Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:27:40 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120228/04431617895/artist-sues-sony-music-because-her-artwork-appears-background-music-video.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120228/04431617895/artist-sues-sony-music-because-her-artwork-appears-background-music-video.shtml suing RCA and Sony Music because a mural she painted -- and which appears to be in a public area -- appears (rather briefly) in the background of a music video by Elle Varner. You can see the video below: The colorful mural really isn't in the video that long and is hardly a central part of the video. It's just part of the background (and doesn't even show up until pretty far in). But Hayuk claims that using it in such a video without a license is infringement. We've seen plenty of other attempts to claim copyright on public artwork and it strikes us as equally ridiculous each time. If you're putting your artwork in public, it should be non-infringing if someone else happens to capture it in a photograph or video.

There's a separate factoid in the case, which is that Hayuk apparently created the original mural for a different music video, starring Rye Rye and M.I.A., which you can see below: So part of this might just be about "competing" videos both using the same mural (briefly in both cases). Though, honestly, the two videos are extremely different, and unless you're really spending much time paying attention to the walls in the background, you probably wouldn't even notice that this is the same wall. Of course, it's always entertaining when a major label gets sued for copyright infringement, but this case really just highlights how ridiculous copyright law has become these days that merely dancing in front of a wall can be considered copyright infringement. It's entirely possible that this will be found to be infringement, but any system that leads to such a conclusion has serious problems. The mural is public, and having people film a music video there is something that happens. Don't want it? Paint over the mural or put it on private property.

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]]> oh-please http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120228/04431617895 Mon, 14 Dec 2009 11:48:00 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091211/1638267320.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091211/1638267320.shtml Rob Hyndman sends over the news that a Vancouver art gallery was ordered to remove a mural, because it was viewed as being anti-Olympics. The Olympics, of course, comes to Vancouver in a few months. The mural in question showed five rings, in the usual Olympic pattern, with four of the rings showing a frown face, and the fifth showing a smiley. The mural was hanging outside of the gallery, so the city claims the order to take it down came due to local graffiti laws -- though the gallery says in 10 years, this is the first mural it had to take down. In fact, when the landlord was told to remove the graffiti, he called the city back to ask what graffiti since he didn't see any and assumed the mural was fine, given the history of murals hung there. And, of course, there's already concern over a special law -- passed just for the Olympics -- that gives law enforcement the right to remove signage that they don't like.

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]]> free-speech?-not-with-the-olympics-in-town http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091211/1638267320