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Cease and Desist: From the Law Offices of M.C Grosfischerplan

[Back story - Satire Alert set to ON]

The latest dispatch from the copyright wars:

Download C&D for Robert Hovden 2014

________________________________________________

 

 

M.C Grosfischerplan , Esq.

_________________________________________________________________

 

 

From:

The Law Offices of M.C Grosfischerplan

Butch Kills, NY 11101

[email protected]

 

1 December 2014

 

To:

Robert Hovden

School of Applied and Engineering Physics

Cornell University

271 Clark Hall

Ithaca, NY 14853-3501

c. XXX-XXX-XXXX

 

Re: Copyright Infringement

 

Dear Mr. Hovden:

 

I represent Ms. Joy Garnett, award winning painter and appropriation artist in the above captioned matter.

 

Ms. Garnett is the copyright owner of all rights under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. 101 et seq., hereinafter “the Act”) in and to an image entitled, “Laylah K.” (hereinafter “the Copyrighted Image”). The Copyrighted Image was adapted from a 1969 photograph of the renowned Palestinian Freedom Fighter Laylah Khaled that has been determined to be a public domain image and therefore not protected under U.S. copyright law. Furthermore, Ms. Garnett’s apparent use of a Creative Commons license for the digital reproduction of said Copyrighted Image on her website does not supersede her copyright, nor does it negate Ms. Garnett’s ability to exercise her rights with regard to the Copyrighted Image as enumerated in the Act.

 

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that your nano-etching entitled “Laylah K.” (hereinafter “the Infringing Image”), which is currently being displayed in the exhibition When Art Exceeds Perception hosted by Cornell University’s Jill Stuart Gallery infringes Ms. Garnett’s federal and state intellectual property rights, principally her exclusive rights of display, reproduction and right to make derivative works under Section 106 of the Act, despite the fact that the display of the Infringing Image, which is etched on “industry-standard silicon wafers”, is not remotely perceptible to the human eye, even with the use of conventional visual aids, and is, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

 

Additionally, a portion of the magnified reproduction of the Infringing Image appears on the Cornell Council for the Arts website on the announcement page for Biennial Projects, http://cca.cornell.edu/?p=projects, which lists the exhibition as open to the public through the fifteenth day of the month of December of this year. This use is also an infringement of Ms. Garnett’s rights as reserved under the Act.

 

The Infringing Image, described as a “nano-etching” (or “nano-lithograph”), knowingly infringes and takes as its own the principal figure in the Copyrighted Image, which is referred to in the press material for the exhibition (http://cacm.acm.org/news/180109-cornell-biennial-celebrates-nanotech-as-art/fulltext) as “the original image” and also as one of “several famous works of art”. Furthermore, the Infringing Image replicates the entire composition of the Copyrighted Image, though in a scale and format 500 times smaller than the eye can resolve, and five times smaller than the wavelength of light, and therefore invisible to even the conventionally aided eye under normal daily human circumstances. And yet, the Infringing Image takes too much.

 

It is well recognized that a change in the medium of expression cannot excuse the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image, even if under the circumstances that medium renders the image far from visible, and hence possibly non-existent, except in the mind of the would-be beholder. Where it is reasonable to consider the mind’s eye, (or the “Imagination”) as a “medium”, and memory a recording device, memory can be considered potentially infringing, even where the objects of its attention fly far below the radar of human perception.

 

Similarly, the fact that the unauthorized use of the Copyrighted Image cannot be justified as fair use under Section 107 of the Act, is supported by a long line of cases. Without going into great detail, suffice it to say that in no way can Mr. Hovden’s (hereinafter referred to as the Infringing Artist) use of the Copyrighted Image be considered a “legal” parody of Ms. Garnett’s work. Rather, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently stated in the case of Campbell v. Acuff Rose, “This is not, of course, to say that anyone who calls himself a parodist can skim the cream and get away scot free. In parody, as in news reporting... context is everything, and the question of fairness asks what else the parodist did besides go to the heart of the original.”

 

Whilst one recognizes that artists often pay homage to other artists, copying of this kind constitutes copyright infringement. You are simply sailing under the flag of “piracy”, taking verbatim, protected artistic expression. Making this pirated copy tiny, even utterly imperceptible, or perhaps not even inscribed as described (since there is really no way to know), does not make it okay.

 

Under the Act, Ms. Garnett has the right to request that you cease and desist from any further exhibition, display, sale or reproduction of the Infringing Image. Nevertheless, Ms. Garnett is willing, in this one instance, to forgo her right to an injunction, seizure of the Infringing Image and damages, to permit your creation of a derivative work on acceptance by you of the following terms and conditions in writing:

 

1.      In any and every display and exhibition, visible or otherwise, of the work (hereinafter “the nano-etching”), a credit or nano-credit on or next to the invisible derivative object will be provided as follows:

 

“Based on an original painting by Joy Garnett.

Copyright Joy Garnett, 2003"

 

2.      All other rights in and to the Copyrighted Image are expressly reserved. They may not be reproduced nor derivative works made, whether barely visible, invisible, or otherwise hardly in existence, without the prior written approval of Ms. Garnett.

 

3.      Two slides of the Nano-etching/lithograph, “Laylah K.”, will be provided to Ms. Garnett. If slides cannot be obtained, then miniscule digital files will be acceptable provided that proof is offered to show that these files indeed depict what cannot be seen by ordinary means.

 

In the interim, please see that references to the work and reproductions of it are removed from the Cornell Council of the Arts website and everywhere else.

 

Please note that this letter is without prejudice to Ms. Garnett’s legal and equitable rights and remedies, all of which are expressly reserved, should you fail to agree to the terms and conditions as stated above.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

M.C Grosfischerplan , Esq.

 

The Law Offices of M.C Grosfischerplan

Butch Kills, NY 11101

[email protected]

______________________________________

Addendum: "Rofl"

 via https://www.wired.de/collection/latest/robert-hovden-zeigt-mit-wissenschaft-die-grenzen-des-geistigen-eigentums-auf

The Grift Economy

This article first appeared in Art21 Magazine, Apr/May 2014 Issue: 'Value'

Wolf Paw, Distribution of Wealth, 2104. Mixed media; dimesions variable. Courtesy Ace Chinchilla Gallery, Zurich. © Wolf Paw. All Rights Reserved.

Copy That!

The Grift Economy

by Joy Garnett | Apr 14, 2014

“A grift isn’t fully realized until it is grifted.” —Giovanna della Grema, The Grift: Imaginative Futures in Contemporary Fine Art, 2104

 

Dear Artist,

I hope this finds you well. I am Giovanna della Grema, the director of Ace Chinchilla, LLC, an advisory group for global contemporary fine art based in the capital of Switzerland. I am also senior partner of Grema & Grema, Ltd., our family’s bespoke art consultancy business, whose reigns were recently handed over to me by my father, its founder, after his untimely death by motorcar accident. Thanks to his foresight I am able to legally and fruitfully communicate my proposal to you today.

Also, may I add, it is with deep sense of purpose and utmost sincerity that I write this letter to you, knowing full well how you may feel receiving such a missive from someone you have not met or heard from before. There is no need to fear, as I discovered your listing in reliable US-based arts publications, including the renowned Arts in Americas Directory, which lends credence to my humble belief in the wisdom of this communiqué. I also assure you of my honesty and trustworthiness.

Not at all incidental to this proposal is my exceptional role as private consultant and curator to none other than Her Excellency (HE), the celebrated Sheikha Noor bint Ascii bin Zift, whose beauty and generosity are well known throughout the global fine art community. You will no doubt have read about HE these past several years in all the major newspapers and art magazines, not to mention the annual Top 1000 lists. But in case you, a busy artist immersed in your own process, are not up-to-date on Her Excellency’s growing achievements, I will gladly fill you in at a later date should we continue to discuss our potential arrangement. For now, I will simply point you to a few facts: Her Excellency is heir to a small family estate, an exquisite jewel situated on the pristine outskirts of the eponymous Royaume de Zift² founded through the implementation of the Village-Turned-Nation-State Solution policy after the climactic events that swept through the realm in the previous decade.

Zift rises from the banks of a former ancient river that for millennia emptied its waters off the northern coast of the African continent. After myriad filthy hovels were razed, Zift was redesigned top to bottom by the visionary “starchitect” Hubertus IV of Hohenlohe-Langenburg-Elf (the great-great-grandson of the Alpine ski celebrity), who earned his degree from the prestigious NYUCorp (Eastern Divisions) soon after the close of his generation’s war. Ever since, sparkling Zift has lent its name to all that touches its borders.

But I must cut this history lesson short and come to our main point. On behalf of Her Excellency, I offer this morsel: we are very much interested in working with you.

Currently we (Her Excellency and myself) serve a handpicked coterie of international young artists, including Martín Martín, Juno Bieber, Agnès Hermès, Antonio van den Boss, Viv Smith, Wolf Paw, Uli Abramovitch, Minus Wei, Julep Haden-Guest, Mustafa Deliria, and several other up-and-coming individuals of enormous potential. We are forging long-term relationships with these fine artists as we spearhead the contemporary resurgence of established patronage systems that once flowered in the golden age of every culture, long before the advent of the now-defunct, twentieth-century model known as The Gallery System, not to mention that short-lived, unsustainable-but-widespread phenomenon of the same era, the International Art Fair.

But before I go into detail about our proposal, which was confided to me privately by Her Excellency herself, I feel obliged to assure you in advance that both Ace Chinchilla Gallery, LLC and Grema & Grema, Ltd. are committed to meeting the diverse and changing needs of contemporary fine artists, and to providing cultural programmes for the ideas and practices encompassed and encircled by the cognitively challenging, opaque global culture of contemporary fine art. The core focus of our multiplatform initiative is to foster personalized and discreet intercourse with and within the world of contemporary fine arts—including painting, fine digital photography, 4-D relational performance, and new and newish media forms—to establish innovative, critical, telecommunicative dialogue between artists, institutions, and potential audiences. I am, in my dual capacity as senior partner of Ace Chinchilla and sole consultant to Her Excellency, committed to working directly as Artist Ambassador to those cutting-edge contemporary art institutions around the globe that one cannot avoid thinking about, as well as major fine arts magazines (such as the one enclosed in this e-information packet), where you can read all about the very artists we carry. It is our goal to create long-standing brands and prestigious environments for fine artists who we feel merit our support, as can be witnessed on our renowned website and attested to by our worldwide, high-end clientele.

To my point then: all we need are your Full Names, GlobalSensChipID number, and your Bank WireSIM code to start the process of changing the certificate of the deed of deposit in your favour to enable you to come over to claim the money and start your residency with us. That is all. Very simple. Let me know what you think about this. In the interim, we—Her Excellency and I—continue to be astounded by your distinguished output and anticipate assisting you with the development of your career, as only we can.

I look forward to hearing from you and would be pleased to provide you with more details. We are very interested in your work. Thanks a lot.

All my best,
Giovanna della Grema

(The above letter is inspired by true events. However, none of it is real. Any resemblance to actual people, real or imagined, is coincidental.)

________

1. A play on “A gift isn’t fully realized until it is given away,” from Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (New York: Vintage, 1979), 50.
2. “Zift,” Urban Dictionary.

 

Joy Garnett is an artist and writer in Brooklyn, New York. She blogs about art and open source culture at NEWSgrist.com, and is Arts Editor for Cultural Politics, a contemporary media theory journal published by Duke University Press. She is currently writing a book and working on a visual archive. She is addicted to Instagram. 

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