Because Of Course There Are Copyright Implications With Confederacy Monuments
from the copyright-makes-a-mess-of-everything-dept dept
There's no issue of public interest that copyright law cannot make worse. So let me ruin your day by pointing out there's a copyright angle to the monument controversy: the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), a 1990 addition to the copyright statute that allows certain artists to control what happens to their art long after they've created it and no longer own it. Techdirt has written about it a few times, and it was thrust into the spotlight this year during the controversy over the Fearless Girl statue.
Now, VARA may not be specifically applicable to the current controversy. For instance, it's possible that at least some of the Confederacy monuments in question are too old to be subject to VARA's reach, or, if not, that all the i's were dotted on the paperwork necessary to avoid it. (It’s also possible that neither is the case — VARA may still apply, and artists behind some of the monuments might try to block their removal.) But it would be naïve to believe that we'll never ever have monument controversies again. The one thing VARA gets right is an acknowledgement of the power of public art to be reflective and provocative. But how things are reflective and provocative to a society can change over time as the society evolves. As we see now, figuring out how to handle these changes can be difficult, but at least people in the community can make the choice, hard though it may sometimes be, about what art they want in their midst. VARA, however, takes away that discretion by giving it to someone else who can trump it (so to speak).
Of course, as with any law, the details matter: what art was it, whose art was it, where was it, who paid for it, when was it created, who created it, and is whoever created it dead yet… all these questions matter in any situation dealing with the removal of a public art installation because they affect whether and how VARA actually applies. But to some extent the details don't matter. While in some respects VARA is currently relatively limited, we know from experience that limited monopolies in the copyright space rarely stay so limited. What matters is that we created a law that is expressly designed in its effect to undermine the ability of a community with art in its midst to decide whether it wants to continue to have that art in its midst, and thought that was a good idea. Given the power of art to be a vehicle of expression, even political expression or outright propaganda, allowing any law to etch that expression in stone (as it were) is something we should really rethink.
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Filed Under: copyright, moral rights, vara
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Ah the puns.
Anyway, the thing is, nobody will care about the law when it doesn't fit their world view so it's likely going to be enforced selectively. Where have we seen it before?
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Humanity = Hypocrisy
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Too speculative
Is anyone claiming it is applicable? This story has little more than some vague generic speculation it may apply. You could post it any time a news story says "statue".
A bit more information would help. When were these built? Are the sculptors or their children still alive? Has anyone claimed to own any rights? Were they government works?
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Maybe it should be "Because of course there could be"? Though I don't think that makes much sense, since "could be" would negate "of course". So maybe just "There could be".
Like you say, it could apply to any article or story about "statue", Confederate or otherwise.
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Re: Too speculative
Is it needed that anyone has yet to bring up the issue? Cathy is pointing out that there is an angle. VARA is so vague that someone may attempt to use it, and for reasons other than actually protecting copyright.
Normally, one would hope that the stupid is taken out of laws before they are passed, but it is not, and we have countless example of how the laws are misused afterward. (Or sometimes laws retroactively cover egregious unethical and awful behavior.) Why does it need to have already happened to "[point] out there's a copyright angle to the monument controversy: the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA)". The angle is there, whether or not anyone has yet used it.
What can happen, given current circumstances, occupies a rather large chunk of human thought. Sometimes we don't do it enough. Sometimes we do it badly. Sometimes we do it badly, and don't examine enough what are the consequences of doing it badly. But we do it.
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It was already pointed out, within the last month, in the linked stories—which were topical and included a good summary of the law's problems. The headline to this story makes it seem bigger than it is, but I'm not seeing any real analysis here. Find me a sculptor, show me they have a history of legal bullying, and we'd have something worth reporting—even if they hadn't done anything yet. How about a reference to someone considering a lawsuit? We don't even know whether VARA could apply to any of the referenced statues, i.e. whether they are new enough. We don't know who holds the rights, if any. It's a weak story.
Sure, that can be good, but this story feels like it ends half way. I can summarize it as "It would be interesting to see whether VARA could apply to these events"—a sentence that could be added to any story referencing the events (or in the comments), and a question that this story never attempts to answer. The rest of the text is mostly a rehash of the recent VARA articles.
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And that's what the article fiddles with. What if somebody used it to prevent confederate statues from being removed? What if some controversial statue, say, "Fearless Hitler" cannot be removed due to the law? These Confederate statues were there for ages and were not a big deal until last week. So once we decide that some types of artistic expression are bigoted, fucked up enough that they should be moved to some museum of human stupidity, someone not as evolved can use such laws to prevent removal.
We've seen it in Germany if memory serves when Recep Tayyip "Gollum" Erdogan (the moron from Turkey) used an obscure law to go after critics there forcing the legislative to shot it down swiftly. Copyright is that obscure law framework except that there are plenty of morons benefiting from it (at the expense of our culture, free speech and tax money).
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Yeah, the article's reasonable enough in that sense. But it's trying too hard to make it seem like this is something that's already happening, especially with the headline. Really, this is an op-ed disguised as a news article, and if that were obvious upfront I wouldn't have minded. The "confederacy monuments" aren't really the point of the story, they're just something that prompts us to reconsider VARA and the ways it can be misused.
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Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
Because Of Course There Are Copyright Implications With Confederacy Monuments
Copyright Implications notwithstanding tearing down historical monuments in a fit of politically correct ignorance in a delusional effort to erase the US's checkered history is a complete disgrace.
What other US history would the morons leading the charge of the defective brigade seek to shove down the memory-hole?
There are a great many indelible spots staining the US's history and not one of them is worth committing national suicide for in 2017.
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Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
If you think tearing down statues of traitors who fought to preserve slavery is “erasing history”, I have a new invention for you that you might want to look into.
We call them “books”.
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Re: Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
"As Your Doctor, I Am Protesting the Removal of Your Tumor Because I Don’t Want to Erase Your Medical History"
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/as-your-doctor-i-am-protesting-the-removal-of-your-tumor -because-i-dont-want-to-erase-your-medical-history
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Most of them fought against a tyrannical regime that was ignoring the Constitution right left and center while the regime's courts rubber stamped every violation.
There were abolitionists in the south and slavers in the north. Quite a few people in the south wanted to abolish slavery and switch to an industrialized economy -- but that would threaten northern state economies, so they got blocked from doing so in every legal and a few illegal ways. They knew full well that a slave labor society couldn't compete with a free and industrialized society, but they weren't allowed to fix the problem short of secession.
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Re: Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
Cool, now that we don't need museums or art galleries we'll be able to put that land to good use.
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Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
Do you participate in the re-enactments also?
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When did HBO start licensing out stage versions of The Wire?
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Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
Good try though.
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Re: Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
Then what? Should we remove the books from the library? Should we remove all the monuments and statues of all the Presidents that owned slaves? How far do you want to go?
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Re: Run in Circles Scream and Shout Flail Your Arms All About
If you think tearing down statues of traitors who fought to preserve slavery is “erasing history”, I have a new invention for you that you might want to look into.
We call them “books”.
You are a fool Steven T. Stone as those who seek to destroy their past (unpleasant or not) will never learn from their ancestors (ie histories) mistakes.
The persons you accuse of treason and preserving slavery were simply fighting to preserve their way of life.
What is so frightening is that once you unhinged politically correct lunatics are done tearing down all of the offending statues/memorials you may start burning all the offending "books".
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The British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the heritage tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands.
Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
Anyone who makes the "heritage" argument for keeping Confederate monuments in public places should be reminded that American heritage includes war against Confederates and Nazis. "You can celebrate your heritage by building monuments to Confederate generals. And then we will celebrate ours by destroying them."
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By that standard, his statues could get pulled down too.
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Setting aside how King lacked the kind of sociopolitical power to turn the systems of White supremacy against their masters and thus avail himself of the systemic power of racism…
(…and the whole bit about a “bad childhood”, because I have no idea what the hell that is supposed to mean…)
King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is not racist. His ideal was a world where the color of a person’s skin mattered not in regards to whether that person could live, play, work, and otherwise co-exist with others in civilized society. In his ideal world, a Black man would receive the same rights, same access to state resources, and the same basic human respect as White people.
I can think of only one group of people who could possibly think of his dream as a racist one: White people who fear the ridiculous fantasy that says if Black people were treated as equals in every way, they would somehow “enact revenge” on White people for the entire history of this country’s treatment of Black people.
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I'm an Indian and I think MLK was a radical who has said things that could be interpreted as "racists" or "bigoted", but that doesn't mean I think we should start renaming streats and tearing down monuments. Whats next? Should we start burning books we don't agree with?
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’tis better to burn books than people.
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Nothing.
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I would agree that the color-blind society would be the ideal, but we don't have that yet, and I would also probably agree that some degree of "counterbalancing unfair disadvantage due to race" is probably appropriate. The devil, however, is in the details.
(Also, as long as we still think of "race" as a thing, we will never achieve that color-blind society. The core idea of racism, on which everything else is based, is the idea that the ill-defined collection of characteristics which we label as "race" is an appropriate basis for categorization; as long as we still think of "race" as being a set of categories, much less - however unconsciously - classify people into those categories, a post-racism society is impossible.)
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How crazy should we get? Shall we remove Thomas Jefferson's head from Mount Rushmore because he owned hundreds of slaves during the course of his life? What about George Washington? Should we rename the capitol because he owned slaves? Tear down his monuments? What about Martin Luther King Junior as you suggested? How's the social justice crowd going to react when we start tearing down his monuments because he was a bigot and racists? When does it end?
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The reason people want to have statues of famous Confederate figures removed is not because they are of people who owned slaves.
It is because they are of people who, by their (AFAIK entirely voluntary) actions, opposed ending slavery.
It is because that is the only, or at least by far the most major, thing for which these people are famous - and, thereby, the thing for which they are being honored with these statues.
It is because to have these statues up is to honor the pro-slavery cause for which these people fought.
By contrast, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and so forth are famous in history for many things which do not involve their support for the cause of slavery; in fact, it is entirely possible to present a reasonably comprehensive history of the things for which they are remembered which does not mention slavery at all. It is to honor these things, not their ownership of slaves, that these statues exist.
If you want to have public images to remind us of the history of slavery, in a "never forget, so that we never repeat these things" line, that's fine; there are ways to do that, even ways involving statuary, which do not involve presenting those who fought to preserve slavery as figures worthy of honor and respect. If you want to design and/or commission such a statue, I wish you all success.
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Which ones and who gets to decide? Jefferson Memorial? Mount Rushmore?
How about the Confederate soldiers memorial in NC (already torn down), the old joe monument in Gainesville Florida? Monuments to commemorate the soldiers that fought and died. What about Cemetery markers in Cali like the Confederate section that was toppled after 90 years... a Cemetery marker? Really?
How about Nathan Bedford Forrest? Arguably the most brilliant tactician of the time. Battle after battle and without any military training he was wrecking the union army. Sure, he was accused of some bad shit, I'm willing to bet he was guilty as hell too...... on top of all that he was rumored to be the the Grand Wizard or some shit for the KKK...but would I know all that if I hadn't seen his monument in Nashville? Would I have felt compelled to research and learn?
How about we just mob rules it like we did in NC? Just form a social justice mob and start destroying monuments, spit on them, and basically act like total idiots. I can only imagine what would happen if the pro confederate mobs were to start pulling down monuments of union soldiers and generals.
I once thought there was no fucking way Trump could ever be President and sure as shit it happens. I think sure as shit that the white supremacists or white power or whatever the hell they are could never gain power... what happens if they do? Do we sit back and watch them pull down MLK statues because hate is now right?
Where does it stop?
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I do not wish to “destroy history”. Let the statues be placed in museums and the history taught in schools, as they both should be. But I cannot fathom any reason to keep up monuments that are meant to glorify a group of traitors who seceded from the United States and fought on the losing side of a war to preserve slavery.
Those statues—many of which were placed in the South during the first half of the 20th Century—celebrate and glorify men who betrayed this country for the cause of treating other people as property based on the color of their skin. The Confederacy lost the war; why should monuments celebrating their loss—and their horrific cause—remain standing? Why should Southerners, including myself, take pride in the “heritage” of the Confederacy and the cause for which it fought to preserve?
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The glorification is itself an important part of history. How did these people get power, and why did people still support them long after they lost?
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The glorification is itself an important part of history. How did these people get power; why did people still support them long after they lost, and when they did such terrible things?
While shouldn't have these statues is public for purposes of glorification, that doesn't mean they have to be relegated to museums. Not everyone goes to museums, and this history needs to be known. A courthouse isn't a good place but somewhere like a park could be fine, if the context makes it obvious that we're talking about history without intending to glorify or support them. ("Context" is where VARA comes in: an artist might complain that they intended to glorify the Confederates, and we've robbed the statue of that. As we should.)
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How do we remember him without statues everywhere to remind us of the horrors of Nazism?
Then again, it seems some people don't, seeing the kind of flags that were on display during the Charlottesville protest.
(Unless those swastika flags, salutes and chants of "blood and soil" we're just a friendly historical reminder on their part? Does Poe's law apply IRL? /s)
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As it pertains to monuments; Nearly ALL of the monuments to Hitler and his cronies were erected before the end of WW2. Where nearly ALL of the Civil War monuments in question were build AFTER the Civil War was over. In some cases 50 years after it was over. Not saying right or wrong, just saying it's a fact.
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Roger Strong (profile), 18 Aug 2017 @ 2:42pm
All those Confederate monuments weren't about preserving 19th century "heritage." They were about intimidation in the 20th.
intimidation? Please place your crayon on the table before you put your eye out.
The memorials were about reconciliation in a nation that saw over one million killed and wounded.
The British in India were faced with the practice of "suttee" - the heritage tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands.
Please stay on tangent US Civil War not British in India.
Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
Tangent, crayon down.
Anyone who makes the "heritage" argument for keeping Confederate monuments in public places should be reminded that American heritage includes war against Confederates and Nazis. "You can celebrate your heritage by building monuments to Confederate generals. And then we will celebrate ours by destroying them."
Not the dreaded "heritage" argument (in scare quotes and all).
How dare you attempt to imply that I'm a racist you witless ahistorical crayon wielding fool.
You have no idea of my "heritage" .
I'm only stating the blatantly obvious which is even the techno-wizards of the 21st century stand upon the shoulders of their ancestors.
Ouch my head hurts.
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Nope. Most came decades, even a century later.
General Lee himself lobbied against erecting Confederate memorials fearing they might "keep open the sores of war." They'd have the effect of "continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour."
Similar examples. Sorry the concept went over your head.
You implied it; I didn't have to. I just pointed out a fallacy in your claims.
I'm pretty sure that you don't either.
That sounds like a claim made by those "Proud Boy" renamed neo-Nazis. Who are careful to ignore that non-Europeans invented the foundations of civilization, agriculture, science, literature, math, architecture and more.
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http://i.imgur.com/ugedoym.jpg
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I think you are a little confused about the liberals, they don't see ISIS as friends and right as the enemy. They see you both as dangerously ignorant fanatics.
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Now, do you mean an actual trophy, or do you mean statues like the ones erected well after the end of the Civil War—specifically during the first half of the 20th Century—to commemorate, honor, and otherwise deify the men who lost that war?
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I have already commented about this subject, albeit on a different post.
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forget it
(this is sarcasm by the way, It's sad that I had to add this for the "History" challenged)
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