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How Etsy Sellers and Big Business Make Money on Public Domain Art (vice.com)
"Some people have figured out how to turn reselling public domain content into side hustles," reports Motherboard:
On Etsy, there are thousands of listings for downloadable prints and lithographs that are in the public domain. The concept is pretty simple: these merchants round up and download the most visually beautiful art in the public domain, and then sell prints on Etsy. But some of them don't even go that far and just sell digital files of the art. Then, the buyers can print out the prints at whichever size they want and use them as they please...
With that being said, there's also big companies like Walmart that are also trying to earn money off art in the public domain... Similarly, the Museum of Modern Art is selling "Red Canna" by Georgia O'Keeffe, which is now in the public domain, for $166.50 (on sale from $185). For the love of god, don't pay $166.50 for something you could download for free and print yourself for less than $16.
Of course, none of this is bad necessarily. The public domain exists in part so that people can give formerly copyrighted works new life -- sometimes an iconic painting simply needs to become a bedspread. But now that many new works are available for free, it's worth having a quick look around if you're thinking of buying vintage art. You might be able to get it for free elsewhere.
To be fair, the Museum of Modern Art is a non-profit -- and reportedly avoids all government funding.
With that being said, there's also big companies like Walmart that are also trying to earn money off art in the public domain... Similarly, the Museum of Modern Art is selling "Red Canna" by Georgia O'Keeffe, which is now in the public domain, for $166.50 (on sale from $185). For the love of god, don't pay $166.50 for something you could download for free and print yourself for less than $16.
Of course, none of this is bad necessarily. The public domain exists in part so that people can give formerly copyrighted works new life -- sometimes an iconic painting simply needs to become a bedspread. But now that many new works are available for free, it's worth having a quick look around if you're thinking of buying vintage art. You might be able to get it for free elsewhere.
To be fair, the Museum of Modern Art is a non-profit -- and reportedly avoids all government funding.
It’s public domain. That’s the whole point. Since when is this news that matters?
It is good, without qualification. Anyone who is aware of how many things are gone forever because it was made effectively illegal to preserve them wants a bunch of no-talent hacks keeping old works alive as much as possible.
We can argue about the price, but there is definite utility in having someone else do the grunt work to produce a quality print and framing
A good quality print costs - heavy acid free paper, non-fugitive ink, high resolution image which was most likely created by a professional photographer or scanned by someone that really knows what they are doing. It may cost more if it is still under copyright but even a public domain image is going to cost if you want a good quality print. If Walmart and the Museum of Modern Art ever sell the same public domain image, pretty sure I can tell you which one will still look good ten years. Sometimes, you do get what you pay for.
To me it seems like the author would be one of those people that complains that a professional plumber/mechanic/electrician costs money. They could do the job themselves and then disaster would ensue. In this particular case they are complaining that a non-profit art organization has made a 24 x 20 print, framed it, and is selling it for $166 when they could have done the same for $16. I don't know about the quality of their work but I would assume that MoMA knows how to frame art doing and have done a decent job. Yes anyone could put in the work and effort to do the same. But I can tell you it would be more than $16 to do that job. The frame alone would probably be more.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.