Following in the trail of Paris, the tailWindy city of Chicago has decided to copyright the city's centerpiece Millenium Park. At first, city representatives were claiming that the copyrights were being enforced to protect the rights of artist Anish Kapoor but in fact that doesn't seem to be the case.
Instead, as this followup article says, city officials are actually enforcing their ban on photography in Millenium Park so they can prevent competition in selling buttons, teeshirts, and postcards, etc — commercial reference to a public space, paid for by citizen dollars (directly or indirectly, through tax breaks for SBC, which contributed), so that city-associated businesses can assign themselves licences to Kapoor's sculpture and the rest of the park and its usage. They are suppressing public usage by claiming it is in the interest of the artist, but the artist receives absolutely no money from the rights.
(Next, one supposes graffiti artists copyrighting overpasses once they've been tagged...)
See this link to lead to scans of a recent article in the Chicago Reader.
Thanks Tim Atherton for pointing out that this sort of thing is illegal in the honorary blue state of Canada:
Canadian Copyright Act
Miscellaneous
32.2 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright
...
(b) for any person to reproduce, in a painting, drawing, engraving, photograph or cinematographic work
(i) an architectural work, provided the copy is not in the nature of an architectural drawing or plan, or
(ii) a sculpture or work of artistic craftsmanship or a cast or model of a sculpture or work of artistic craftsmanship, that is permanently situated in a public place or building;
See you at noon at the Embarcadero!
Posted February 19, 2005 08:58 AM | TrackBack