The United Kingdom has reluctantly joined 19 other EU countries “adopting the droit de suite, or artist’s resale right, which requires sellers to pay artists (or their heirs) as much as 4% of the price every time a piece is resold, for up to 70 years after an artist’s death. (The droit does not apply to sales between two collectors.)” The rule, which applies retroactively to art created in the past and already in collectors’ hands, is likely to harm British galleries and dealers — and perhaps artists as well — by driving the international art market to countries that do not enforce such rules. “The cream of the crop of important modern and contemporary art has already fled Europe and is beginning to leave London in anticipation of 2006,” says Dallas economist David Kusin, who conducted a study on the subject for the European Fine Art Foundation. (Susan Adams, Forbes, Jun. 20).
Posts Tagged ‘art and artists’
Untraceable — but still under copyright
Due in part to expansions of copyright law lobbied for by Disney and other giants, a huge volume of writing, art and music which would otherwise by now have entered the public domain is still under copyright, even though the rights to much of it — things like picture postcards, ephemeral commercial illustration and sheet music issued by long-defunct publishers or with no identifying marks at all — cannot be traced to any particular current successor-owner even by good faith efforts. Per Wired News:
According to comments submitted to the copyright office, one married couple couldn’t get a wedding photograph repaired: The photography shop would not scan and reprint the photo because it was taken by a professional and the shop was afraid of violating copyright, even though the photographer was out of business.
“For heaven’s sake, this is a photograph of me and my wife, and I can’t have it legally repaired!!! Wrong, wrong, wrong!” wrote William Haynes.
(Katie Dean, “Copyright Reform to Free Orphans?”, Apr. 12).
Iowa Poetry Awards
“An online group of self-described ‘literary watchdogs’ is threatening a class-action lawsuit against the UI Press, alleging that recent awards for poetry were unfairly given to writers with ‘illicit’ ties to the program. Postings at foetry.com demand a return of $20 reading fees after the 2004 Iowa Poetry Awards — open to anyone inside or outside the university — were given to people with ties to the UI. University officials note that the contest employs blind judging, in which the authors’ names are removed from the manuscripts.” (Drew Kerr, “Two allege bias in UI Press poetry awards”, Daily Iowan, Feb. 28)(via Schaeffer who got it from Maud Newton).
“One-Question Interview: Tom Perrotta”
From this August:
Yankee Pot Roast: Which do you prefer (to munch on, not to adorn book covers): Pepperidge Farm Goldfish or chocolate-chip cookies?
Tom Perrotta: I prefer chocolate chip cookies. They don’t have as many lawyers.
Background detail: Malcolm Jones, “Fiction: New Snack Attack”, Newsweek, May 24; before-and-after book covers; Perrotta’s Little Children.
“Naming a character after a famous person costs writer $15 million”
That’s Eugene Volokh’s capsule summary (Jul. 12) of the jury result reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Tony Twist, the former rock ’em-sock ’em Blues hockey player, was awarded $15 million Friday by a jury that concluded comic book artist Todd McFarlane had profited by using Twist’s name without his permission. McFarlane, formerly the principal artist and writer of Spiderman comics, gave the name Tony Twist to a violent New York mob boss in McFarlane’s Spawn comics in the early 1990s.” (Peter Shinkle, “Tony Twist wins $15 million verdict”, Jul. 10). Brian J. Noggle also comments.
“Judge Says Artist Can Make Fun of Barbie”
Merits of loser-pays: Five years ago, the Mattel toy company sued artist/photographer Tom Forsythe for copyright and trademark infringement over “a series of 78 photographic images of the wildly famous doll showing her nude, and sometimes posed provocatively, in or around various household appliances. … After a lengthy legal tussle, which included a series of appeals, a federal judge late last week instructed Mattel to pay Mr. Forsythe legal fees of more than $1.8 million.” (Bill Werde, New York Times, Jun. 28).
“Art vs. property rights”
One reason not to commission a mural for your building: the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, which with some exceptions “prohibits the intentional alteration, mutilation or destruction of artworks without the consent of the artists” and gives the offended artist a right to sue. Lawsuits under VARA have not been numerous, but have raised questions of fairness to art owners as well as of unintended consequences. (Daniel Grant, Wall Street Journal Leisure & Arts/OpinionJournal.com, May 27; Cynthia Esworthy, “A Guide to the Visual Artists Rights Act”, NYArtsAlive.com, undated; IvanHoffman.com.
Find this man a dictionary
“‘I don’t think censorship is a bad word, but it has become a bad word because everybody associates it with some kind of restriction on liberty,’ said Mr. [Pat] Boone, who is in Washington making the rounds as the national spokesman for the 60-Plus Association, a conservative senior citizen lobby.” (Steve Miller, “Censorship in arts ‘healthy,’ Boone says”, Washington Times, Apr. 21)(via TMFTML).
More on comics clerk’s conviction
Reader William Dyer (BeldarBlog) writes that he “was disappointed to see your brief entry today on Overlawyered regarding the Jesus Castillo obscenity case. The stories you linked today are filled with factual errors and generally overblow the story.”
Comics? Must be for kids
“Earlier this [month], the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of Jesus Castillo’s 2000 obscenity conviction for selling a comic book. … In September 1999, Castillo, manager of Keith’s Comics in Dallas, sold a copy of ‘Demon Beast Invasion: The Fallen’ No. 2 to an undercover police officer. The adults-only comic (an English translation of a Japanese manga) was labeled as such and was stocked in an adults-only section of the shop. The police officer was an adult. … ‘I don’t care what kind of testimony is out there,’ the prosecuting attorney said. ‘Comic books, traditionally what we think of, are for kids.'” (Franklin Harris, Pulp Culture Online, Aug. 7) (via Unqualified Offerings)(Comic Book Legal Defense Fund). More: reader William Dyer (BeldarBlog) writes taking issue with the linked stories.