Educated Guesswork: Copyrighted but publicly visible

February 12, 2005

Copyrighted but publicly visible

The New Urbanist is covering the story of Warren Wimmer, who was stopped by a security guard when trying to photograph Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago's Millenium park

Here's the press director for the park:

"The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist."

Terence Spies points out that there's an obvious intersection between "privacy" technology like remote camera shutoffs and this kind of aggressive copyright enforcement: IPR zones where you're not only not allowed to take pictures, but it's technically impossible to do so because your camera won't let you.

Posted by ekr at February 12, 2005 9:17 PM | Filed under:

Comments

There is a lot of case law in this area. I predict the city will loose badly on in trying to stop photos of public statues and sculpture. By loose here, I of course mean legally, they are already "losers" by any reasonable meaning of the word.

Posted by: Fluffy at February 13, 2005 7:49 AM

Eventually the other shoe will drop, and the maker of that statue will be sued by the inventor of the jelly bean.

Posted by: Bram at February 15, 2005 12:05 AM