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."

Comments

What of other works of art?

[TimmyDee]

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.

Re:What of other works of art?

[Grax]

Now the trick is for the overlords to print up t-shirts that they retain the copyright for and then place their people in camera view of any event that they would like to censor.

What if a news event would happen next to this sculpture? Could they deny coverage? If not then who decides what is newsworthy?

I am sorry. Public sculptures, no matter how the court currently views them, should not be protected from photography. There is too much danger to freedom of speech.

Next thing you know

[RLiegh]

people will be harassed and intimidated merely for taking photos of public landmarks!

Re:Next thing you know

[radish]

What I am saying is that the US and MANY other countries are/were attacked by Muslim extremists.
So should we also be chacking up on people who look like the other terriorists who have attacked the US? Let's see. There's those washington sniper guys. They were black, so let's check up on anyone who's black. Then there's Timothy McVeigh - who was (as far as I can remember) a white christian. Better start locking up some white christians then.

I think it's better to be over secure and have a lot of people as a false alarm then to let some real threats through and have another 9/11.

Defending your freedoms by giving up your freedoms? Makes a lot of sense. Moron.

What about the buildings that the bean relfects?

[sgant]

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.

This Is The Natural Outcome Of..

[SirChive]

...complete and absolute corporate control over a nation's legal framework.

Copies of Copies, Reflections of Reflections

[brwski]

This is simply what happens when (and these are not necessarily related):

1. Everything becomes a commodity,
2. 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.