Schoolgirl goes to museum. Schoolgirl sketches on drawing pad Matisse’s Large Reclining Nude. Security guard tells schoolgirl sketching not allowed ‘because of copyrights’.
What the hell?!? So the constant daily barrage about ‘intellectual property rights’ has created this monster where the average joe who knows shit about the law thinks that anything and everything has copyrights. Whatever happened to freedom of expression? Whatever happened to the fact that IP is not a natural ‘right’, but a state-granted limited monopoly over a particular expression of an idea?
Eyewitness News 11.com: Young Prospective Artist Finds Herself in a ‘No Sketch’ Zone via Boing Boing
7 Comments
Tell that to the corporate lobbies!
Eh errr… to be honest the guard is wrong? it is at most fright tactics. Unless there are signs saying no sketching/doodling/drawing, it is perfectly legal to sketch. Even if there’s such a sign it would NOT be an infringement of copyrights, but merely a debatable breach of contract.
But its true that copyright subsists in almost every product of mankind.
ivan:
exactly. That guard doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Fortunately for the kid, the museum curator later explained that the guard was mistaken. My rant was about how the media blitz against ‘piracy’ has created this permissions-based culture where everything must be approved before copying, EVEN though copyright doesn’t subsist.
Out of curiousity, given that the painting is by Matisse, and at the time of creation copyright should’ve been life+14, wouldn’t that painting have been in the public domain by now?
Aren’t copyright extensions retroactive?
Agagooga:
nope. if that were true, Beethoven and Mozart would be under copyright too, wouldn’t they?
well, if the copyrights extend to centuries, maybe. afaik in the US it’s 75 years aft author’s death now for books and music right?
whatever happened to academic use?
something interesting — the museums here charge a fee for the training courses they conduct for museum guides. it’s a reasonable amount, but apparently some of that money goes to arranging rights of use with publishers for photocopies. aren’t our museums here covered by academic use clauses or something?!?
Yes but who would own the copyright to Beethoven and Mozart?
No copyright extensions are retroactive as long as the works are still under copyright. Why would the companies seek to extend copyright terms? Disney lobbied for the latest extension to keep Steamboat Willy out of the hands of the public.
No now it’s 90 years after the death.
People photocopy in museums?!