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!
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!
Place your own work in front of the sculpture, and sue them because their mirror is replicating your copyrighted work.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.