Slashdot Mirror
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."
Windy City, blow me.
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
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.
people will be harassed and intimidated merely for taking photos of public landmarks!
This is outrageous. The funding came from two sources: public and private. The article addresses both. First public:
The city's $270 million is mostly coming from bonds backed by revenue from the underground parking garages, said Lisa Schrader, a spokeswoman in the city's budget office.
Paid for by the citizenry of Chicago. Now, there was also the private source:
In all, about $200 million of the funding came from private contributors whose names are sprinkled throughout the park -- Wrigley Square, Bank One Promenade, BP Pedestrian Bridge, McCormick Tribune Plaza, the Lurie Garden.
Boom, they have their recognition and return on their investment.
My point is that these works of art are being errected in a public place, paid for by public funds and through private sponsorship (that has recieved its due return - free advertising in the form of building nomenclature). It is absolutely absurd that the citizens would be charged money to take pictures in their own damn park! Because that's what it is, they all own it through their tax dollars. Therefore, they should be able to take their damn pictures for free. Otherwise, can the city of Chicago really be providing the best government to its citizens?
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
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.
Oh wait.. Chicago, the Windy City. Now I get it.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
This country gets stupider with every second. If only Canada wasn't so bloody cold.
Vote Quimby!
"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.
Place your own work in front of the sculpture, and sue them because their mirror is replicating your copyrighted work.
Ahem..
Search for Cloud Gate bean
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.
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.
I for one welcome our fucking gigantic copyrighted chromium-bean wielding overlords.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
I copyrighted my own voice, so I could charge companies for phone calls when they start with an automated message that says "this call may be recorded for [whatever reason]..."
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''
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.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
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!
I'm a big tall mofo.
No, that's 17 USC 106A. The appropriate section of the law is 106(1), which states that the copyright holder has the exclusive right to reproduce the work. 106 applies to all copyrighted works. 106A merely adds some additional rights with regards to works of visual art; it doesn't supplant 106.
So yeah, if you take a photo of a copyrighted work, it will typically be infringing. There are some exceptions e.g. 107, 120, but no blanket exceptions that seem useful here.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
How about "land of the fee" instead?
Boy, you will really be in trouble if you take a picture of the building, with the image of the bean reflected in the glass, with the image of the building reflected in the bean... and so on... you will owe an infinate amount of royalties!
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
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.
"I'm sorry, but a photograph of a sculpture is not a reproduction of said sculpture. " - it's a transformative reproduction. There's enough creativity involved (choosing the angle etc) that if it were in the public domain, a picture if it would qualify for copyright; on the other hand, it's close enough to the original that it could be considered either a copy or a derivative work. These are the same issues that were litigated in the Bridegeman art Library v Corel case.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The traditional name for such a gift is "white elephant".
The usual story explaining this is that occasionally very pale elephants are born, and in SE Asia, these have been traditionally considered a sacred beast. If you offended a king or prince or other powerful person, one way of getting back was to give you a "gift" of a white elephant. This obligated you to care for the elephant for the rest of your/its life. This could be somewhat of a financial burden, of course.
Sounds like the people of Chicago have themselves such a gift. Especially if you can be sued and fined (or imprisoned?) for merely taking a picture of the gift at its very public location.
This is probably also a good exhibit in any discussion of changing the copyright laws.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I didn't see this list mentioned yet, the Picture Archive Council of America has a list of things you can't photograph.
..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.
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
The question is what is the legal status of "The Bean"?
Judge for yourself.
From http://www.publaw.com/photo.html/
Photographs of Property
Although property does not enjoy a right to privacy or publicity that there are other bodies of the law that might prohibit or restrict the unauthorized use of a photograph containing property. These bodies of law may include among others contract, trademark, unfair competition, copyright and trespass law.
The guiding principle, that of course is muddled with exceptions, is that as long as a photograph of private property is taken while the photographer is on public property or on property that is open to the public then it is permissible to publish that photograph without permission from the owner of the property.
However, there are exceptions where it may be necessary or advisable to obtain permission from the owner of the property. These exceptions may include among others, a photograph of (i) artwork displayed in a museum, gallery or other location, (ii) a well-recognized product, such as a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, where the manufacturer has been litigious with respect to commercial uses of photographs containing their product, (iii) a building where the building design is protected by a federal trademark registration - recently there was litigation involving a photograph of the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame, (iv) a "famous" pet such as Lassie, (v) interiors of private buildings and (vi) personal property, such as their clothing or jewelry, that could identify an individual.
Actually you've got it backwards (especially if you are using photography as your basis of knowledge).
The creator owns the copyright UNLESS they sign something specifically relinquishing it.
Try www.editorialphotographers.com if you're looking for a website with real insight into photography related copyright matters.