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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.
fp
The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.
Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.
Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME, and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian, which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.
Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.
One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.
Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.
GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases they mature and reach stable featureful release states much more quickly. Some examples of this are: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.
It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly more advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of impressive behind the scenes technologies will finally mature: component technology (bonobo), media (Gstreamer), internationalisation (pango). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.
It is also worth noting that GNOME also develops code for use outside the project (see the XML libraries as one example) - the KDE project rarely (if ever) engages in this kind of work. KDE developers ensure that all software must link with Qt, and hence tie it closely with the Qt toolkit preventing re-use and enhancing the value of TrollTech intellectual property.
Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.
Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects; and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.
Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) used to bandage up the design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE architecture to see the truth.
Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.
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.
Slashdot.NET
News for Gates. Stuff that's Shit.
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!
How original.
--sdem
The Rider Nation had better be ready for defeat!
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.
Go Buccaneers!!!!!
2002-10-18 16:33:41 Illegal Art on Display (articles,censorship) (rejected)
I wonder how many more people could've attended? Thumbs up slashdot! *big fake smile*
...They'd probably call it art ;-)
[/end_joke]
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
You is teh suck.
heh, by illegal they mean goatse.cx
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!
I'm going to go to a Super Bowl party now. You can stay at your parent's house and troll slashdot.
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
I tried reading it the first time, and I learned nothing.
I tried rereading again, and found points that were interesting or insightful.
Did you ever bother to take a writing course in your life?
This is why I will never pay a dime to subscribe.
- Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
This is completely out of date since Safari was announced/released. Apple, one of your touted companies, chose Konq over Moz (and Opera, if they would even have bothered; Opera isn't even available on OS X last I looked). Instead you need to focus on Apple's adoption as a play against fears of AOL changing the direction of Mozilla. Then point out Apple's reference to the light amount of code being a positively-phrased slap against the true immaturity of Konq which will allow Apple free reign to guide Konq's development itself.Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
As it is, your troll is out of date and unbelievable to casual observers. In short, you suck AND swallow.
Two more to go! (!!)
the site is already down after a slashdot ddos attack (aka slashdotting)...
It's an interesting site, but I doubt any of those artists make money, because the only art that pays is corporate art. Those artists will have trouble finding any paying jobs after making criminal anti-corporate art. Fun to look at though!
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
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.
Please make this illegal art.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
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
my.these.trolls.are.really.annoying.maybe.you.have .been.owned.up.the.goat.rectological.cavity.you.bi zaoch.ha.this.might.be.begginning.to.really.piss.y ou.off.but.let.me.tell.you.wider.is.very.much.bett er.oooh.yeah.wider.is.BETTER.than.narrow.pages.mmm .iLike.it.wide.and.juicy.ascii.art.is.the.coolest. thing.sincsliced.bread.and.you.all.are.really.goin g.to.get.abused.by.your.fathers.with.pitchforks.et c.but.anyway.this.page.is.getting.wider.and.wiider .every.second.this.is.being.typed.so.fear.my.wrath .motherfskers.this.page.has.been.owned.and.my.dadd y.is.going.to.celebrate.by.anally.abusing.your.har lot.mother.my.these.trolls.are.really.annoying.may be.you.have.been.owned.up.the.goat.rectological.ca vity.you.bizaoch.ha.this.might.be.begginning.to.re ally.piss.you.off.but.let.me.tell.you.wider.is.ver y.much.better.oooh.yeah.wider.is.BETTER.than.narro w.pages.mmm.iLike.it.wide.and.juicy.ascii.art.is.t he.coolest.thing.since.sliced.bread.and.you.all.ar e.really.going.to.get.abused.by.your.fathers.with. pitchforks.etc.but.anyway.this.page.is.getting.wid er.and.wiider.every.second.this.is.being.typed.so. fear.my.wrath.motherfskers.this.page.has.been.owne d.and.my.daddy.is.going.to.celebrate.by.anally.abu sing.your.harlot.mother.my.these.trolls.are.really .annoying.maybe.you.have.been.owned.up.the.goat.re ctological.cavity.you.bizaoch.ha.this.might.be.beg ginning.to.really.piss.you.off.but.let.me.tell.you .wider.is.very.much.better.oooh.yeah.wider.is.BETT ER.than.narrow.pages.mmm.iLike.it.wide.and.juicy.a scii.art.is.the.coolest.thing.since.sliced.bread.a nd.you.all.are.really.going.to.get.abused.by.your. fathers.with.pitchforks.etc.but.anyway.this.page.i s.getting.wider.and.wiider.every.second.this.is.be ing.typed.so.fear.my.wrath.motherfskers.this.page. has.been.owned.and.my.daddy.is.going.to.celebrate. by.anally.abusing.your.harlot.mother.my.these.trol ls.are.really.annoying.maybe.you.have.been.owned.u p.the.goat.rectological.cavity.you.bizaoch.ha.this .might.be.begginning.to.really.piss.you.off.but.le t.me.tell.you.wider.is.very.much.better.oooh.yeah. wider.is.BETTER.than.narrow.pages.mmm.iLike.it.wid e.and.juicy.ascii.art.is.the.coolest.thing.since.s liced.bread.and.you.all.are.really.going.to.get.ab used.by.your.fathers.with.pitchforks.etc.but.anywa y.this.page.is.getting.wider.and.wiider.every.seco nd.this.is.being.typed.so.fear.my.wrath.motherfske rs.this.page.has.been.owned.and.my.daddy.is.going. to.celebrate.by.anally.abusing.your.harlot.mother
heh
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.
.. . 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?
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
OMG, I live less from a mile from this. For those who went, is it geekish jeans and a shirt, or black tie?
Seriously folks. These people are a menace to society and should be sent to Guantanamo Bay immediately for disposal. If you don't like the laws then there is something seriously wrong with you. If you don't relish long prison sentences and killings by government agents for violations of the DMCA, drug laws, gun laws, etc then you are seriously messed up.
Everyone who doesn't support the federal, state, and local governments should be beaten down and killed or thrown in prison where they'll be brutally and relentlessly sodomized.
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.
*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.
Pasty Fucking Geeks:
Get off the damn computer and watch the Superbowl!
It might just make you a little more normal!
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...
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.
(+5 INFORMATIVE)!!
ktnx bye.
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.
Illegal Art!!! more like celda
It was in New York a couple months ago. Did you get the cd?
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.