NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Critique of Fair Use

Raises interesting concerns; NEWSgrist thinks that the open-endedness of fair use is a good thing despite the unending confusion, and is still mulling it all over...

via iCommons:

Why a fair use exception is probably not such a good idea
May 7th, 2007 by Tobias Schonwetter, iCommons legal columnist

This month, iCommons’ resident copyright columnist, Tobias Schonwetter, explains what troubles him about the fair use doctrine and why the doctrine is less user-friendly than commonly assumed.

At a recent conference in the Caribbean, I was given the opportunity to express some of my views on copyright-related matters. Naturally, a lively discussion took place and subsequently a number of people approached me to share their ideas and opinions with me. It was during one of these talks that an Asian delegate told me that his country was about to replace the present set of specific copyright limitations and exceptions with a so-called fair use provision.

In a nutshell, fair use is a copyright exception in the US Copyright Act which allows the reproduction of an otherwise copyrighted work without the copyright-holder’s consent in certain circumstances. The exception is fundamentally based on the belief that not all copying should be banned in order to facilitate socially important endeavours. In this way, fair use safeguards (among other things) the fundamental right to free speech and freedom of expression, which is widely recognized as one of the most fundamental principles in a civil society.

The utilisation of a fair use provision instead of specific exceptions is a popular demand from user rights activists and campaigners for the public domain these days - and the Asian delegate had clearly assumed that I was part of this category after what I had said at the conference. Consequently, he was astonished and terrified when I told him that I would not necessarily recommend such a move for reasons which I am going to explain below.

In the days following our discussion, I often recalled the conversation and eventually spent a good deal of the remaining conference time discussing this issue with a variety of people. In the course of these conversations, I learned two things. Firstly, the fair use doctrine is often confused with the concept of fair dealing – a related set of copyright exceptions contained in the Copyright Acts of numerous Commonwealth legislations. Secondly, a general tendency exists to glorify the concept of fair use – regardless of its considerable disadvantages.

So, first of all, the concepts of fair dealing and fair use are not synonymous, they are, actually, analogous! Both concepts share, without a doubt, the same fundamental idea of permitting uses of copyrighted works which are considered fair. However, the concept of fair use is, in general, much broader since it is not confined to specific purposes – for example research, (private) study, criticism, review and news reporting. Furthermore, some of the uses permitted under the concept of fair dealing only pertain to certain kinds of protected works. By contrast, the fair use doctrine applies to all kinds of protected works.

[read on...]

Evening Post: Stressing over Banksy

via GrammarPolice, April 29, 2007:

Cue Alanis

Courtesy of Crooked Timber. There's also news of a hilarious attempted theft. I believe that one of Banksy's collectors (or someone who's considering buying?) reads this blog; hope this news isn't too stressful to read.

Posted by Kriston | Link | Art | Comments (1)

The Price is Right @ The Whitney ISP

The Price of Everything…Perspectives on the Art Market

Presented by

Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program
The Art Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street
May 17 – June 24, 2007

OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday, May 17, 2007
5–7 pm

The Price of Everything… Perspectives on the Art Market addresses the different overlapping micro-economies that comprise today’s expanded art market, structures that are often invisible to the casual observer. Taking its title from Oscar Wilde’s definition of the cynic as “a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing,” the show explores how artists have responded to the distinction between price and value, or to the erasure of that distinction. The featured works investigate the commercial aspects of exhibition and display, engage the concept of speculative value, or shed light on the role of the collector. Bringing together older and contemporary artworks, the exhibition reveals the playful side of works that seem grounded in explicit critique and locates critical subtexts in pieces that, at a first glance, might not appear to directly address market mechanisms.

The exhibition was organized by the 2006-07 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program: Martin Braathen, Stéphanie Fabre, Minnie Scott, and Mike Sperlinger, in an ongoing collaboration between the Whitney ISP and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York.

From Robert Morris’s 1969 Money, a proposal that the Whitney Museum invest $50,000 as a work of art—a performance piece in which capital does the performing—to Christian Jankowski’s art/retail role-reversal video piece Point of Sale (2002), the works reflect on the economic conditions of their reception and circulation. In Karl Haendel’s $56,055, 2005 (2005) the price of the picture, a life-size drawing of a Cadillac SUV, is pegged to that of its subject matter; while in Conrad Bakker’s works the emphasis is on our economic expectations of the exhibition space itself (including a site-specific nod to the Graduate Center’s own history as a former department store). Elmgreen and Dragset’s road sign, which points towards their sealed Prada store in the Marfa desert, is a reminder that these expectations extend far beyond the conventional gallery space too. Fareed Armaly & Christian Philipp Müller’s audio evocation of an opening and Fia Backström’s frieze of Artforum ads both address the background hum of commerce and its effects. The complicated give-and-take of art philanthropy is examined in a selection of artworks given to corporate donors under the auspices of the American Art Awards and in Marianne Heier’s Permanent Installation (5,783 Euros) (2005). Hans Haacke and Louise Lawler, in very different ways, both address the effects of the art market on the meaning of works themselves, while Danica Phelps and the Fine Art Adoption Network suggest parallel forms of dissemination and collection beyond the confines of the market.

Within the context of the current market fever The Price of Everything… attempts to correlate different kinds of investment—intellectual, emotional, as well as financial—and poses a series of questions about the kinds of returns that we expect from contemporary art.

Steve Mumford: Punking It Up in Iraq

Journalist, blogger and artist Caleb Schaber at CPIC, Baghdad

Artist and inveterate adventurer Steve Mumford has been back to Iraq; his latest journal entry is now up on Artnet along with new drawings; here's an excerpt:

It strikes me that wherever reporters gather in numbers, they themselves become a colorful part of the story -- a random collection of individualists of diverse political stripes who count themselves happy in a war zone. And in expanding its journalistic standards to include bloggers, the army increased the colorful quotient. There are the self-styled warrior-poets, the weary Ernie Pyles, the iconoclasts and the debunkers of conventional wisdom. You’ll also find the angry activists and, even now, the sunny boosters ("I’d rather fight ‘em here than at home"). But in spite of these personae, most remain modest and circumspect about predicting the outcome of this war. While many feel that invading Iraq was a mistake, I get the sense that few would advocate an immediate withdrawal.  

Caleb Schaber is a very tattooed blogger, artist, musician and bartender who once ran for mayor of Seattle and writes for something called the Northern Nevada Newswire. He shows off his latest tattoo: a dotted line around his neck, with the inscription "cut here" (also in Arabic, helpfully, on the back), which he got because his girlfriend said he should get more punk rock for Iraq. Last year between embedments he bartended in Kabul, a city that sounds a lot like Saigon in its excesses and pleasures, at least as he describes it.

On March 26, 2007, Caleb arrives from a helicopter day trip to Diwaniya, where he had gone to witness an Iraqi Police swearing-in ceremony. Caleb provoked a sensation among the new cops for his tattoos. "But man," he adds, "when I showed them my ‘cut here’ tattoo they, like, totally freaked out and took off!"

Lately, Caleb has been flying around Iraq on Blackhawks and filming miniature golf courses in Tal Afar. You can hear the haunting musical results of his jamming with pilots and contractors at http://nnnv.podbean.com/ and see his videos from Iraq at http://youtube.com/Panzwayi.

[read on...]

Wafaa Bilal's Domestic Tension

via Rhizome:

New submission: Domestic Tension.

    May 10th, 2007, 4:39 pm 

   

Anonymous writes:

For the duration of May, 2007, Iraqi born artist Wafaa Bilal will live in the FlatFile Galleries in Chicago. The public can watch him 24 hours a day over a live webcam; and if they choose, visitors to his website can shoot him with a remote controlled paintball gun.

Bilal’s self imposed confinement is designed to raise awareness about the life of the Iraqi people and the home confinement they face due to the both the violent and the virtual war they face on a daily basis.

You can participate - eg shoot at him with a paintball gun - by clicking here.

See this site for some videos and more about the Wafaa's work. Good stuff.
            

Originally from selectparks.net- games by artists, published by Lauren Cornell  

   

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