The UK has passed a new act that has photographers and other creators worried about maintaining ownership of their images. The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act theoretically aims to make it easier for companies to publish orphan works, which are images and other content whose author or copyright can’t be identified. But whereas in the past, orphan works were often out-of-print books and historical unattributed photos, today millions of images are quickly orphaned online, as they move from Instagram to Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr without attribution along the way.
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Master songwriter Bob Dylan’s latest release looks like an invitation to steal. The cover of the 86-track compilation is a photograph of worn paper, like the surface of an old file folder. On the front is scribbled in marker: Bob Dylan: The Copyright Extension Collection Vol. 1. It may put the viewer in mind of System of a Down’s Steal This Album!, but theft is the last thing on Sony’s mind — the compilation is meant as a tactic to maintain copyright control of the music amidst Europe’s shifting public domain laws.
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Continuing a tradition we began last year, we’d like to wish you not just Happy New Year today, but also Happy Public Domain Day!
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The advantage of the New Year is that new and wonderful things are liberated enter the public domain. The Art and Artifice blog has posted a new list of artists whose works as of January 1, 2012 can be used, republished, translated or transformed till your heart’s content!
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The New York City Bar Association’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Appropriation: Contemporary Art After Cariou v. Prince” was, as billed, “a frank discussion of fair use and artistic practice.” And it was, indeed, frank, with all six panelists speaking plainly and tough audience questions encouraged. But it was also, clouded and meandering, the way that all intellectual property discussions are.
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Last Sunday, we linked to the story about a monkey who took a photo and resulting legal issue of copyright around the image. Well, Techdirt who first asked the question, “Who Owns the Copyright?” just received a takedown notice requesting that they remove the monkey photos.
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This week’s Required Reading examines how copyright law impacts images by animals, art’s LGBT problem, a history of English, China’s political prisoners, against reviews and Frank Lloyd Wright’s dislike of intellectuals.
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Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has initiated a course for contemporary visual artists to protect themselves and their art projects. It is an introduction to legal issues that is designed to make “legalese comprehensible and manageable.”
Continue Reading → Online we encounter more information than ever, but we also lose a hell of a lot. On May 3, the blog WeLoveViral posted a photos and a video titled “Swimming Pool Illusion.” The YouTube video embedded in the post is titled “Amazing Japanese Fake Pool” and has been viewed (as of today) 6,211,210 times!
The problem is that the pool is question is neither a pool, nor Japanese. In fact, it is an artwork by Argentinean artist Leandro Erlich titled “Swimming Pool” (2008).
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One of the most important social, political, and artistic concerns facing us today is the question of access: our ability to share media, our ability to take ownership of or simply to view films, music, and other forms of art. In the past, non-digital and only finitely reproducible media created a certain type of economic exchange and ownership which has long been upended by file sharing. Every day millions of people download and stream films on the Internet in an alternative form of exchange more related to cultural capital than economic capital. This is a political action accomplished as easily as downloading the flat version of Avatar.
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