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

Re:What of other works of art?

[strelitsa]

This is just another example of what happens when you elect a mayor and city council filled with enlightened Democrats who know better than you do about how to spend your money. Even the voters residing in the graveyards should be annoyed over this.

Re:Slashdot Needs a New Feature

[TheCodeFoundry]

I nominate Howard Dean's meltdown scream in 2004. "The scream heard 'round the world!"

yeeeeearRRrrrrrrgh!!

Re:What of other works of art?

[Karma Farmer]

Yeah, because anyone with a couple grand for a commercial photographer should be able to shut down the space for his or her own amusement.

Your photographer wasn't a tourist taking a few snaps. He or she was a professional photographer who is making a living taking photos of people. If he's charging a couple of grand for photos of you, that's one thing. If he's charging a couple of grand for photos of you in the conservatory, that's another thing entirely.

You should be pissed at your photographer for telling you that he could sell you photos of you in a certain place, when he couldn't. He lied to you, not the city.

Re:Implications: public domain; buildings in gener

[Doc Ruby]

The design and the appearance of a work are two different entities. There's a lot more to the design of a building than its exterior appearance (including the exterior of its internal walls etc). The blueprint is of course copyrighted, but its appearance is not. That's one of the powerful results of appearing in public in our society: people will copy. The music industry has jammed its spanner into the works of folk music, through the historical accident of their role in distributing little pieces of plastic containing recordings, a new setup in the music process. Now that their historical episode has passed, they're trying to hang on to their manufactured rights. And the MPAA is leveraging them for movies. But the basic system in our culture is to copy any representation, anything made, some relatively short time after its been introduced to the public. That's how the really large values of public appearances are created: by the public, by repeating them with our own versions. That's why these copyright and other IP extensions are untenable, in direct contradiction of how we actually operate. Whether buildings and their design documents, music and their scores, or this post and the points I'm making.

Re:What of other works of art?

[Doc Ruby]

"This post is a gift to Slashdot. I hereby own and retain all copyright on it. I have exclusive rights to authorise copies and derivative works. I hereby revoke all rights."

Thanks.