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Public Park Designated Copyrighted Space
wiggles writes "The City of Chicago recently completed a $475 million park/civic center known as Millennium Park. One of the central features is a sculpture officially called Cloud Gate and unofficially called "The Bean". The Bean is a giant, 3 story, 110-ton hunk of highly reflective steel. Photographers taking pictures of the sculpture have been charged money by the city. The park district is claiming that pictures of the park violate the designers' and artists' copyrights. Quoth Karen Ryan, the press director for the park's project, "The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist." In response, Chicagoland bloggers have been posting as many pictures as they can get of The Bean."
What happens to other publicly displayed works of art? Also, wasn't this payed for by the people of Chicago and thus now owned by the taxpayers? Shouldn't it be up to them to decide how to enforce/not enforce the copyright? Essentially, this is like Ford telling people not to take pictures of their own cars because the designers (read: the company) still own the copyright to the design.
Appalling.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
people will be harassed and intimidated merely for taking photos of public landmarks!
In a sense, this is a good thing, because it turns more people against the modern bastardization of copyright law. A few more incidents like this and America will be ready for serious reforms to copyright law.
"Photographers taking pictures of the sculpture have been charged money by the city."
That's about one step short of the RIAA charging me every time I hear a song in a public place...
Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if the city is keeping that money for themselves rather than collecting that money for the artists that created these so-called copyrighted works.
I must also wonder how long this will go unchallenged. I can't see this standing up in court if, for example, the land was paid for using tax dollars instead of private funding.
The Bean itself is voilating copyrights of the buildings that it reflects...the reflections themselves are "reproductions" of the buildings that are designed by artists and builders.
I think the designers of the Prudential Building should charge the designers and the City of Chicago for the reproduction of their building without their permission.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
...complete and absolute corporate control over a nation's legal framework.
This is simply what happens when (and these are not necessarily related):
- Everything becomes a commodity,
- Representations of things become somehow more valuable than the things themselves.
The first issue expresses itself most clearly in societies where money is held to be both the highest value and the Most Powerful Thing: whoever contols it, and can get their hands on it, clearly has The Power. Thus people seek to control the flow of commodities (which now include ideas, representations, waveforms, etc.) so as to tap into the flow of power, i.e., money. The second issue...well, the second issue is troublesome in its own special way. It also has been dealt with by Baudrillard time and time again. Just check out some of his essays...they're certainly not the final word on the subject, but they cover far more ground that may sensibly be covered here. One might perhaps want to begin with some of the essays in The Transparency of Evil or in Screened Out.brwski
"Because without beer, things do not seem to go as well''
I'm sorry, but a photograph of a sculpture is not a reproduction of said sculpture. If people were out making photographs of some artist's photographs you'd have a point.
Similarly, you can take photographs of jewlery, but if you take a wax mold and make your own reproductions - even if it's of a piece of jewelery you own - you are violating the artist's copyright. Even in that case though, jewelers get around the other jeweler's copyright my creating their own similar, but not copied, pieces with only subtle differences. Unless the original jeweler has a design patent on some of the unique elements of the design, this is perfectly legal.
The issue here is that the city wants to make money selling postcards and nobody has sued their asses yet.
Either the artist wants to be pauid twice (for the commissioning of the work, and again for photos taken of it) or SBC wants to both give away the work and keep it.
If they wanted to charge people for looking at it, they should have made the park private and charged admission. Having donated the piece to a public park, they've got the only bite at this particular cherry they deserve.
Unless the RIAA figures out how to DRM your eyeballs, that is. Great SciFi plot idea, but in real life pretty miserable.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing