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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."
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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.
Before I got halfway into the summary, I started to think that this was some kind of self-referential post-modern art book.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
It can't be a breach of contract. I didn't agree to anything when I paid them money for the ticket. I certainly didn't agree to have conditions imposed on me after the sale. (I can't see a ticket until I pay money for it...) That's like, "by opening this package, you agree to the terms of the license enclosed". No, no I don't! Especially if I can't see the license until I pay money.
Also, how are they really going to enforce "no commercial use"? Let's say I take a picture with their permission under the no commercial use. I then turn around and give (not sell) the copyright to that picture to someone else. They can then use that picture commercially because there is no agreement forcing me to force any future copyright owner to agree to the conditions.
I'm sure the same argument would apply in national parks and similar, except that they are generally run by people with access to guns and prisons and such. Still, if I'm in country B, and I then return to my original country A, there isn't much the authorities in country B can do to stop me selling my pictures or using them for advertising or whatever.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!