Techdirt. Stories filed under "greenville" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "greenville"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 4 Aug 2009 00:57:19 PDT Little Mermaid Statue Free To Be After Artist's Estate Didn't Expect Negative Publicity Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090803/0146585745.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090803/0146585745.shtml going after a small town in Michigan, for daring to have a "Little Mermaid" statue to play up many of the town's Danish ancestors. There's a famous Little Mermaid statue in Denmark, and the artist's estate (the artist died fifty years ago) apparently thinks all such statues infringe on its copyright (even though this statue was very different). However, in our comments over the weekend Christopher alerted us to the news that the estate had withdrawn the copyright infringement claim, apparently citing the publicity as the reason. Apparently, being a copyright bully can have a bit of a backlash...

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]]> funny-how-that-works http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090803/0146585745 Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:26:11 PDT Copyright Cops Go After Town For Creating Little Mermaid Statue Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090731/0337175728.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090731/0337175728.shtml is demanding a lump sum payment or that the statue be taken down. The actual artist died in 1959... but thanks to recent extensions in copyright (yippee), copyright now lasts life plus seventy years.

Of course, I'm wondering if the statue even violates the copyright at all. While the town says it was inspired by the one in Denmark, the actual statue is different:
At about 30 inches high, it's half the size of the original and has a different face and other distinct features, including larger breasts. "We've gotten a lot of heat about that too," he says
Considering that so much of the statue is different, is it even a copyright violation at all? Apparently, this isn't the only town that's faced problems over such statues. The article notes, amusingly, that Vancouver, British Columbia -- after failing to get permission from the artist's estate -- instead put up a statue entitled "Girl in a Wetsuit" and even added swimming fins and goggles to get the point across. It's hard to believe that this one artist, whose been dead for fifty years, should have total control over statues of mermaids, but that's what today's copyright law gives us. Isn't it great?

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