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

Precedent doesn't support this

[vijayiyer]

As far as I know, anything viewable from a public area may be photographed. If the artists want to enforce copyright, they should place their sculptures in an enclosed building.

Re:Precedent doesn't support this

[Colgate2003]

You can take pictures of anything you can see from a public street or public land (as long as you are on said public land). There are specific exceptions for top-secret military installations (see 18 U.S.C. 795). Anything else is fair game.

However, you can't sell pictures of other people's work, including sculpture and architecture, without their permission. The city is breaking the law if they won't let anyone photograph the object, but not if they are just charging people who are trying to sell their pictures.

I am not a lawyer, but I am a photographer who knows his rights.

Re:What of other works of art?

[Slak]

I was married last year in Chicago (where I reside and pay substantial property and sales taxes), and tried to take some wedding pictures at the Chicago Park District's indoor conservatory. Security stopped my bride and me from being photographed. I was outraged! And Millenium Park is worse, since it was completely overbudget and YEARS late.

But, what do you expect from a city that send bulldozers in the middle of the night to shut down an airport?

Insane.

The Eiffel tower, too

[hellgate]

BoingBoing recently ran a story about the Eiffel tower. Now, because the Eiffel tower was built in the 19th century, there's an extra twist: Only the tower at night (with its recently added lighting) is supposedly copyrighted.

Re:What of other works of art?

[Renesis]

This actually seems to be fairly common with new buildings and works of art in public spaces.

I was working with some people on some new postcards and they asked me to check out the royalties on a couple of new structures in London they'd taken pictures of.

They'd been burned when they sold postcards of the Louvre. The architect who had designed the Louvre Pyramid had complained and they had to pay him about 0.10 in royalties per postcard sold.

Obviously anything over a certain age is copyright-expired, so castles etc are fair game! ;)

Slashdot Needs a New Feature

[EEBaum]

We need a new feature on Slashdot. For each news story, there should be a "scream in horror, pain, and disgust" button. This way, whenever a story is reported where otherwise well-thinking people do something that makes no logical sense whatsoever, you can simply press the button to register your "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGH."

Each thread would have a scream counter, and perhaps also rate them by severity/incoherence. Perhaps a high-bandwidth version could be introduced in which posters can record their screams, and visitors can listen to all of them together, a la "millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

I bring this up because there is an increasing number of stories, like this one, where I think a good scream is necessary, but can't be made into a coherent thread.

Publicity Stunt

[bigtallmofo]

This was an extremely effective publicity stunt. Since I'm a contrarian that doesn't like to fall for such things, that's all I have to say on it.

Take that, City of Chicago!

Re:What of other works of art?

[VValdo]

Try including a shot of the Hollywood Sign in a motion picture. Turns out, it's is not just a city landmark, but a trademarked brand owned by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which cannot be included in a distributed film without paying licensing fees.

At least that's what I've read. It didn't show up in a quick trademark search for "hollywood sign" Has any other city landmark (Eiffel tower, etc.) been trademarked like this?

W

Re:Copyright misunderstanding?

[Peyna]

17 USC 106 (Copyright holder exclusive rights)

Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:
(1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
(2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
(3) to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
(4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and
(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Re:you got that right

[voidptr]

How the hell can you blame the midnight raid on Meigs by the Daley administration (Democratic Mayor of Chicago) on the Bush administration? Daley tried to get rid of that airport since he took office in 1996, under Clinton. The FAA didn't know the airport was gone until the Mayor's office told them after it had been buldozed.

The Bush administration BTW is fining the city of Chicago at least $33,000 for improper notification, and up to about 8 million for improper use of federal airport funds that were supposed to be used at O'Hare.

yes he is

[zogger]

..that's a good point and any group who wanted to countersue for using their image as part of the artisitic expression should sue him all the way into bankruptcy. The "art" is most definetly using other folks images once they are reflected in it. Mexican standoff then, I hope it happens. I do landscaping sometimes, I should copyright all the work I do, photo it and document it, then charge people a fee to drive by and look at it. either turn their heads or pay a copyright "license to view" fee.

This is ridiculous, absurd, insane. It's not even the least bit humorous or logical. To infringe the copyright, one would have to make a copy of the sculpture. That's what "copy" means, to make a "copy", an exact duplicate. A photo is not a copy of a sculpture, it's a reference to it at best.