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Art School's Expensive Art History Textbook Contains No Actual Art
Dr Herbert West writes "Students at Ontario College of Art and Design were forced to buy a $180 textbook filled with blank squares. Instead of images of paintings and sculpture throughout history (that presumably would fall under fair-use) the textbook for 'Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800' features placeholders with a link to an online image. A letter from the school's dean stated that had they decided to clear all the images for copyright to print, the book would have cost a whopping $800. The screengrabs are pretty hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is what great art has come to in our time: Michaelangelo's "Broken Link"
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
They seem to believe that a url where you can see it online is as good as having it printed right in fromt of you. Were I one of those parents I would just hand then a piece of paper with a link to a picture of $180. Fair is fair.
Well file this under no fucking shit.
Schools don't care, because they are making filthy money off of them, that have no incentive to do anything to reduce the prices.
Maybe the photographs they wanted to use were copyrighted, not the artwork, per se... they were too lazy to take their own pictures? For a $180 book they should have the budget. Heck, I've been to many of those museums, I'd be happy to go back and take pix if they'd pay for the trip.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Before I got halfway into the summary, I started to think that this was some kind of self-referential post-modern art book.
TFA doesn't say why they couldn't find another book (or I just did a poor read).
Art is hard to teach without pictures, just look at the examples given, "line, light, form, and color" without being about to see the line, light, form, and color...unless the placeholder borders are the lines, the form is the rectangle, and the color and light are combined by the stark white on the page where an image should be (God, it sounds like some obscure, abstract art already)..
Think about it like this, it is a programming book without code snippets, although having online snippets would make sense since it is programming and you program on a computer, so it's even worse than that.
You can't just go into a museum and take a picture of something and have it be good enough for print. You need the proper lighting, etc, etc.
That and presumably the museum could refuse you access if you were going to take pictures for commercial purposes.
Even a poor snapshot is better than a blank white square.
Link from summary - Salon: "This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic. "
Hyperallergic - "What is this, October!? According to a blog post"
Original Source: http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2012/09/16/copyright-and-the-pictureless-art-history-textbook/
Having attended University, I fail to see how someone is "forced" to buy a copy of the text. Borrowing a copy from the library, borrowing a copy from a friend, etc. are all ways to avoid being "forced" into buying a text.
Having made it through university without being "forced" to buy any texts for libral arts courses, I fail to see how the purchase of an art history text "forces" someone to actually buy the text.
That and it seems that the ebook edition has the pictures in it.
Stupid Canadian copyright law apparently (or inept publishers, there have been texts published with art pictures for a while right? Even in Canada?)
On the other hand, this is probably just a hoax. Nothing to see here, please move along. (no pun intended, really)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I call BS on the school. I took an Art History class in the US maybe 5 years ago, and it was chock full of really good reprints of famous works throughout history. The book cost me like $80.
Yes, while such slavish copying would not result in a copyrightable photograph here in the US, the school and textbook in this case are Canadian, and it is likely that photographs of public domain works in which nothing creative is added by the photographer are copyrightable anyway for some reason.
-- 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.
time to go bionic eyes and put barcodes everywhere...
The cost of hiring a professional photographer to travel to all these museums (and probably a bunch of private collectors) and take all these photographs is probably higher than just buying these photographs from someone.
Anyway at $180 a book one would expect to be able to get photos in it. The $800 each for copyright clearance as TFS claims sounds totally unrealistic to me. Works that are in museums should have photos available at low cost; privately owned works maybe a little more but also not too much. It's mostly stock photo work after all.
Old art works are not copyright protected of course. Everyone is free to make their own copies of such a work - make an identical painting, make a photo, print that photo.
However the newly made painting and photo do have copyright on them. Just like you can not copyright a building or a person, but you can copyright a photo of that building or person.
Honestly, they're art history students. I doubt they even know what money is, if they've even heard of it. I mean, if you're already charging for the world's most worthless education you're pretty much robbing someone, may as well grab all you can along the way.
...I picked up a DVDROM off the front of a magazine several years ago which had no less than 46,000 paintings digitally reproduced in printable resolution - including some of the more famous (Da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Il Cenacolo or L'Ultima Cena, Van Gogh's Tournesols, Van Eyck's Adam And Eve and The Adoration Of The Lamb, to name but a few). I've still got that disc somewhere. If the school need a decent source, they should see me.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Except the whole book is a scam.
Professors say, to teach this course I need four books! However, by piecing together a book from other books and paying only the necessary royalties I can save you (the students) money.
Never mind the professor/publisher makes a small sum from each student he sales his crap too. Unfortunately, looks like publishers are getting wise to the piece-mail offering and want in on the pie. The good news is now they can save a lot of money by not paying any royalties. Somehow, the savings don't get passed onto the consumer.
We had this happen a few times in college and some dealt with it as any good/scrupulous student would. They thoroughly made copies of the material and distributed accordingly. Fortunately, a few of us had the master print code for the printers and the university appeared to be happy to foot the bill for the copies.
As a small note, when confronted with the scam the professor completely defended his practice. Though no great portion of any piece of the book was used in great detail. I know, I neither purchased the book nor took one of the photocopies. The material presented for testing was nearly one hundred percent lecture material or wild draft speculation.
Egads. The least they could have done is print QR codes linking to online versions instead of blank space...
It'll be right at home in Alabama and Missouri, next to the science textbooks that contain no science...
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Even a poor snapshot is better than a blank white square
You forgot one thing -
A book filled with poor snapshots will not make Slashdot
A book filled with blank white squares ... will
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This sounds like something from a Stanislaw Lem short story. Pirx visits a planet where IP laws have gone mad but everybody goes along with the insanity.
It's a crying shame that no other art history books have ever been written or published. Ever.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Anyway at $180 a book one would expect to be able to get photos in it. The $800 each for copyright clearance as TFS claims sounds totally unrealistic to me.
Perhaps it was just a small run book for one specific class at a specific school. So while the licensing fee for copyright clearance could be nominal, it might still be a lot of paperwork to be done, and a prohibitive cost for a book that might sell 60 copies a semester...
It would cut down on a lot of legwork, to just not bother with printing images in the first place, and give students links instead.
Although, of course it devalues the textbook as well (IMO)... for no pictures or diagrams, the book should be less than $50 a pop.
Anyone here teaching a course might be interested in the comprehensive new textbook I'm writing. It has an attractive hard cover, a quality binding, and a single page inside which lists the URLs for Google and Wikipedia. My planned retail price is $499, but I'm willing to offer a volume discount.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
There is a huge misunderstanding in the summary about what is copyright (the art vs the images of the art), and the comments so far do poor job of explaining it, so I'll try. What the textbook maker does not want to pay for is licencing is photos of the works of art. If you wanted to take your own photo of any of these works of art you could (so long as the museum allowed photography), but without setting up, lighting or permission of the museum to use flash, a nice camera, or the proper angle your photo might look like shit. Especially on larger images in poorly lit churches with bars over the chapel in which a work of art is hung, getting your own photo is next to impossible. Museum and private collections take super high quality photos of their work and then licence out these images, using these fees to support the collection. Why they would charge $180 for a book which is essential just text I don't understand. No one out side of these classes will buy the book at $180 if it has no images, so why not just cut the blank spots, and have an all text textbook that has footnotes or side-notes with links to the art the text is talking about? You'd save a number of pages of space from the new layout, and you no longer have to pay for glossy photo pages, you could even make it a paper back and reduce the price to $50 or $60 and probably make the same overall profit off the book, if not more.
The book likely is authored by someone who works at the university. So they write the book with all the pictures. Publisher says "Pictures are real expensive we'll have to charge a ton." So they leave the pictures out, and require the students to buy the book anyhow.
You often find that the very worst textbooks are required by the teacher that wrote them (or they were written by the department head or so on).
The next Slashdot Idle story will be ready soon, but Fark users can beat the rush and see it early!
Required reading for internet skeptics
So where the fuck did the rest of the $180 cost come from? Oh right, raw profit and instructor kickbacks...
Presuming the photos were taken to portray the art as faithfully as possible, then the photos are not copyrightable. There is no "creativity" in making a copy, any more than a Xerox machine owns a copyright of every copy it makes. Even if it takes considerable skill and time to get such a faithful photo, it's still not "creative" to copy something faithfully.
Learn to love Alaska
But you can't copyright something that isn't creative, and a picture of something designed to be as un-creative as possible (faithful to the original) is not copyrightable, even if it takes considerable skill and time to achieve the effect.
Learn to love Alaska
You can't go into a museum and take a photograph, BECAUSE THEY DON'T LET YOU. They'll provide photographs if you want, but only under license.
So the paintings are out of copyright, but the DRM, erm phyical barrier to them, WILL GO ON FOREVER. This is necessary to encourage Picaso to paint more painting, Van Gogh needs to be rewarded to paint more.
because I almost choked laughing... oh my, oh my... what has this world come to. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" and here is copyright in 2012 managing to do the exact opposite of BOTH these noble goals.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
I've used some of their equipment. It sucks. Everything from China sucks. It's made by chinks.
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
So this book just contains links to graphic material that might o might not be copyrighted, but hosted and provided by others not related to the book?
I'm I the only one who thinks that sounds a lot like a torrent list site?
I'd like a dozen of these please. Can you deliver them to the principal of Sequoia High? He receives packages on my behalf all the time. Oh, and he wants a pizza. Just bill him. He's cool.
So you're saying that if I take my $500 dollar camera to a museum and snap a picture of a picture then I can sell it on for $800 a pop...per viewer? What are we now, a nation of TicketBastard scalpers? That's what this is, a copyright fueled analog of scalping. Eventually we're all going to say no thanks to art, music or science. They'll eventually become too expensive for common folk.
What gets me is that these people demand power plants and roads and infrastructure. Are these people going to complain in 20 years when we all collectively shrug and say "what's a road?" or "what's a power plant?" because we weren't allowed to see pictures of them?
Humanity has cashed out.
at least the Goatse chapter is not as scary now
Table-ized A.I.
Making a photo of an existing painting is creative, as you created something that wasn't there before.
You are probably thinking of the popular definition of "creative" which means doing something original, special, and not obvious. That's another meaning of the same word. Luckily the makers of copyright law were smarter than that.
And even though I wouldn't call your comment special or anything, you still own the copyright on your comment for the simple reason that you created it.
This is how many public domain works end up recopyrighted. Nobody is allowed to take photos of the original, and the only existing photos are copyrighted. This especially happens after an historic work of art has had some work done to restore it to its original glory. The old photos all show the unrestored version, and all photos of the restored version are recent and copyrighted. It's an ugly practice and needs to be outlawed.
Fraudulent claims of copyright requiring 'clearance' and (ab)use of gatekeepers to control access to public domain works, where no copyrights in the original works exist, is a common method of revenue raising that is well known and nothing new. "Copyfraud and Other Abuses of Intellectual Property Law" by Jason Mazzone attempts to address this and other abuses of so-called "intellectual property" law with suggestion of ways to reform the law. Very US-centric but an interesting read anyway.
(I am in no way affiliated with the author or publisher.)
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Why not go whole hog? You put the text of the book online, with links, free for everyone. For your class you charge a $200 "book fee". If anyone complains you give them a second URL together with a username and password. They log in, enter their name in field, and send it to you. That was the "homework", and what they get for $200 and asking silly questions.
Sign up now. If you join after the start of the semester it'll be $250. Actually, make that a round $300. And your password will be "imacunt".
A US federal court decision is hardly relevant in a question of Canadian copyright law. (The Ontario College of Art and Design is, as ought to be clear from the name, located in the Canadian province of Ontario.)
Thankyou, I have added your domains and associated IP scopes to my global blacklist.
That still doesn't clear the makers of the book of seeming to be incompetent and lazy. And that's quite a bit of incompetence, for $180 a pop. Though one could say these students should be learning something with economic substance instead, but that doesn't clear the authors and gee, looking at it that way, this book does look like a barely-disguised attempt at fleecing the gullible. I may be out of a job right now, despite having some actual skills, but I'm actually glad I didn't go to that art college.
the textbook for 'Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800' features placeholders with a link to an online image.
I hope they don't plan to publish in the Netherlands, since linking is infringing there now.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The future of education in the digital age? Courses unable to provide the information they are teaching because the anti-piracy laws mean only the original publisher of the material is allowed to talk about it?
There are more Ontarios in the United States than there are in Canada if I'm not mistaken.
In all seriousness, why couldn't they just get a book with the pictures and then stick with that book for the duration of the class? Used books are cheap. Book rentals are cheaper. But if the school buys the books and loans them to the students in the class, that would be the cheapest. Assuming it's not illegal to rent or loan said books.
Why do we apply copyright to photos of works of art? They've already been created: there's no extra benefit to incentivise their creator.
If a book with images costs $800 and one with blank placeholders costs $180, imagine what a book would cost that was printed on 1/4th the amount of paper and just included URL's instead of blank placeholder boxes.
In fact, why not just sell a $0.01 Post-it with a download link to a PDF file written on it?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Don't pretend that your definition of "creativity" is the same as copyright law's. Just because you produce something that wasn't there before doesn't make it subject to copyright law protection, not in the U.S. at least. There are plenty of things that you can make that weren't there before that won't be subject to copyright protection, and making faithful scans or photographs of flat art is one of them. What usually happens is that even though the photograph may not be subject to any protection, the terms under which the museums let the photographer take the photographs mandate that the museums retain the rights. This is a contractual obligation and doesn't need copyright law to stand. The museums then decide on what terms they let anyone get access to said photographs. In a contract you sign with the museum (or a licensing agency), you, again, contractually oblige not to disseminate copies except in a set of predetermined circumstances. This doesn't need copyright law to have standing either. If someone copies that picture from you, though, then it's fair game as long as you didn't facilitate it (or whatever other terms of the contract there may be as to safeguarding of the picture). Once those pictures end up somewhere where others have access to them, they may often be legally copied even if everyone pretends it isn't so. One usually doesn't sign contracts when buying books, so that pretty much means that apart from inapplicable copyright law there's nothing else stopping you from copying. Of course copying dithered printed reproductions is somewhat silly, you'd need quite high resolution scanners to do a good job of it, and then you probably want to retain the dithered color separation unaltered for reprinting, ideally at similar scale.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
If they are trying to make a point about copyright I have to assume that they released their book into the public domain. In this case, how can they expect someone to buy a physical copy of their book for 180 USD? A small amateur binders should be able to print a decent physical copy for much less than that.
Is some of the price set to go to charity or something?
This cant be right
The technology is quickly getting to a point where you'll be able to take quite amazing pictures using nothing more but a hand-held custom camera. These days you can illuminate the scene with infrared light and use that for realtime motion tracking augmentation to a built-in inertial reference platform. This is used to stabilize a longer-exposure done on the main imager. Even in poor light on modern imaging chips it won't take longer than a couple seconds to get enough light to have decent noise. Of course obstructions may be a problem, but you can always take multiple exposures from slightly different angles and then reproject the images and stich them up. No biggie.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Definition: Pulling a Romney. When you publicly reveal such contempt for your stakeholders that you render your entire enterprise meaningless. It is as if you are the captain of the Titanic, and of your own volition you create the iceberg that sinks your ship. You are not just shooting yourself in the foot, you are negating your entire existence.
Why is Snark Required?
The ticket will have 'no photography permitted' printed on it, if you tried to use those images in commercial work, they can pursue you for what is basically breach of contract.
Museums license the images out, some more permissive than others, this is typical:
http://www.metmuseum.org/research/image-resources
I expect the idea is that the students go and find the images online, print them out and stick them in.
It's more of a workbook than a textbook.
"I'd be happy to go back and take pix if they'd pay for the trip."
- Cost of hotels and airflights around the world will be the small part of the expenses. How much does it cost to ask the Louvre in Paris to close their gallery and reposition the Mona Lisa for you to get a nice shot, then ask the Vatican if they'd close the Sistine Chapel while you take photos, the big galleries in the USA to retrieve their most priceless paintings from the secure vaults and set them up so you can "take pix"?
That I think will be where the costs are... hence probably cheaper when writing art history books to purchase the rights to use an existing high quality image.
5. Profit ...?
Perhaps it was just a small run book for one specific class at a specific school. So while the licensing fee for copyright clearance could be nominal, it might still be a lot of paperwork to be done, and a prohibitive cost for a book that might sell 60 copies a semester...
You're missing the point. Why publish a book with no photos? What is the fucking point?
Its worse, even the original publisher will now have to pay for the authorized use of controlled content items otherwise in the public domain. Uses will conflict, law suits will fly like flocks of birds on the wing and ultimately every thought, every word, every idea will be locked down tighter than Lady Guinevere's chastity belt. You so much as hum more than 3 notes in public and a duly appointed officer of the court will pull you up so hard and so fast, you'll need to check to if your feet are still in the shoes. The stupid is accelerating people. It was fine a hundred years ago when your stupid only meant you'd have to learn to walk without the toe on your left foot anymore... damn farm machinery. Your neighbor couldn't even hear you scream curses, nobody was disturbed. Things worked just fine in spite of the stupid, because the percentage of stupid per unit mass was low.
Flash forward a century and now I can pay some imbecile to go to Washington, to have another imbecile pass a law that will require people have to drive with their children glued to the roof. And they'll do it, sure as Gawd made little green apples these crazy fucks will try to pass this law, and if I throw enough money around it'll pass, and the Supreme Court will find it Constitutional. We now live in a time where you can make people do anything if you just throw money around. You can remove consciousness from future generations by making it pay per view. You can put all our rights in little jars and show them in a museum. You can even turn flesh and blood people into "Human Resource Assets". Makes you want to throw up just a little, doesn't it? I don't know any more where to get off this bus, but I want off. Either someone please steer this thing in a sane direction or let me off at the next stop thanks.
Copyrights are Copywrongs.
Patents are patently absurd.
Fuck all who spray forth their individual spittle made of the very languages given freely to all and having worth only due to the culture to in which they share, and then choose to restrict who may share their works. Fuck them all -- Abolish Copyrights. Abolish Patents. You are ALL fools if you do not.
Have you guys seen the new art history book I wrote?
It's waaaaaay better than that Canadian book. I've embedded the pictures right in the book:
A Brief History Of Art
(Please send me $180 if you click on it)
Thanks!
In those examples, the photos fall under copyright, not the original work.
It makes sense once you employ the kind of math that turns a $20 textbook into a $180 textbook.
Seems legit.
Although, of course it devalues the textbook as well (IMO)... for no pictures or diagrams, the book should be less than $50 a pop.
Are you mad! An art appreciation book with no pictures... here let me frame this in a context you might better grasp. You go to an adult bookstore. You see a hot little DVD, the clerk says "Oh, great choice, this is so hot, that'll be $180." You say $180! How can this possibly be! Is it that good?" He assures you it is, so you put down your money, and go home, pop it in the player and every time someone is about to consummate the boom chicka wow wow, the image is replaced with the URL pointing you to a site where you can see people engaging in sexual acts. Now, tell me, how are you feeling? How much is that DVD worth? Would you say that DVD is now worth only $50? Would "Devalue" even be the first word that popped into your head?
This is education as rape. This is copyright gone bug fuck. This is student abuse in no uncertain terms and a dark cloud that threatens to extinguish education as we know it. What this is not is the devaluation of a text book. This is the devaluation of future society.
Err in light of the topic of the debate, THAT IS A GOOD THING.
Well yes on my $1000 calibrated monitor they look fantastic. On my sister's $500 piece of crap laptop on the other hand it looks complete different. It looks completely different even on the same screen depending on where you stand, what angle the screen is on, what the backlight is doing.
Screw the resolution.
You are not allowed to make an identical painting. That would be punished as counterfeit.
My guess would be it's a ploy to "encourage" students to by the digital version which has the photos hotlinked. If my hunch is right, it'll cost the publisher nothing to "print" the digital version, but they'll still charge ~$180 for it. And the students can't sell it used to next year's students.
But the problem is that the only available images of the original work in its current state are copyrighted.
Why not just throw in a free copy of this and refer to the page numbers!!?
Seriously, I can walk into any local bookshop and browse through any number of books with reproductions of famous artworks, most of which are pretty cheap. They could do worse than picking up a copy of "The Story of Art" by Gombrich.
Failing that, could they not take the position that Wikipedia do: 'The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain, and that claims to the contrary represent an assault on the very concept of a public domain'?
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
i imagine someone will scan the physical book and combine it with the pictures online and put it on pirate bay, and then email all the students.
You are probably thinking of the popular definition of "creative" which means doing something original, special, and not obvious. That's another meaning of the same word. Luckily the makers of copyright law were smarter than that.
The example I gave in another post is that a Xerox machine doesn't get copyright on the copies that come out. It's creating something that wasn't there before. But it took no creativity to produce it, just as a mechanical replica (by means of a photograph) designed to have the least creativity possible (so as to be faithful to the original) is not copyrightable.
Luckily the makers of copyright law were smarter than that.
So that's why the courts have decided that a photograph taken to approximate a scan includes no creative element, even if it took significant cost, effort and skill to produce. Though they have protected photos of buildings, as they require a choice of location to shoot from, and will always have perspective issues. But a scale sculpture of it would not be covered, even if extraordinary skill was required, as it requires no creativity to produce.
Learn to love Alaska
If it's been "restored", then its current state is no longer the original work. It's a derivative work, at best.
Why would anyone in their right mind purchase art books which contain no art references. A link to a website just doesn't cut it. At $180 I want a text book that either prints the images in the damn book or provides a color calibration device and it's own viewer program to ensure I'm seeing correct colors. It's far from just calibrate your display and all color is correct, there are so many other factors involved that are mostly out of your control unless your very meticulous about what parts you buy, what software you install, and regular maintenance to remove the poorly engineered codecs that random software likes to install for you.
Why would the school endorse this book? It just makes no sense.
How much does it cost to ask the Louvre in Paris to close their gallery and reposition the Mona Lisa for you to get a nice shot, then ask the Vatican if they'd close the Sistine Chapel while you take photos, the big galleries in the USA to retrieve their most priceless paintings from the secure vaults and set them up so you can "take pix"?
Don't most of those places get funding from the government? I.e. From taxes.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You're wrong. It's NOT possible to copyright photographs of two-dimensional art. Copyright law only allows copyright on "original works of art". And photographs of text and pictures are not original. And there's not only the law (just about anywhere in the world, including the US and Canada) which doesn't give them copyright, but there are also court decisions support that.
This doesn't keep photographers from claiming copyright, but actually, what they're doing is FRAUD. And the people doing that book could have just ignored these fraudulent claims. There was no need at all to "clear copyrights", because there aren't any. And if the photographer is unhappy and sues -- tough luck, he's actually the criminal trying to defraud the public.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
You're only right for three-dimensional works of art. With two-dimensional ones, you're dead wrong. It's not possible to copyright a photograph, scan or photocopy of a picture or text, because it's lacking originality. Just read your copyright-law.
So anyone claiming copyright on a two-dimensional replication of a two-dimensional work he does not hold copyright on is simply trying to the DEFRAUD the copyright holder -- and if that work happens to be in the public domain, he's trying to defraud the public.
I'm totally baffled that so many here believe anyone can claim copyright on a photo of a public domain picture. Propaganda must have worked wonders. But it's just not what the law says. Not in Europe, not in the USA, not in Canada.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
I went to the article and the "links" in the sample page all directed students to the e-book of "Art History" by Marilyn Stokstad. Is there a free e-book of this out there? It's like $184 for a Kindle version. Am I missing something?
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
According to the summary, it was not an art appreciation book, it was an art history textbook. So your comparison to a pron dvd does not fit. It would be more like buing a book about anatomy and psychology of sex, and instead of images of sexual acts to illustrate the text, they would put in links to pron sites.
I think 180 is ridiculus, but if the text was good, $50 is, IMHO, not unreasonable. It would be better if it was an electronic version, with clickable links, though.
AccountKiller
Why they would charge $180 for a book which is essential just text I don't understand.
ALL the arguments and explanations about Copyright and whatnot are irrelevant in this situation - it was used as an excuse.
Since the only people who will pay are the students, the school and department won't give a shit. But if this happened in industry, Prentice Hall would get sued.
I think this sends an excellent message to students: don't even think about making money over the long term from royalties.
Even a poor snapshot is better than a blank white square.
Not if the intention is for the students to draw the images themselves.
That is rediculous, no art in an art textbook. That would be like having no equations in a math textbook or no electic circuits in a circuit textbook. I think when it comes to students and textbooks there needs to be a lighter stance taken to fair use, what good can come from holding back information from students trying to learn.
Well, this case deals with Canada, and who knows what their laws are all about.
But in the US, anyway, a work cannot be copyrighted unless it is original to the author. If only part of it has originality, then only that part (at best) is copyrightable.
Check out 17 USC 102(a):
Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.
You may also wish to read the Bridgeman case which is the leading precedent around these parts.
-- 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.
I thought there was an exception in copyright law allowing copying for educational use, whether it be the (probably expired) copyright on the original work of art, or the photo of said work.
Jfhdfjf
It is pretty clear what happened. They are using a system that automatically
downloads and inserts the images at the time the book is typeset. On the final
run just before printing, someone accidentally switched on the draft mode.
Nobody checked the pdf file, and they ended with several hundreds printed textbooks with placeholders for all the images.
They wanted to throw them away, but someone had the brilliant idea to pretend it was done on purpose, because of copyright issues.
AccountKiller
Well more to the point they decided to publish and sell a book (and a facultity/department actually choose to buy) that wasn't complete.
I am sorry if the publisher saw this they should had gone, and stated we cannot publish this book. I use to write software for publishing companies, and it takes into accounts of things like pictures and paying for rights and royalties, paper pages, bounding extra media.... They should have did that work before they published it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why do you think that I'm a "copyright shill?" I don't pretend to like what the law currently is, but I'm not going to ignore the reality we're currently facing either. I feel that only if people know what the law really is will there be enough of a call for reform that we might actually get it. (Also, I was talking about contract and sales law, not copyright)
I will say that I think the underlying idea of copyright is sound; I'm not in favor of abolition on a matter of principle, although I would support it if I felt that there were no better alternative. But I don't think that this is what you meant. I'll bet you haven't seen my posts on what I'd like to see copyright become.
-- 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.
http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/100t7i/this_is_my_todays_newspaper/
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_374/12368051426X3544.jpg
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_374/12368051426X3544.jpg
A professor I knew who taught anatomy at the local medical school said they were using Grey's anatomy texts. Another professor, understandably shocked, asked "Aren't there any newer textbooks with color pictures of real anatomy they could use?" The first one replied that, yes, but they were copyrighted and generally couldn't be used for overheads without highway robbery, and the texts were expensive for the students. He said they would simply refuse to buy them, which wouldn't do well for the school's ranking.
I'm guessing the situation isn't quite the same between medical schools and (ahem) art schools. If your art students at your art school don't know art history, well, they can still find jobs in retail just as easily. Still, students there should try striking and seeing where that gets them. If no one takes the class and the school has a bunch of texts printed up and not bought, that's going to be an incentive to change in some way. If it's a required class, try not buying them and just google it or fake it.
Ugly indeed. As an example, I give you this:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/23/church-masterpiece-restored-as-mr-bean-would-do-it/
imagine what a book would cost that was printed on 1/4th the amount of paper and just included URL's instead of blank placeholder boxes.
Now lets take that even further - Since this book has no pictures, a student's only reason to buy it comes from the questions likely to end up as homework assignments.
So, imagine a book that has only the chapter questions ("paraphrased" of course), and a link to Wikipedia for the answers.
Hmmm... On second thought, don't imagine that. I think I need to go file a business method patent now...
well computer science is NOT IT and borderline coding (varied based on the school).
Go to a IT trade / tech school and you will find computers in them.
but why do you need a Art major for job working with adobe CS and other tools??? When you should learn that at a 2 year or less tech / trade school or even own your own.
The Idea of a 4 year college with mostly theory based classes is a hold over from the past that we need to fix.
This is student abuse in no uncertain terms and a dark cloud that threatens to extinguish education as we know it.
In all honesty, education has been very messed up for at least a few decades now, but this may help tick off enough people that we get something better.
some schools have books as part of the class cost.
AKA is like having all the BS stuff like forced resort fees build in to the list price. Vs say having one list price and then when you get there they say you must pay and no refunds.
"A professor I knew who taught anatomy at the local medical school said they were using Grey's anatomy texts."
Hardly. They would use the book from Henry Gray and not a script from a bad TV show.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray's_Anatomy
i can see this as the next frontier of apple, selling ebooks with pristine white images!
Hahahah, I'm not saying what you said isn't a problem. I'm saying that your statement "the public domain work ends up recopyrighted" is inaccurate - the painting itself isn't suddenly under copyright because photos of it are under copyright. An observation that was apparently worth "-1 zomg flamewurthy" to someone.
What is missed by all the commentators is this simple startling fact. But for a lucky few get to teach art history creating more art history majors, majority of them will end up in some minimum wage job. After graduating as an Arts history major, how many hours of toiling in minimum wage will it take for them to earn back that 180$?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well, this wasn't the BEST medical school. The students all really loved crappy soap operas and hated reading.
(yes, you're right, my mistake)
No, I meant literally. You don't find computers in books.
A photograph of a computer isn't functional, theoretically a photograph of a piece of art might be useful (but maybe not, if you're shrinking it down to book size it might lose some of its appeal).
Also, as I pointed out to someone else, most of the coding books you get these days have the code online and the text just references the code online. At least in my little corner of the CS universe which is AI/Graphics/Game programming/HPC.
Could you please cite the case in Canada that was decided the opposite way to the U.S. Bridgeman case?
Can you or anyone else cite an example of a Canadian case that was decided the opposite way to the U.S. Bridgeman case?
I've you haven't seen it yet: Google Art Project
Google street view style 360 degree angle views through the museums and incredibe high resolution images of each painting, fully zoomable to where you can see cracks in the paint.
Were that the case, surely a $20 blank pad with nice paper would suffice.
Expensive textbooks are something that students commonly complain about as a horrible offence against justice.
However....
We have a real problem of over-education in the developed world. There are more educated people in the job market than there is demand for educated labor. Worse yet, these educated people are burdened with lifelong debt that they can't repay because it survives bankruptcy and the only jobs they can get don't pay squat (due to the over-abundance problem just mentioned).
There is no fair and just way to solve this problem. Everyone wants to get a high-paying job that engages their finest talents, but there aren't enough such jobs to go around so not everyone can. We used to solve this problem by making education so expensive it was only available to a small subset of the population. Thus, the free market balanced itself out. But now, under the auspices of equal opportunity, we create a much worse situation...a nation of people in debt and depressed because they are way overqualified for their job, and because the dream they were promised has vanished in a puff of smoke.
It's just that they're all pictures of the overlords of the universe: invisible pink unicorns.
Plus a few pictures of the god that Atheists worship.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
The students should all march into the deans office and punch him right in the mouth for that stunt.
Who the fuck approved THIS textbook for use in that class?
I have an Art History book from college propping up one of my monitors right now that's full of pictures.
Keep in mind that part of the price is the size of the audience. I've become quite aware of this as I have some niche interests in the realm of scuba diving -- they're not cheap, even though manufacturing should be. I have an expensive computer which would be worth maybe $400 if it had mass appeal. Mine was numbered 3879 so I get why it was considerably more. The research, development, and building the manufacturing process have to be offset somehow...and with an art history major being a frequent punchline, I doubt their audience is large enough to charge much less than $180 and pay for the publisher fees, time spent writing, researching, revising, etc.
While it's true that a book about prehistory to 1800 won't need much updating, short term returns are a necessity in the publishing world.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
That's the second huge piece of spam I've seen posted today on /., and before such things were so rare as not to be remembered.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You're missing the point. Why publish a book with no photos? What is the fucking point?
Most books I have contain words to be read. In this case they are probably refering the the color composition of the white rectangles.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
With a good telephoto lens you can stand away from the crowd and have a tripod setup to take your picture. Since it is on a tripod you can do a long exposure to compensate for not having a flash. I would suggest setting up near the Virgin of the Rocks (unless they have moved it) as the big draw is Mona Lisa and almost no one goes to that section to see anything else.
Time to offend someone
816
Read the alt text.
I think 180 is ridiculus, but if the text was good, $50 is, IMHO, not unreasonable.
No, it is in fact very unreasonable. An art history book without photos is like a mathematics book without numbers.
Free Martian Whores!
(though right now I am very tired, I had to be up all night, not work related).
so were you watching porn, or just setting up more sock puppet accounts? or did you have a late night cult meeting to attend?
one things for sure - there was no woman involved.
Art book: $180
Art degree: $60000
Interest on art degree: $200000
Working as a WalMart cashier for your entire career because you have an art degree: Priceless.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
An art history book without photos is like a mathematics book without numbers.
Hmm, let me see: on my shelf, I have about 50 math books. They all have some numbers in them, namely the page numbers, but more than half of them don't really have more than that. You probably would not find a math book with only page numbers, but there are math books that do perfectly fine with just numbers 0 and 1 (and I don't mean digits 0 and 1, I mean numbers 0 and 1).
Anyway, when I was in college, all textbooks, including the art history ones, were printed on the cheapest available paper, with very bad black and white reproductions of whatever graphics was necessary. Most of the art works were not available on the internet, either, and students were usually referred to either the actual works, if they were in a local museum, or to a high quality prints in a book that was on reserve in the library.
AccountKiller
You are not allowed to make an identical painting. That would be punished as counterfeit.
You are indeed allowed to make an identical painting, so long as the original isn't under copyright protection and you don't try to pass it off as the original.
Make an exact copy of the Mona Lisa and sell it as a reproduction, legal.
Make an exact copy of a Rothenberg, punished for copyright infringement.
Make an exact copy of the Mona Lisa and sell it as the original, punished for fraud.
Free Martian Whores!
My approach:
1. Write open-source rocket science textbook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods and give it away
2. Get hired by someone like Elon Musk or Richard Branson to help build their next space project.
3. Profit!
Free textbook is a nice side effect, since printed textbooks are too damn expensive, but the payoff is someone actually building one of the projects in the book. The book just serves as advertising for the ideas.
Where I work, most disruptive commercial photography is done outside normal visitor hours (i.e. between 18:00 and 09:00).
However, all images we have are available for license for commercial use, and can be browsed and bought on a website. Prices for a book seem to be between £30 and £200, depending how large you want to print it and the number of books being produced. I expect a non-profit would be charged much less, if anything.
(We do get funding from the government; charging to license images for commercial use reduces the amount of funding we need.)
I'm not a lawyer, nor am I familiar with every country's laws. HOWEVER, there's a critical difference between taking a still in a museum of a 100+ year old painting and making a video in a theater of a first run movie.
The video is an illegal copy of a copyrighted work - It's generally less than a year old. The painting is OUT OF COPYRIGHT, therefore duplicating it is 100% legal, no matter what the owner(museum) says. "No Commercial photography" has no force of law, other than the possibility of kicking you out.
Still, to my knowledge, educational use of the artwork is incredibly cheap, depending on the resolution. It indicates to me that the creators of the book were horrible/lazy negotiators, it shouldn't have been $800 for a bunch of(say) ~3" diagonal sized pictures of various works.
I don't read AC A human right
...but getting public funding means they can't act about any of it as if its private property.
They are just the caretakers of the public domain - not its owners or managers.
It is not their duty to make a profit but to assure the proper level of care for the works so that they may remain available to the public, now and in the future.
That is why they get to have a part of the public money. Instead of say... public schools.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As mentioned earlier, Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp, decided, at least in the USA, that a 'close as possible' copy of a public domain work can't be copyrighted, due to lack of originality.
Yes, this 'discourages' creating a digital master, but most of the time there's enough public interest to create one anyways, at least if the work has enough merit.
I don't read AC A human right
they could have got that lady who "restored" that one picture to paint versions of all the artwork for this book.
Artists have been the ones pushing the hardest for copyrights. They have made all of our lives miserable. Restaurants can't play music without copyright cops beating up the owner, fitness centres can't play music without copyright cops shaking down the owner, you can't even modify an image and add it as background to something else you've done, its all under heavy lockdown. The artists have done this. Now comes the flipside. Links in an artbook instead of pictures. Instead of being given a physical book, a PDF with links would have been better (instead of costing $180, they probably could have gotten away with $40). Instead, they pay $180 for the privilege of browsing the web. Have fun with that.
I took a look... there were no blank white squares. I want my money back.
It's an ugly practice and needs to be outlawed.
So what you are suggesting is, if I let you into my house, I HAVE to let you take pictures?
Just because something doesn't have a copyright on it, doesn't mean you can copy it. If the owner won't let you make a copy, then you can't make a copy.
I would love you to back that up with a legal reference such as a particular case that delivered this as the final verdict.
You can claim it to be true and I wish it was, but I do need to see the proof.
XML - A clever joke would be here if
You don't consider it a problem that public domain works become inaccessible, despite interest in them?
Making a photo of an existing painting is creative, as you created something that wasn't there before.
Great, so when i copy a movie or a book, i can claim copyright on the copy?
A US federal court decision is hardly relevant in a question of Canadian copyright law.
Which Canadian case was decided in a way contrary to the U.S. Bridgeman case?
You can't just go into a museum and take a picture of something and have it be good enough for print. You need the proper lighting, etc, etc.
That and presumably the museum could refuse you access if you were going to take pictures for commercial purposes.
you can do as well as the average magazine picture with a good camera and SOME expertise. Too dim? Use a tripod.
the museum should not allow photoflash as the UV degrades pigments.
But can you see the paint in the cracks. Isn't it weird how they follow you round the room?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apple have patented them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Four-color high quality lithographic reproductions of all that art, with the proofs, the layout, the press-checks, sign-offs, specialty inks, and on and on would have cost $800 dollars.
But what a book!
My father took art history as an art-teaching major in the 50s and his professor swore by this one book. I think it was $200. My dad bought it. Full color reproductions of 50 master works. He still has it and used it every year in his teaching. Done right, this is an investment.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
A book filled with blank white squares ... will [make slashdot / the media]
A pathetic goal for a textbook, but understandable in the context of business.
You know, the idea that "There's no such thing as bad press" .
THINK! It's patriotic
Lord, this is funny... 'the book from Henry Gray'
Surely you recognize that 'Gray's' Anatomy isn't the same thing Gray wrote... they just use his name in respect, in the title?
Or do you think that Fred Jane still works for IHS?
Of course, had you actually READ the wiki reference you provided, you might have figured this out, but I guess it was too hard to read past the first paragraph or too... ;-}
...at its finest. This is a fine example of how our education system works -- you pay for an expensive education and then never stand a chance of having the best education in the world because you don't live in Finland.
Yep, shit's bad and about to get worse.
Pull up a stump to the campfire, put a marshmallow on a stick and read this:
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-342
Your last two sentences really reminded me of it... creepy shit.