An Update On The Pretty Crummy Supreme Court Term So Far On Issues We Care About

from the bad-beginnings dept

As the Senate hearings continue over what the future United States Supreme Court may do, it's worth taking a moment to talk about what the current Court has already just done. The RBG-less Supreme Court is now back in session, and in view of the actions it's taken in at least four separate cases, it has not been an auspicious beginning.

Even some of the best news still managed to be awful. For instance, cert was denied the Enigma Software v. Malwarebytes case. Denial is bad news because it leaves a terrible Ninth Circuit Section 230 decision on the books. On the other hand, having it denied may have dodged a bullet. Section 230 is already in the cross-hairs of Congress and the Executive Branch; inviting the Supreme Court to go to town on it too seemed like a risky proposition, and Justice Thomas's unprompted dissent ripping Section 230 jurisprudence to shreds makes clear how much damage the Court could do to this critically important law if it took on this case.

And the risk of cert being granted here just might not have been worth it. For one thing, the case may continue. The Ninth Circuit had overturned the original granting of defendant Malwarebytes' motion to dismiss, which sent the case back to the district court. Which means there could be another opportunity at some point later in the litigation for Malwarebytes to challenge the lousy reasoning the Ninth Circuit employed to revive the case. Of course, it's possible that the parties might settle and leave the Ninth Circuit decision on the books, unchallenged. However, even if that happens, it's a precedent already called into question by the more recent Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga.. So it's not great that future defendants will have to argue around the Ninth Circuit's ruling, and by no means a certainty that the Bostock statutory construction argument would prevail, but at least there is something of substance to enable future defendants to make a good run at it.

Meanwhile, at least two other cert denials left us with even more bad news. One of these cases was Austin v. Illinois. Supreme Court review was sought after the Illinois Supreme Court left in place Illinois's revenge porn law. As we pointed out at the time – and the lower court in Illinois had recognized – the Illinois revenge porn law is not a content neutral law, and as such it's also not one sufficiently narrowly-tailored to meet the strict scrutiny the First Amendment requires. The law also doesn't take the intent of the defendant into account. Unfortunately the Illinois Supreme Court did not seem bothered by these constitutional infirmities and upheld the law. We were hoping the United States Supreme Court would recognize the problems and grant review to address them – but it didn't. The law now remains on the books. And while it might indeed punish some of the deserving people that a constitutional revenge porn law would also catch, the problem with unconstitutional laws is that they also tend to catch other people too, even those whose speech should have been constitutionally protected.

The other cert denial of note is in G&M Realty v. Castillo. This cert petition sought review of the shockingly awful Second Circuit decision doubling-down on the terribly troubling EDNY decision awarding a multi-million dollar judgement ostensibly for violating the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). Never mind that, despite its apparent policy intent, VARA will actually lead to less public art and thus actually hurt artists, and ignore for the moment the short shrift the law gives to real property rights, these decisions managed to offend the constitution in several other outrageous ways. As we explained previously, there were multiple due process issues raised by how this particular case was adjudicated and the extraordinarily punitive penalty awarded against the defendant property owner, who had simply painted over his own building after the district court told him he could.

But the problem isn't just that this particular case was a travesty; what this case also illustrated is how badly VARA offends both the First Amendment and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. It gratuitously awards an extra benefit to only certain expression based in some way on the content of that expression, which is not supposed to happen. (Put another way: it also denies a benefit to certain expression based on its content.) It is an utterly irredeemable law, and it is a great shame that the Supreme Court refused to grant review, not just to overturn the Second Circuit's galling miscarriage of justice but to free us all from this law's unconstitutional reach. Assuming Congress will refuse to repeal it, we will have to await a new victim of the law with the means and ability to challenge their injury before we will have any chance of being rid of it.

The reality is that Supreme Court jurisprudence is always at best a mixed bag when it comes to copyright. Earlier this year it did produce a good decision in Georgia v. Public.Resource.org, but it missed a rare opportunity to restore sanity when it comes to the VARA amendment to the copyright statute. Now the question is whether it will restore sanity when it comes to how copyright in software works.

Oral argument at the Supreme Court was finally held last week in Google v. Oracle, after having been postponed from its original March hearing date due to the pandemic. It's impossible to read the tealeaves and know how the court will rule, but it was hard to come away with too much optimism. What was concerning about the hearing is the undercurrent reflected in the justices' questions that if the Court rules in Google's favor it is somehow doing Google a favor and diminishing Oracle's copyright. When in actuality it is Oracle's copyright claim that is much broader than the law has ever allowed.

Copyrights have always (or at least until recently) been understood as limited monopolies granting their owners a limited set of exclusive rights for limited periods. Over the years these periods have become less limited, and interpretations of what these exclusive rights cover have tended to get broader. But the basic monopoly has still always been curtailed by the subject-matter limitation of Section 102(b) of the statute, which limits what can actually be subject to copyright in the first place, and fair use, which limits what uses of the work the copyright owner can exclude.

Both of these limitations are at issue before the Court: whether Oracle could even claim a copyright monopoly over the API in the first place, and, even if it could, whether that copyright could allow it to prevent other people from freely using the software's API to make their own interoperable software, or if that would be fair use. The complication in this case is that there's a special section in the copyright statute – Section 117 – that enunciates other exceptions to the reach of software copyright's, due to their unique nature that makes them different than other sorts of copyrightable works. Oracle argued that this section exhaustively articulated the limits to its software copyright, but if this view were correct it would mean that software copyright would not be subject to any of the other limitations that have always applied to any other form of copyright.

Worse, not only would such a conclusion be bad policy that would deter future software development – the sort of authorship a software copyright is supposed to incentivize – but it would also constitute a significant change from the status quo.

The one bit of good news to report is that at least Justice Sotomayor recognized this issue. In particular she observed how out of step the Federal Circuit's decisions had been from those of most other courts that had considered whether APIs could be subject to copyright. Their consensus had been no, and the freedom this view afforded software developers to make their software interoperable has enabled an entire industry to take root. In her questioning Justice Sotomayor appeared to recognize how badly it would threaten that industry if the Supreme Court adopted the Federal Circuit's decisions in favor of Oracle's copyright claims because of how much it represented a significant change in the previously understood reach of a software copyright.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Counsel, at the --in your beginning statement, you had the sky falling if we ruled in favor of Google. The problem with that argument for me is that it seems that since 1992, and Justice Kagan mentioned the case, the Second Circuit case, a Ninth Circuit case, an Eleventh Circuit case, a First Circuit case, that a basic principle has developed in the case law, up until the Federal Circuit's decision. I know there was a Third Circuit decision earlier on in the 1980s. But the other circuits moved away from that. They and the entire computer world have not tried to analogize computer codes to other methods of expression because it's sui generis. They've looked at its functions, and they've said the API, the Application Programming Interface, of which the declaring code is a part, is not copyrightable. Implementing codes are. And on that understanding, industries have built up around applications that know they can -- they can copy only what's necessary to run on the application, but they have to change everything else. That's what Google did here. That's why it took less than 1 percent of the Java code. So I guess that's the way the world has run in every other system. Whether it's Apple's desktop or Amazon's web services, everybody knows that APIs are not -- declaring codes are not copyrightable. Implementing codes are. So please explain to me why we should now upend what the industry has viewed as the copyrightable elements and has declared that some are methods of operation and some are expressions. Why should we change that understanding? [transcript p. 52-53.]

The question is whether her skepticism about Oracle's copyright claim is one that will be adopted by the rest of the justices, or whether sometime later this term we'll be writing even more posts about how the Supreme Court has let everyone down on this front too.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, api, copyright, revenge porn, section 230, supreme court, vara

In New 5Pointz Decision, Second Circuit Concludes That VARA Trumps The Constitution

from the immoral-rights dept

A few weeks ago there was news that a developer in New York City was being forced to dismantle twenty already-built floors in the building he built too high. If only he had thought to let some graffiti artists paint the walls of these excess floors, because then he could never take them down…

I say that, of course, in response to other recent news from New York: the Second Circuit has upheld the awful decision by EDNY to sanction a building owner millions of dollars for daring to paint the walls of his own building. And, in doing so, the Second Circuit has illuminated, in stark relief, what an unconstitutional disaster the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) is.

But before explaining why, first here's some background. This decision, in Castillo v. GM Realty L.P., is the latest in the litigation over "5Pointz." In brief, a developer owned a building in Brooklyn that he wasn't doing anything with, so he let some graffiti artists paint its walls. Eventually he decided that he wanted to do something else with his building, and in response the graffiti artists sued him under VARA, because his plans would cause those paintings that hadn't already been destroyed by the artists [see p. 4] to now be destroyed by him. The district court refused to enjoin the building owner, however, so he went ahead and painted over them. Upon learning of the painting over, the district court then immediately had non-enjoiner's remorse and got so angry at the building owner for doing what it had let him do that it threw the book at him. In fact, it was $6.7 million dollars worth of book it threw in punitive statutory damages, because how dare that building owner paint the building he owned after the court said he could.

The appeals court decision doubles-down on all the problems with the original district court decision we flagged before, including how catastrophic it is for the future availability of public art to subject those who allow it on their property to such expensive consequences. It makes true the saying "no good deed goes unpunished" and will ensure that few will ever be inclined to offer such favors ever again.

We also highlighted the manifest unfairness of punishing the building owner for doing something that the court had cleared the way for. This unfairness itself presents a constitutional infirmity, particularly in light of the enormous statutory damages award granted, and then upheld, to punish the building owner.

Ultimately, the district court concluded that it could not reliably fix the market value of the destroyed paintings and, for that reason, declined to award actual damages. […] Nonetheless, the court did award statutory damages. It determined that statutory damages would serve to sanction Wolkoff’s conduct and to vindicate the policies behind VARA. [p. 8-9]

Statutory damages are already constitutionally suspect, especially when they are so severely inflated above any actual measure of harm, as was the case here, and especially when they appear to be punitive in nature, as was also the case here, because they function as quasi-criminal sanction without all the due process protections a finding of criminal liability is supposed to require.

But that's not the only constitutional problem with VARA that the decision highlighted. The decision made clear that it also fails on equal protection and First Amendment grounds.

The major issue that the appeals court considered was whether the district court was right in upholding the VARA claim. The crux of that analysis hinged on whether the destroyed paintings qualified as a work of "recognized stature." If they did, then they were protected from destruction by VARA, whereas if they did not qualify, then they would get no extra protection. [p. 13]

But think about the implications of the law. It means that the right to special protection for one's expression is only available for some expression, and whether it gets that protection pivots on the content of that expression. Laws are not supposed to be able to favor or disfavor expression. Yet, as this decision carefully – if perhaps inadvertently – explains, that's exactly what VARA does.

Whether a work is of recognized stature, and thus entitled to additional protection, hinges on its "high quality, status, or caliber." [p.14]. Contrast this special protection with regular copyright protection, which applies to any original work of authorship of any statutorily-enumerated type (literary work, musical work, etc.) fixed in any tangible medium, regardless of that particular work's quality. In other words, bad paintings are just as eligible for basic copyright protection as good paintings. But in the case of VARA, the moral rights provision inserted into the copyright statute, it is only the good paintings that get this extra protection, because the bad ones will never be able to achieve that stature. ("The most important component of stature will generally be artistic quality." [p. 14])

Of course, whether a work is of good quality or not is a matter of opinion. So who gets to decide? The court recognized that the "personal judgment of the court shouldn't be the determinative factor." [p. 14]. Instead it deferred to "the artistic community, comprising art historians, art critics, museum curators, gallerists, prominent artists, and other experts." [p. 14].

But ratifying the subjective opinion of others as the basis upon which to dole out special legal protections is no better than the court making the determination on its own initiative. First, the decision of what opinions to credit is at best arbitrary, as was the case here, where the court deferred to an opinion of a presumed expert who had not even seen the works:

Nor do we see merit in Wolkoff’s criticism of the court’s decision to credit the artists’ experts. As is almost always the case where competing expert testimony is adduced, the trier of fact accepts one side’s experts over the other’s. Judge Block did so here and gave sound reasons for his choice. Renee Vara, the artists’ expert, testified to the high artistic merit of the 5Pointz art but also testified that she had not seen the works before their destruction and had assessed them on the basis of images. We see nothing wrong and certainly nothing clearly erroneous with this approach, one well within a district court’s broad discretion to accept or reject evidence. [p. 22]

But even to the extent that the opinion the court adopts reflects a true consensus, it still means that popular expression gets more statutory protection than less popular expression, which is not something the First Amendment permits.

Worse, it means that certain people end up with more rights than others. As the court expressly noted, "[A] 'poor' work by an otherwise highly regarded artist nonetheless merits protection from destruction under VARA." [p. 14] In other words, some artists of poor works will get this bonus protection, yet some will be denied it, which puts VARA in conflict with the equal protection clause, which forbids this sort of legal favoritism.

The facts of this case illustrate the problem. The aerosol paintings at 5Pointz were "curated" by Jonathan Cohen. Cohen chose which artists could paint, what they could paint, where they could paint, and how long the paintings could remain. Yet despite his outsized role in the creation of the paintings in question – or, indeed, because of this role ("When the curator is distinguished, his selection of the work is especially probative." [p. 25]) – the court deferred to him as someone whose opinion on the worth of a work could be dispositive in determining whether it deserved these extra legal protections.

Next, Appellants object to the district court’s reliance on Jonathan Cohen’s testimony about his curation of the artwork. The district court reasoned that Cohen’s selection process, which involved review of a portfolio of an artist’s work and a plan for his or her 5Pointz project, screened for works of stature. Appellants, however, contend that this determination was irrelevant because Cohen made his evaluation before the artists painted their 5Pointz works. Nonetheless, the district court cogently reasoned that a respected aerosol artist’s determination that another aerosol artist’s work is worthy of display is appropriate evidence of stature. An artist whose merit has been recognized by another prominent artist, museum curator, or art critic is more likely to create work of recognized stature than an artist who has not been screened. This inference is even stronger where, as here, Cohen reviewed a plan for the subject work before allowing it to be painted. Accepting and crediting such testimony easily falls within a district court’s trial management responsibilities and in this instance involved no abuse of discretion or clear error. [p. 23-24]

There is no constitutional problem with the fact that Cohen played kingmaker with respect to what artists he allowed to exhibit at 5Pointz and which works could attain any sort of visibility. As an individual he is entitled to make these content-based decisions. What is not okay is for the courts to allow his personal opinion to acquire the imprimatur of the state to create extra rights for his favorites. As the Second Circuit set forth, this power appears to be what VARA allows. But it's not what the Constitution permits.

Filed Under: 2nd circuit, 5pointz, art installations, artwork, graffiti, moral rights, property rights, statutory damages, vara

Mercedes Goes To Court To Get Background Use Of Public Murals In Promotional Pics Deemed Fair Use

from the mural-victory dept

The unsettled nature of how copyright law applies to public works of art like murals continues to be frustrating in the extreme. We've already seen examples of how this becomes an issue with mural artists whose work briefly appears in unrelated works, such as music videos, as those works are filmed in public. You guys remember public, right? It's that place we all get to coexist and enjoy together without constantly stomping on each other's necks over intellectual property rights. Except we don't anymore, as far too many artists believe that they can imprint their art in full view of the public and then disallow any commercial depiction of that public space.

And if that doesn't sound idiotic to you, you need psychological care.

This is once again at issue, as Mercedes has asked a court to make it clear that murals appearing on public walls in the background of a few promotional photos of their vehicles is fair use. This is in response to the very threatening noises made by four mural artists to their murals appearing in the background of some Instagram images. To be clear, Mercedes is suing only to ask for a court to declare images, like the following, fair use, not to attack the artists themselves.

That partial mural in the background is one of the murals in dispute by the four artists. The mural is not the focus of the photo. It's not the subject of the photo. It's just that Mercedes took pictures of its vehicle driving around in public and those murals are in the background, partially depicted. Whatever that is, it sure doesn't sound like copyright infringement, and sure does sound a hell of a lot like fair use. Which is exactly what Mercedes is asking the court to declare.

Mercedes has filed lawsuits against four artists after they accused the car company of infringing upon their copyright by including graffiti murals in the backgrounds of car photos posted to Instagram.

The Detroit News reports that in its lawsuits filed on March 29th, Mercedes is asking a federal judge to rule in its favor against claims being made by artists Daniel Bombardier, James “Dabls” Lewis, Jeff Soto, and Maxx Gramajo.

It was only a year after the photos were published that the artists began accusing Mercedes of copyright infringement. All that harm must have really been delayed, I suppose. As a symbol of their artistic dedication, even after Mercedes took the photos down from Instagram due to the complaints, those same artists continued to demand Mercedes pay them for the images. In its suit, the car company is arguing both that its use was fair use and that the murals are exempt from copyright as a matter of law.

Mercedes argues that its inclusion of the murals was fair use and that the murals are exempt from copyright protection under the Architectural WorksCopyright Protection Act since they’re permanent parts of the architecture.

Which seems like a bit of a stretch. Permanent is not the word I would use for graffiti, having seen it, you know, removed before. The fair use argument is much stronger, given the limited nature of the use, the fact that it wasn't the subject of the larger use, and the damned fact that all of this is in full view of the public. Mercedes was using Detroit to sell its cars, not these murals. Calling this copyright infringement would make no more sense than a restaurant across the street from the murals being accused of replicating a public performance by putting in patio seating in full view of the mural.

So let's hope the courts get this right and we get some caselaw to do with public murals.

Filed Under: advertising, fair use, murals, panorama, public, vara
Companies: mercedes

Court Destroys Future Public Art Installations By Holding Building Owner Liable For Destroying This One

from the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished dept

Last week was a big week for dramatically bad copyright rulings from the New York federal courts: the one finding people liable for infringement if they embed others' content in their own webpages, and this one about 5Pointz, where a court has found a building owner liable for substantial monetary damages for having painted his own building. While many have hailed this decision, including those who have mistakenly viewed it as a win for artists, this post explains why it is actually bad for everyone.

The facts in this case are basically this: the owner of a run-down, formerly industrial building in a run-down neighborhood aspired to do something to redevelop his property, but it would be a few years before the time would be right. So in the meantime he let some graffiti artists use the building for their aerosol paintings. The building became known as 5Pointz, and the artwork on it soon began to attract attention. The neighborhood also began to change, and with the improvement the prospects for redeveloping the property into residences became more promising. From the outset everyone knew that redevelopment would happen eventually, and that it would put an end to the arrangement since the redevelopment would likely necessitate tearing down the building, and with it the art on the walls. As the date of demolition grew closer, the artists considered buying the building from the owner in order to prevent it from being torn down and thus preserve the art. However the owner had received a variance that suddenly made the value of the property skyrocket from $40 million to $200 million, which made the buyout impossible. So the artists instead sued to halt the destruction of their art and asked for a preliminary injunction, which would ensure that nothing happened to the art while the case was litigated. But in late 2013 the court denied the preliminary injunction, and so a few days later the building owner went ahead and painted over the walls. The painting-over didn't end the litigation, which then became focused on whether this painting-over broke the law. In 2017 the court issued a ruling allowing the case to proceed to trial on this question. Then last week came the results of that trial, with the court finding this painting-over a "willfully" "infringing" act and assessing a $6.7 million damages award against the owner for it.

It may be tempting to cheer the news that an apparently wealthy man has been ordered to pay $6.7 million to poorer artists for damaging their art. True -- the building owner, with his valuable property, seems to be someone who potentially could afford to share some of that wealth with artists who are presumably of lesser means. But we can't assume that a defendant building owner, who wants to be able to do with his property what he is normally legally allowed to do, will always be the one with all the money, and the plaintiff artist will always be the one without those resources. The law applies to all cases, no matter which party is richer, and the judicial reasoning at play in this case could just as easily apply if Banksy happened to paint the side of your house and you no longer wanted what he had painted to remain there. Per this decision, removing it could turn into an expensive proposition.

The decision presents several interrelated reasons for concern. Some arise from the law underpinning it, the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, an amendment to copyright law that, as described below, turned the logic of copyright law on its head. But there are also some alarming things about this particular decision, especially surrounding the application of high statutory damages for what the court deemed "willful" "infringement," that accentuate everything that's wrong with VARA and present issues of its own.

With respect to the law itself, prior to VARA the point of copyright law (at least in the US) was to make sure that the most works could be created to best promote the progress of the sciences and useful arts (as the Constitution prescribed). The copyright statute did this by giving creators economic rights, or rights designed to ensure that if there was money to be made from their works, they would have first crack at making it. The thinking was that with this economic incentive, creators would create more works, and thus the public interest goal of having more works created would be realized.

VARA changed this statutory equation for certain kinds of visual works. Instead of economic rights, it gave their creators certain moral rights, including (as relevant for this case), the right to preserve the integrity of their work. This right of integrity includes the right

(A) to prevent any intentional destruction, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right, and
(B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right.

Which may sound well and good, but as we see with the costly way the statute plays out, rather than creating economic incentives stimulating the creation of new works, it has now created economic effects inhibiting them, which in the long run will only hurt the artists VARA was intended to help.

The most obvious way it hurts them is by deterring property owners from allowing any art to be installed on their property, because it means that if they do, they may be forever stuck with it. Allowing art to be installed means they will either stand to lose the control they would have had without it (itself a hit to the property's worth), or potentially be faced with thousands if not millions of dollars in liability if they do what they want with their property anyway. And what property owner would want to chance such dire consequences in order to encourage art?

Granted, some of this risk can be ameliorated with written agreements, which were lacking in this case. But if all public art requires lawyered paperwork, it raises costs and will deter both artist and property owner from pursuing this sort of mutually beneficial arrangement. In this case the property owner had let the artists use his building to create, for free, by unwritten agreement simply because at the time they all agreed that it was good for both of them. It will not be good for creativity if we discourage this sort of symbiotic relationship from taking root.

It also will not be good for future artists whose economic interests might have benefited from other such opportunities like those 5Pointz offered. Even in this case the court noted all the evidence presented in "Folios", showing that being able to paint the building had opened up all sorts of doors for the artists to reap further economic rewards for their art. Artists will have fewer opportunities for that sort of career-enhancing exposure if landlords are deterred from giving it to them.

There is an implicit argument present in the plaintiffs' case that some of the rise in the value of the building was due to the artwork, and that it would therefore be just to share some of that windfall with them. But by this same logic, the building owner would have been similarly responsible for, and thus entitled to a portion of, the rise in value of the work of the artists whom he had allowed to exhibit. It would not be good for artists in the long run if they should find themselves needing to share their good fortune with their benefactors – or be potentially liable for any loss in their property value, should the presence of their work diminish it.

This case also stands to have some directly chilling effects on artists. While this case is not about graffiti artists suing each other for painting over each other's works (as the court noted, up to now graffiti artists have routinely painted over each others' works without any more severe penalty than social approbation, if even that), it's not clear why, if the decision stands, the next case couldn't be. The decision found that a VARA claim could be vindicated regardless of whether a work was temporary or permanent, and instead focused on whether a work had achieved the stature needed to be entitled to protection under the statute. It won't be good for artists if they have to fear being tied up in litigation with their peers due to the transient nature of their medium (or locked out of being able to create at all because others have already used all the good spaces first), or caught in a judicial cage match to determine whose work has the stature to be more deserving of protection.

It is possible that the court erred, and transient art falls outside VARA's purview. But there is enough ambiguity in the statute to potentially extend to it, and in any case, the statute's deterring effects would apply to all sorts of art, not just aerosol-painted art. Unfortunately at no point does the decision contemplate these effects, or its effects on other important policy values such as urban planning and affordable housing, if VARA is able to trump other forms of law, such as property law, that normally speak to what a building owner may do. The decision also largely ignores that the building owner had let the artists paint there in the first place, when he didn't have to. And it ignores that the building owner had done this apparently now wrongful painting-over of the art on his walls after this very same court denied an injunction that would have told him not to. None of these factors mattered to the court.

But all of them should matter to us, as should the extremely troubling way the court found his "infringement" (in other words, the painting-over) "willful," and thus subject to heightened damages. This is where the decision not only encapsulates the policy flaws of VARA, but also threatens to be seriously distorting to copyright doctrine (and other law) generally.

One troubling aspect is the punitive attitude by the court towards the building owner for having painted over the art after the very same court had denied an injunction preventing it. In between its order of November 12, 2013 denying the preliminary injunction, and its November 20, 2013 decision explaining its order (embedded below), the building owner had gone ahead and done the painting-over. This act appears to have outraged the court, whose November 20 decision reads more as an explanation for why it probably should have issued the injunction, now that in the intervening time the owner had painted over it.

As the court correctly observed in this 2013 opinion, preliminary injunctions exist so that courts can prevent irreparable harm at the outset that a court is likely to later rule needs to be prevented, if it would be too late to unring the bell at that point. In fact the language the court cited for the injunction is so standard that when the naked order denying the preliminary injunction was issued, it was perfectly reasonable for the building owner to presume that either (a) he was likely to win the case and be able to do what he wanted to the building, or (b) it wasn't such a severe harm if he removed the art now and later the court decided he shouldn't have, or (c) some combination of both. So it reads as a serious miscarriage of justice for the court's 2018 decision to punish him for going ahead and removing the art, or "recklessly disregard[ing] the possibility" that removing it would be wrongful, as the court put it.

Furthermore, if the court is right in its 2018 decision that the painting-over raised a valid VARA claim, then it was wrong to deny the injunction in 2013. Problematic though it is for VARA to introduce non-economic rights into copyright law, the whole point of one of them – the right to maintain the integrity of the work – can only be vindicated with an injunction. If this right were something that could be adequately compensated for by monetary damages, then it would start to look a lot more like an economic right. That's not what VARA was ever intended to create, but it is what the court effectively created back in 2013 when it refused the injunction and deemed monetary damages sufficient to address any harm should the VARA claim later prevail.

As it wrote in a confused passage in its 2013 decision:

Although the works have now been destroyed—and the Court wished it had the power to preserve them—plaintiffs would be hard-pressed to contend that no amount of money would compensate them for their paintings; and VARA—which makes no distinction between temporary and permanent works of visual art—provides that significant monetary damages may be awarded for their wrongful destruction. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 501-505 (providing remedies for VARA violations). In any event, paintings generally are meant to be sold. Their value is invariably reflected in the money they command in the marketplace. Here, the works were painted for free, but surely the plaintiffs would gladly have accepted money from the defendants to acquire their works, albeit on a wall rather than on a canvas.

It continued more bizarrely:

Moreover, plaintiffs’ works can live on in other media. The 24 works have been photographed, and the court, during the hearing, exhorted the plaintiffs to photograph all those which they might wish to preserve. All would be protected under traditional copyright law, see 17 U.S.C. § 106 (giving, inter alia, copyright owners of visual works of art the exclusive rights to reproduce their works, to prepare derivative works, and to sell and publicly display the works), and could be marketed to the general public—even to those who had never been to 5Pointz.

In the court's defense, it is correct that VARA does allow for infringements of moral rights to be compensated by monetary damages. But it shouldn't be the primary form of relief, and the court's punitive use of the highest amount of statutory damages to compensate the artists exemplifies why. Statutory damages are normally for when it is hard to measure economic loss and so we have to instead make some presumptions about how much compensation that loss deserves. There are already plenty of problems with these presumptions tending to allow for the recovery of far more than what actual losses would have been, but this decision magnifies their problematic nature by allowing statutory damages not only to overcompensate economic loss but to overcompensate non-economic loss. In other words, congratulations, we now have "pain and suffering" in copyright cases.

Perhaps in a way we always have – the overuse of statutory damages has always suggested that is really a retributive, rather than truly compensatory, damages measure. In this case, the court is perfectly frank that's what it's doing:

If not for Wolkoff’s insolence, these damages would not have been assessed. If he did not destroy 5Pointz until he received his permits and demolished it 10 months later, the Court would not have found that he had acted willfully. Given the degree of difficulty in proving actual damages, a modest amount of statutory damages would probably have been more in order.

But courts have always maintained the facade that compensation for emotional harm is unavailable in copyright cases. The 5Pointz court even acknowledges this limitation in footnote 18 of its 2018 decision:

Plaintiffs contend that they are entitled to damages for emotional distress. Under traditional copyright law, plaintiffs cannot recover such damages. See Garcia v. Google, Inc., 786 F.3d 733, 745 (9th Cir. 2015) (“[A]uthors cannot seek emotional damages under the Copyright Act, because such damages are unrelated to the value and marketability of their works.”); Kelley v. Universal Music Group, 2016 WL 5720766, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 29, 2016) (“Because emotional distress damages are not compensable under the Copyright Act, this claim must also be dismissed.”). Since VARA provides damages under “the same standards that the courts presently use” under traditional copyright law, H.R. Rep. No. 101-514, at 21-22 (1990), emotional damages are not recoverable.

But the outright hostility the court repeatedly shows the defendant, in the language in both decisions, makes it clear that statutory damages are being used to compensate for what is otherwise a purely emotional harm. From the 2018 decision:

The whitewash did not end the conflict in one go; the effects lingered for almost a year. The sloppy, half-hearted nature of the whitewashing left the works easily visible under thin layers of cheap, white paint, reminding the plaintiffs on a daily basis what had happened. The mutilated works were visible by millions of people on the passing 7 train. One plaintiff, Miyakami, said that upon seeing her characters mutilated in that manner, it "felt like [she] was raped." Tr. at 1306:24-25.

There are good reasons why we do not allow copyright to remediate hurt feelings, not the least of which being that they are likely to run raw on both sides. From an article from last year (before the $6.7 million judgment):

Wolkoff feels betrayed by the artists he thought he was helping by lending them his wall to bomb. He cried when the building came down, he confessed, and said he would bring back more street artists to paint at the location after the renovation—just not those who sued.

Notably in its 2017 ruling (also embedded below) allowing the VARA claim to go forward, the court dismissed the artists' claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress, despite the strong emotions the case had engendered.

Because the defendants destroyed 5Pointz only after the Court dissolved its temporary restraining order and did no more than raze what they rightfully owned, the defendants simply did not engage in the kind of outrageous and uncivilized conduct for whose punishment this disfavored tort was designed.

And therein lies the rub: the building owner did no more than what other law clearly allowed. But by allowing artists to bring claims for the "intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification . . . [of works that] would be prejudicial to [the artist’s] honor or reputation" the court has set up a direct conflict between VARA and what traditional copyright law, and traditional property law, have allowed. And it has done this without addressing any of the implications of this new policy collision.

Filed Under: 5pointz, copyright, economic rights, graffiti, infringement, moral rights, public art installations, vara

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.

Filed Under: copyright, moral rights, vara

Artist Sues Church For Moving His 9/11 Memorial Sculpture

from the this-again? dept

It's pretty rare for us to bring up the issue of "moral rights" over creative works in the US, and even rarer to directly reference VARA -- the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 -- and yet, here we are, twice in one week discussing VARA claims. Even more incredibly, both are about sculptures that were placed for free in parts of lower Manhattan, right off Wall St. The claim that's received lots of attention was the one over the Wall St. Bull and the fact that another statue was placed near the bull, which the artist claims changes his message, and thereby violates VARA. This other claim is from another sculptor, Steve Tobin, who is suing Trinity Church for moving his 9/11 memorial sculpture to Connecticut.

VARA, if you don't remember, was a bill passed in 1990, as a half-assed way to try to pretend that the US is in compliance with the Berne Convention -- the large (and almost entirely awful) international agreement on copyright and copyright related issues. Part of the Berne Convention requires that countries signing on recognize so-called "moral rights." For the most part, copyrights are considered economic, rather than moral rights, which is why they can be bought and sold. Moral rights, on the other hand, are a concept more popular in Europe, which argue beyond the economic rights, the creators of works have certain "moral" rights in what is done with those works. In order to pretend that the US fulfilled the Berne Convention requirements without actually introducing a full moral rights regime, Congress passed VARA in 1990, which gave fairly limited moral rights only to "visual" works like paintings and sculptures. The specific moral rights granted include the right to claim authorship in the work you created, and to prevent the destruction or mutilation of your work -- which is what we discussed in the case of the Wall St. Bull (even though VARA likely doesn't apply to the Bull).

So, now for the details of this case. The Art Newspaper (the link above), which first wrote about this story, did not post a link to the filing (side note: I never understand why journalists don't link to source material if they have access to it). You can read the whole thing here. But the quick summary, as explained in the link above, is this:

The sculpture The Trinity Root recalled a sycamore tree that stood in front of the 320-year-old church and bore the brunt of the debris from the collapse of the Twin Towers on 11 September, preserving the church from more extensive damage. Tobin convinced the rector of the church at the time to allow him to excavate the stump and roots of the tree so that he could create a bronze memorial. The artist was not paid by the church and covered the production costs himself—estimated at more than $1m according to the lawsuit filed in federal district court on Wednesday, 12 April—on the promise that the work would remain in the courtyard permanently.

The sculpture was installed in 2005, but a different rector decided it should be removed in 2015, without informing the artist, and relocated to a church-owned seminary in northwestern Connecticut. “The new rector, Dr William Lupfer, didn’t like it, thought it was ugly and took up too much real estate and wanted it gone,” said Kathleen Rogers, Tobin’s business manager. In the process of moving the three-tonne sculpture, some elements were damaged, the lawsuit says.

You can see a snapshot of the Trinity Root by Tony Fisher here (licensed under a CC-BY 2.0 license):

Large sections of the filing focus on the fact that in multiple press announcements and stories about the Trinity Root, the church mentioned that the sculpture would be a "permanent" installation (and in at least one case, Tobin himself put out a press release with the same claim, and the press release had the church's approval).

The lawsuit goes to great lengths to also note that this is Tobin's most famous work, that it's tied up with his reputation and that lots and lots of people come to visit it. Oh, and also he explains just how much effort was taken in creating, transporting and installing the sculpture (they even had to get the George Washington Bridge to close to allow him to transport the sculpture across it. In other words, this was no small undertaking. There's also a video of the creation, transportation and installation of the Trinity Root:

The complaint also reveals some of the discussions that Tobin had with Trinity Church after finding out that the new Rector didn't like the sculpture (or the crowds that came to see it). Tobin keeps telling the Church that the artwork is "site specific," and the church keeps asking him if he'd help them move it away at the church's expense. Also this: according to the lawsuit, as Tobin kept arguing with the church over moving the sculpture, they apparently went and did it anyway without telling him, and they continue to discuss over the phone with him his objections to moving it, without mentioning that they had already moved it.

One more twist in the contract between Tobin and the church is that Tobin agreed to one of those "you give us everything" clauses reading:

Under the heading "OWNERSHIP; COPYRIGHT" the Agreement further provided that "Tobin hereby transfers and assigns to Trinity by charitable donation all right, title and interest to the Sculpture and all materials related thereto (including but not limited to all sketches, photographs and audio-visual footage), including but not limited to the copyright therein, and any cause of action that Tobin may have with respect thereto, in perpetuity throughout the universe, for use in any manner and in any media now known and hereafter invented."

The question is whether this would count as a waiver of moral rights under VARA. You can't assign your moral rights to another party, but you can waive them. But a waiver, under VARA, has to be written and it has to specify the "uses of that work to which the waiver applies." Tobin's lawyers have a point that the above doesn't seem to be a waiver (and, Trinity Church might want to talk to whatever lawyer drew up that agreement...).

Finally, it's revealed that in moving the sculpture from Manhattan to Connecticut, the statue was damaged in a few places, which gives Tobin more of a claim under VARA for "mutilation" of his work.

So what does this all mean... At a glance, it seems like Tobin has a much more credible claim under VARA than the guy who created the bull, but it still seems... nutty. The idea that the church can never move a statue in its courtyard just seems wrong. And, at the very least, this case is another example of why we should let the Copyright Office know that expanding moral rights is a really bad idea. Remember, the Copyright Office is currently studying the question of expanding moral rights, and the comment reply period is still open (until May 15th).

In the end, while the damaging of the statue perhaps adds at least some greater credibility to the VARA claim -- even though it wasn't designed to be a mutilation, just an accident while moving -- the fact that an artist can claim (even after giving up all rights and title to the piece) that because the piece has some connection to a site, the owners can no longer move it, would be really, really dangerous. Yes, there's a stronger argument here as to why this one location is directly tied to this piece of artwork (and many other artists would have trouble showing the same level of connection), any time you argue that artwork is so connected to its siting that moving it would violate the law... something seems to have gone wrong. I can certainly understand why the artist is upset, but as we noted with the bull, artists give up quite a lot of control when they let art out into the world and, as in this case, hand ownership over to a third party.

Filed Under: 9/11, copyright, moral rights, steve tobin, trinity root, vara
Companies: trinity church

Legal Threat From Creator Of Wall St. Bull Statue Even More Full Of Bull Than Expected

from the you-have-to-be-kidding dept

Yesterday, we wrote about reports that Arturo Di Modica, the artist behind the famous "Charging Bull" statue near Wall St., was claiming that the new "Fearless Girl" statue that was put up in front of the bull infringed on his copyrights. As we noted in our piece, the only possible claim we could see was a weak moral rights claim, under VARA -- the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. However, as we noted in an update to the post (with a helping hand from law professor James Grimmelmann) VARA shouldn't apply. If you read the actual law, it applies to works created after VARA went into effect or to works created before the law went into effect if the title to the artwork has not been transferred from the artist.

But, of course, the history here is that Di Modica dumped the statue in front of the NY Stock Exchange as a surprise in 1989, only to have it moved by the city and given a "temporary permit" in a nearby park that is continually renewed. 1989 is, obviously, prior to the enactment of VARA in 1990. And, Grimmelmann argues, Di Modica "transferred the title by accession when he installed it."

Of course, Di Modica's lawyers don't appear to care. Late Wednesday, the letter that they sent Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York, was released, and their legal theories... are... well... let's just say some might compare them to what comes out of the back of a bull. Yes, it does include a VARA claim, but it's not the main claim of the letter. However, since that was the focus of our post yesterday, let's deal with that one first:

Additionally, the placement of the statue of the young girl in opposition to the Charging Bull has undermined the integrity and modified the Charging Bull. The Charging Bull no longer carries a positive, optimistic message. Rather, it has been transformed into a negative force and a threat. For example, Mayor de Blasio characterized the Fearless Girl as a symbol of "standing up to fear, standing up to power, being able to find in yourself the strength to do what's right." The inescapable implication is that the Charging Bull is the source of that fear and power and a force against doing what's right. Plainly, the presence of the statue of the young girl has tarnished and modified the Charging Bull: "intended as a symbol of strength by the artist, the bull takes on a menacing air in relation to the girl."

This alteration of the Charging Bull and damage to its integrity are prejudicial to Mr. Di Modica's honor and reputation and violate his rights under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, codified as §106-A of the Copyright Law. The Visual Artists Rights Act confers upon authors of works of visual arts, in addition to attribution rights, the right "to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation...." ... Here, there is no doubt that State Street Global Advisors intended to distort, mutilate and modify Charging Bull, and did so intentionally distort, mutilate and modify Charging Bull by installing Fearless Girl in opposition to Charging Bull and engaging on its marketing campaign featuring this image. This violation of Mr. Di Modica's rights will continue as long as Fearless Girl remains in opposition to Charging Bull.

Oh, what a load of bull. First off, this ignores, as Grimmelmann pointed out, that VARA almost certainly does not apply to Charging Bull (though if this went to court, I imagine Di Modica's lawyers would argue, weakly, that he did not give up the title to the statue when he abandoned it on the road). Second, placing something next to your artwork, even as a comment on it, does not "distort, mutilate or modify" the work. And if the public's interpretation of the Bull has gone from positive to negative, well, sorry Di Modica -- that's life. People's opinions change. The idea that a visual artist could block someone else from placing a work near their own work because it might change how people see the original would create major headaches around the globe. Imagine museum curators being forced to move works of art because an artist protests about how the work next to his or her own negatively impacts how people view it. That's insane.

Furthermore, if he's really worried about his "honor and reputation", how do you think the public -- who has overwhelmingly supported the message of the Fearless Girl statue (even if it is just an advertisement for a State Street fund) -- is going to feel about him being the thin-skinned, whiny, petulant artist who demands NY remove it? It seems likely that his actions here will do a hell of a lot more to damage his "honor and reputation" than the Fearless Girl statue does.

Anyway, the main claim in the letter, again, is not actually about VARA. Instead, it's even more crazy. Di Modica's lawyers argue (apparently with a straight face) that the Fearless Girl is a derivative work of the Charging Bull, and thus copyright infringement.

The statue of the young girl becomes the "Fearless Girl" only because of the Charging Bull: the work is incomplete without Mr. Di Modica's Charging Bull, and as such it constitutes a derivative work of the Charging Bull.

The essential importance of placing the young girl statue across from the Charging Bull, as opposed to elsewhere, is highlighted on the website of SSGA, which invites browsers to "[w]atch how the Fearless Girl was created and placed in a spot that made her impossible to ignore." It is only because of the Charging Bull that the young girl statue can be considered "impossible to ignore." Clearly, a deliberate choice was made to exploit and to appropriate the Charging Bull through the placement of Fearless Girl. The inextricable link between the young girl and the Charging Bull has not gone unnoticed. As one commentator writes, "The tiny girl stands bravely face to face with the giant bull, and this spatial relationship of size, orientation, and stance adds depth to the meaning of the symbol."

Furthermore, SSGA and McCann New York made conscious decisions to visually link the young girl statue to the Charging Bull. First, the statue of the young girl, just like the Charging Bull, is made out of bronze. Indeed, the patina of the young girl is nearly identical to that of the Charging Bull. Second, they extended the cobblestone paving of Bowling Green into the adjacent plaza. In so doing, State Street Global Advisors created another unifying element between the Charging Bull and the young girl that serves to transform the young girl into the "Fearless Girl."

SSGA and McCann New York constructed a marketing campaign around the image of the Fearless Girl--the image of a young girl facing down the Charging Bull. They deliberately placed the young girl statue in direct opposition to the Charging Bull and used key design elements to associate the young girl statue with the Charging Bull. In effect, the Charging Bull has been appropriated and forced to become a necessary element of a new, derivative work: "Fearless Girl: Girl Confronts Charging Bull." This is a direct violation of Mr. Di Modica's copyright.

The Fearless Girl was created for commercial purposes: to advertise SSGA and its SHE fund. Because Fearless Girl incorporates and depends upon Charging Bull, SSGA and McCann New York have commercialized and exploited the Charging Bull. A promotional video released by SSGA, which has since been modified, reveals that from its inception, Fearless Girl was conceived and designed in relation to the Charging Bull: The opening scene of the video shows the artist sketching the young girl, with a picture of the Charging Bull beside her. The final scene of that video, is shot from behind the young girl but facing the Charging Bull. The viewer sees only the head and shoulders of the young girl. In contrast the Charging Bull is revealed in its full glory. That image makes incontrovertible the fact that SSGA and McCann New York created the young girl statue to commercially exploit the iconic status and reputation of the Charging Bull. Similarly, the use and distribution of a photograph of both the young girl and the Charging Bull by SSGA and McCann New York is evidence of the commercial use of not only the statue of the young girl, but also of the Charging Bull. This commercialization of the Charging Bull is also a direct violation of Mr. Di Modica's copyright.

So much bullshit, so little time. Creating an entirely different artwork to act as commentary on the original is not derivative -- and even if you could argue that it was, it would almost certainly be fair use as transformative. In fact, the letter itself admits flat out that this is transformative. It's a self-defeating threat letter. You can't argue that (a) this transforms the work entirely (as the letter does) and then (b) also argue that it's direct infringement. But this letter does exactly that. That seems like really bad lawyering. And, really, what of the original copyright is being copied here? The only two things mentioned are the bronze patina (which is not copyrightable) and the Cobblestone paving of Bowling Green which is not part of Di Modica's work in the first place, since he didn't even place the Bull statue there (that's where the city later moved it).

Finally, the letter also argues that Fearless Girl is trademark infringement, because it was a part of a State Street advertising effort. This part includes a bit of a conspiracy theory about the placement of Fearless Girl:

The placement of Fearless Girl opposite Charging Bull also dilutes the Charging Bull's famous trademark. This is a violation of the Federal Trademark Law as codified at 15 U.S.C. §1125(c).

As discussed above, State Street Global Advisors installed the statue of the young girl in the plaza adjacent to Bowling Green and extended the cobble stone paving into the plaza. Had the statue simply been installed in Bowling Green, the statue would have fallen under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks and Recreation. However, because the statue is technically in the plaza, it is now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation. These machinations appear to be an attempt to create a token separation of the young girl statue from the Charging Bull and thereby to circumvent the legal need for Mr. Di Modica's permission to use his Charging Bull.

Or, you know, it was the best place to put the statue to make the point it was making. If you squint, maybe, there's barely some kind of argument that because Fearless Girl "uses" Charging Bull as a sort of component of a kind of advertising campaign, there's a trademark issue -- but, boy, I wouldn't want to be the lawyer who has to defend that argument in court.

Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio seems to be taking this all in stride:

And now we get to see if this actually goes to court.

Filed Under: arturo di modica, bill de blasio, charging bull, copyright, fearless girl, moral rights, vara, wall st.
Companies: state street

Moral Rights, Property Rights And Picasso: An Artistic And Legal Conundrum

from the so-now-what? dept

We've discussed moral rights here a few times in the past. These rights -- which focus on things like attribution and making sure artwork is not damaged, denigrated or destroyed -- are generally not recognized in the US. They're much more popular in Europe, and in fact, are often referred to as "droit moral," which is the French term. Of course, as overly pedantic IP lawyers never fail to remind us, while the US has generally not recognized moral rights, that is not entirely true. As part of trying to sorta kinda pretend that the US was compliant with the Berne Convention on copyright, which requires that moral rights be recognized, the US passed the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), which does recognize moral rights for certain types of physical artwork, including paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures.

That has now created an interesting legal (and, possibly, moral and artistic) conundrum in New York City. The Four Seasons Hotel in midtown Manhattan happens to have a mural painted by Picasso, called "Le Tricorne." The mural was originally part of a set decoration for a performance of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, but has been in the Four Seasons restaurant lobby since 1959. Given how easy it is for anyone to go see it, it has been called Pablo Picasso's most readily accessible painting. Except... the guy who happens to own the property hates it and has referred to it insultingly. And he thinks (or, at least, claims) that the wall the mural is attached to is damaged and in bad need of repair, so he'd like to get rid of the painting (and, supposedly, replace it with another piece of artwork from his own collection). But art experts say that moving the painting will almost certainly destroy it. And, under VARA, it is believed that "works of recognized stature" can be prohibited from being destroyed.

And, voila, a legal and cultural conundrum. As Mira T. Sundara Rajan at the 1709 blog writes:

Where does this leave things with Picasso’s mural? Given its authorship, the ease of establishing that the Picasso is a work of “recognized stature” seems fairly straightforward. Accordingly, VARA could be invoked by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, which owned the Picasso after it was donated to the group in 2005, to prevent its possible destruction by removing it from its place in the Four Seasons Hotel. Such a ruling can be predicted with reasonable assurance in only a few jurisdictions in the world – including India, strongly pro-moral rights, and the United States, strongly ambivalent, which both agree on the principle that destruction of a work should be prevented, in so far as possible, by artists’ moral rights.

Above all, the case fascinates because of Picasso’s absence from the debate. Moral rights are often said to serve the aggrandizement of individual artists or (gasp) their heirs. In this case, however, the dispute would seem to have little impact on Picasso’s reputation or the wealth of his heirs. On the other hand, the painting has aptly been called “Picasso’s most readily accessible painting” (Terry Teachout in the Wall St J, cited here), and it presents the alluring image of art interwoven with the fabric of life in ways that are not usually possible in Western cities. In this case, at least, moral rights are widely perceived as a public interest issue.

There are obviously a number of different arguments to be made about what makes the most sense here, but the destruction of artwork always seems like a distressing result. At the same time, there are legitimate property rights issues -- and a more serious question of what if the structural integrity of the wall is actually in question. Do you "save" the artwork just to have the wall eventually cave in anyway? But where this gets even more interesting to me, is what it might mean for other types of artwork as well. Take, for example, Banksy. His works certainly fall into the realm of "works of recognized stature" -- but they might also be done in places where he had no permission to do them. That's true of a number of other increasingly well-known artists these days. And while Banksy may not be a fan of intellectual property, could someone invoke moral rights (which he may not even care about) to block the removal of one of his works?

Filed Under: four seasons, le tricorne, moral rights, picasso, property rights, vara