggs off. In the process, the government made Boggs rich; thousands more people heard about his art, and the price went through the roof.
Shortly afterwards, the British currency had one of its periodic redesigns. The banknotes had changed to include a claim of copyright. Presumably the government wants to be able to get an injunction against any future Boggs, rather than taking its chance in front of a jury.
One Disney lawyer to another: Let's shut their website down -- we'll plant a Slashdot article!
OK, so it's not illegal, but it's still pretty funny... Check it out here.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
We were waaaaay ahead of YOU on this.
I think I'm going to trademark cease and desist
This month's issue of the 'zine stay free! has companion articles and a CD with some of the pieces in/related to the exhibit, like negativland's U2 radio mix and sampled tracks from De La Soul and the Beastie Boys. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit in Chicago.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Now OSDN has a full-on site for .NET development. Money's tight--sheesh!
You have /.ers looking at "illegal-art", messing around with the DoD .mil domain registration system, ants.... in space( think about it)
Trying to save some bandwidth costs by removing a few readers from the free roaming population?
Well ok ants in space might not get you in trouble. Maybe.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
The disney orgy, I give a +5, funny shit, same goes for the "Dysfunctional Family circus" (BTW RTFA it says that that the DFC author was approached by Bill Keane personally to stop the parodies after a heart to heart talk)
Other than that though, I thought everything else was pretty stupid and didn't really classify as art.
One of the worst exhibits on the page is of some cat that copied his cd collection. Big fuckin w00p, what's so artistic about that? So copying my stuff to CDR suddenly makes me an artist?
Of course, this is all opinion, by which I know some people may disagree with me. So the question bears to mind what is art? I don't think CD duplication is an art, it's just a bunch of mouse clicks or a command line with a few switches. Fuck if that's the case i'm an artist in spades.
Considering it goes on for almost another four weeks, probably not too many, so quit your whining.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
.. . I dropped into the this place (western on the blue line, 2040 north milwaulkee upstairs, in the In These Times magazine office.)
The show is off the hook. There is some video pastiche and collage from the first gulf war that was on GNN (www.gnn.tv?) that is amazing and oddly precient for what is going on now, what is about to happen yet again.
They were asking for donations for the wine, but weren't pushy about it. Thusly, the wine ended up being resonably priced and quite good. It started to snow around 7pm or so, and I didn't get there till after six, so I didn't hear the opening speach (which was quite good, I heard).
I'm so glad this came to Chicago, I'd seen the NY announcement and thought it bad ass. This show rules, and the SF MOMA should definitely try to scope it (it plays to the SF Moma strength of design) for a west coast engagement.
But mostly, this stuff should be on-line. Somebody should take a good ditital camera and make some higer-res photos of the show and do a real on-line catalog, the low-res shit on the current site doesn't do it justice.
They were giving out this CD of music that looked good (and soon to be MP3'd) that says: "Not for Sale: Stay FREE! 003"
Ha. Right on. Also, it has an Invisibl Skratch Piklz track on it (also in CDDB as Various Artist Illegal Art): finally a free giveaway cd that doesn't suck. De La Soul track, Beasties, ubiquitous Negativeland "U2" track, hopefully some punk: tracks like "the JAMS - the Queen and I" sound kind of punk-rock, don't they?
probably not too many
Yeah, just everybody in the New York area.
Four years ago, University of Iowa professor Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "Freedom of Expression"--then hired a lawyer to sue for infringment.
There's modern day society for you.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
This is an extraordinary tale -- thanks for sharing it!
I've quoted you in full on my web site:
http://www.karljones.com/money/artistic_money.asp
-kgj
Audio works are also included in the exhibit but I have not had the time to sample the wares.
It's warez! Really! Isn't that the point?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Duh, Slashdot editors don't actually write or edit anything. Or if they do, they aren't willing to take the blame for it.
Don't get down on Micheal. Just because he and the other editors are getting paid to do something that any one of us could do better doesn't make him a bad person.
It just makes him and all the other "editors" talentless hacks who lucked into their positions through no skill of their own. Do you honestly read slashdot for what the "editors" have to say?
I read it for the comments. I know there are a lot of trolls, junk posts, idiots spouting off about things they know nothing of, etc., but there are some well written, informed opinions in the comments.
I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I feel free to criticize anyone who is getting paid to put their crap up for the world to see.
Slashdot editor: Mommy, look at the pretty picture I painted with my doody on the kitchen wall!
*Music: Anything not owned by the RIAA *Film: Anything not owned by the MPAA *Paintings: Anything readily comprehended by non- artists *Sculpture: Anything resembling non-geometric made before WWII
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
since the laws are written to aid corporations, we need a way that corps can profit from reduced copyright terms. Only then will the evil trend towards perpetual copyrights be avoided.
Any post about the /. editors etc. that ever comes out this harsh (and i've seen a few) are ever posted as anything but anonymous.
/. since it's free and there are downsides to everything, community based or not.
Well, I preferr personally to not care about some of the stuff on
But like anyone cares what I think. Hell I don't most of the time...
"It might just make you a little more normal!"
:)
who says we want to be?
Us real geeks have TV tuner cards, and therefore have no need to decide between TV and computer. ;-)
I read about someone who had made an entire CD from sampled works, and then couldn't get anyone to publish it. I haven't been able to find anything else on it, and couldn't pull it up again later on. I *think* it was called "Nothing to Fear" but I can't be certain.
Also, the U2 song that negativland sampled, or whatever, was recalled and all copies they could find were destroyed. It isn't about art, it is about how much money can you afford to pay to copy other works. It is a little nutty, if you really think about it.
See A Comedy of Values by Weschler for the most well known book on Boggs. Boggs' money related art, which has drawn zealous interest from the Law in several countries, gets the viewer to question the true value of the bits of paper in their back pocket. You can see a few images of his work here and here.
BTW, the engraving of Boggs on the above mentioned book was executed by T. Hipschen - who happens to have done the front and back design of the new US 100 dollar bill - amongst others.
Another artist following in Boggs' footsteps in Tim Prusmark.
Hum. When I went to the site, THIS popped up...
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Isnt this Yew-la thing bad?
This is the coolest link I've seen all week! Thanks for posting it.
The funny part is, he really does sound like that.
Sounds like Flooze to me.
I imagine it would make sales tax difficult to calculate and pay, though I imagine that there are laws to cover tax on barter transactions already.
It was in New York a couple months ago. Did you get the cd?
Yeah, I have a tuner card too. I'm recording the Super Bowl right now. For... the commercials. Yeah, the commercials. Please don't hate me!
That is a fairly silly assumption. Take the case of Negativeland who is responsible for releasing an album under the name U2 which was eventually sewed out of existence and recently re-released (go figure). They are rather infamous after having pulled this stunt and have a loyal following wherever they tour. They release there own albums, (and find it increasing difficult to find anyone to print them for fear of liability) but none-the-less have made a fairly long lived stay on this earth as musicians. If you look at any main-stream one hit wonder your likely to see that they didn't make much money on the first album and never really had a chance again.
The canonical example of illegal music
...and its editor/guru/chief writer Carrie McLaren. She deserves much of the credit for this show. It's wonderful that it's getting so much attention.
hi, we've put together a package of articles to coincide with the show. here's some links:
AN UPHILL BATTLE: INTERVIEW WITH LAWRENCE LESSIG
Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig is the nation's leading advocate for intellectual property law reform; we interview him about the state of the movement.
THE PIRATES OF HOLLYWOOD
The language of film may be universal, but don't tell that to the Motion Picture Association of America--you might end up in court.
MUSIC FOR THE MASSES
When Lester Chambers stepped onto the stage to galvanize the audience with "People Get Ready," his band included one guy who looked like he might be from the IRS. But he wasn't. He was there from the Federal Communications Commission.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
The power of corporations to censor was greatly expanded by the passage in 1998 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was written by and for the lobbies that paid to push it through Congress--the software, entertainment, pharmaceutical and other intellectual property industries.
The logo is clearly not an infringement of copyright or trademark. First, it is protected under the First Amendment because it is a parody. Also, it's being used in non-commerical way to criticize a company, which of course is also protected speech. Third, no one would ever confuse our site with Labor Ready's so it does not infringe on their trademark. What's more, the parody logo only vaguely resembles the company's official logo.
This is just another way corporations get to push around the little guy. They have the resources at their disposal to try to scare and intimidate this organization into shutting up or else face the prospect financial ruin trying to put a fight.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Any chance this mighty fine exhibit might make it to the other side of the Atlantic? The Transmediale festival of electronic art in Berlin/FRG would be a perfect opportunity, for example. I can't wait to see the Gameboyzz Orchestra show at the festival, for example.
Again, people mixing the ideas of freedom and copyright issues.
/. logo, I guess it is copyright/left and not GLP'd. /. has good viewer ownership, even those who hate /. feel a party to what it stands for, so your support is now being associeted with Microsofts new endeavour to associate open source with crime, 3rd world poverty, poverty and starvation in the richest countries, child abuse in the world and the lack of a balanced diet we all suffer from.
If I was to create an image, an association, an icon which stood for something, and someone was to twist this creation, twist this idea, without my consent, then my ideas themselves have been taken and twisted, with my own creative efforts.
Satire is a fundemantal tool we have to give freedom to our voices against political/commercial oppression, it gets things noticed.
The whoring of the Starbucks logo is on one hand, an expression of an opinion, which should in no means be suppressed. However, using the device in the satire is the point in question.
Starbucks is associated with this device, and it is only be used because it serves a purpose, that is, if starbucks had a different logo, it would make this work less effective, it is tied to this assocoation, to the feelings it emits.
Should we allow this? On one hand, I like the idea of being able to take the identity of a company, and tear it to shreds publicly. On the other hand, using their work that they developed, their iconic identity, is it more than a mere identity symbol.
Lets not talk about identity theft, but if the starbucks logo was a beautifully crafted work of art, then would it surpass the artistic license of reference?
Would it be theft to make a derivative work of art? I think so. Lets take this to sites such as deviantart.com, which probably has the largest collection of online art that is digitally managed, and attibuted to so many authors. Many works on that site are reworked and, on suggestions from many artists including myself, you can now attribute your sources for this work, and also express a permission on a derivative work, appeasing viewers.
Given that some of the pieces just hijack the aesthetic pleasing qualities of a work available, and use it to convey a message of their own devising, compounds this as not being fruitful to society. This not only associates the artist with this message, but devalues the work, as others hijack it. We cannot stop this, but should we encourage it?
Imagine Microsoft took Slashdots logo, and reworked it to associate them with hacking and insecurity, and everything it stands for is bad. And people believe it. I am not sure on the rights of the
Ownership of work, and the right to protect what it stands for is paramount, for both sides. Remember, artwork is inherently open source, you can see exactly what it composite aspects are, if you can see in the normal colour spectrum (and we are talking about art that can be defined as viewable through the normal human-visible spectrum).
So if you think open-source == free, then forget it. If you agree that you can take any work, no matter what, and make a modified clone version, then forget it, if you think linux == open-source then remeber it is also free, and some open source, accessible works aren't free (not beer).
Even free(beer), open-source software may come under restrictions that you cannot modify it (copyleft)
Yes it is nice, and fitting to twist up a corporate logo, and yes some peoples works can be used to involke the opposite emotion, but like Gary Larson said, their works are like children, they are protective over them.
What if someone kidnapped your kid, and decided to twist it up for their own agenda, especially if it isn't one you subscribe to.
http://noneinc.com/Live/IllegalArt/
The other canonical example of illegal music, but this time, it wasn't meant to be illegal at first
Will I retire or break 10K?
The exhibit is at 2040 N Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago, les than two Blocks from Margie's candies (1960 N Western Ave.). Margie's is a local Business that has been making some of the best homemade ice cream and homemade candy since 1921.
I was thinking of dropping by the art show but after seeing the location on the website, this is a must see :)
J.S. Boggs is an American artist. There is an excellent hour-long documentary about him called "Money Man." It shows him at work, and one of his avid collectors, and follows him to Washington to try to retrieve some hand-drawn bills that had been confiscated by the Feds.
I heard an story on NPR about the dot-com barter networks that exist some of which are folding. They would get businesses to pool their services and get barterbux in exchange for them which they could spend on services/goods from other participating businesses. I don't know why this is legal since it seems like a different currency to me..
Eat at Joe's.
On the question of printing your own money, this used to be standard practice in Canada. Since the only "real" currency was coins, banks would print paper bills representing a given amount of coins (always promising to be "redeemable" until sometime in the 20th century). The Bank of Canada was set up to provide a central source of paper currenty, and to provide confidence in the currency after some issuers went bankrupt - and obviously when anyone can print their own money, counterfitting is pretty easy - you don't even need to copy a real bill, just make up a real-sounding bank name. For legitimate banks, it was fairly profitable (due to complex economics I don't fully understand), and there's nothing stopping banks from issuing their own currency if they want to, except that likely nobody will want it.
In French Canada during shortages (such as war), playing cards were used as money (signed by an appropriate authority, such as a colonial governor).
Currently in Canada there are only two widely accepted forms of paper currency - bills from the Bank of Canada (which have iridescent patterns on the surface that can't be recreated from a printer), and Canadian Tire Money, which are really coupons that can be spent at Canadian Tire stores, but can sometimes be spent elsewhere, depending on the retailer. Canadian Tire denominations are limited to something like 50 cents.
You collect payment only in currency X, preferable one you know will be going down in value by the end of the year. As you are collecting at current-value, you always get paid the proper equivilent for your work. Once you get paid... immediately exchanged said currency for US$.
Now... on your tax forms, can you claim that you were paid 50000 in currency X. Remember, if the currency is valued lower at the end of the year, you would be paying less tax for that 50,000 - not indicating the fact that you did a turnover to US$.
This would only work if the foreign currency noticably dropped in value between the beginning and end of the tax year, and you'd also have to count the rates for exchanging currency. Anyone know if it would work though?
Being the Anonymous Coward who wrote the slightly OTT post on corrupting peoples works, I found your comments a bit of an eye opener.
I see what you mean, if they engineer these icons, and expose them to our society, then we, as a society, should take ownership, and be allowed to state what we feel they represent, in the same manner that we can say, I feel Microsoft is a very bad company, without getting sued for mentioning their name, we should be able to parody and lambaste any facet of their identity.
We own the right to state what these represent to us, in any from, and reuse their work, or parody it. For fun not for profit.
So, every piece of Disney work is their identity? Any character they develop, can be said to be the property of the viewers collectively?
Or that they have a right to use it in their works to express their impression of the company and or industry? or the world as a whole?
I see your idea for corporate logos, and I hope I made it clear that through my post that I percieved a distinction between the logo, and a genuine artistic creation, one of identity and one of creativity.