Don Ross tries to Trivialize Gohonzon
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Typical rationalization for desecration of the Gohonzon of the High
Snactuary of true Buddhism.
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From: "Don Ross" <campross@f...>
Date: Fri Jun 8, 2001 8:33 pm
Subject: Interesting article: Art-site copies may be legal
Ten years ago, David Brooks, a computer programmer in Toronto, came
across a passing reference to the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh in
one of Frank Herbert's ``Dune'' novels. In the book, one of the few
artifacts of civilization to survive global destruction is the van
Gogh painting ``Thatched Cottages at Cordeville.''
Intrigued by the reference, Brooks made a point of reading up on van
Gogh and seeing the painting on a visit to Paris. ``That was the
clincher,'' he said.
Van Gogh's art, the letters he sent and, of course, the narrative of a
misunderstood artist who sold only one painting during his lifetime
and committed suicide, all conspired to convert Brooks, 36, from an
interested observer into a passionate Van Gogh autodidact.
Five years ago, Brooks took his preoccupation with van Gogh to the
Web. He is the creator of the carefully constructed Vincent van Gogh
Gallery (www.vangoghgallery.com). Brooks painstakingly scanned and
digitally mounted reproductions of every one of van Gogh's remaining
2,200 paintings, sketches, watercolors and drawings. He also made a
point to include texts of all of the artist's 864 surviving letters.
Last year, Brooks left his job at the Canadian Imperial Bank of
Commerce to devote himself to the site. It looked like his dream of
making a living as a van Gogh researcher was about to come true.
That was until an e-mail message arrived in December, from a friend at
the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. ``She said, `I found this Web site,
and I think the person is using a lot of your material,' '' Brooks
recalled.
Brooks says he was flabbergasted to discover that all of the art
images and all of the letters appeared to have been copied from his
site and reposted on About Van Gogh Art (www.about-van-gogh-art.com),
a commercial site that sells everything from van Gogh lunch boxes to
reproductions painted in China. Brooks recognized much of the digital
work as his own.
``I probably have about 15 images that you simply can't find anywhere
in color,'' he said, ``and I found them on this guy's Web site, the
same size.''
To Brooks, this was the digital-age equivalent of an art heist. But
what he discovered, he says, is that copying Web sites can be
completely legal.
The images that he had collected and posted had entered the public
domain 70 years (50 years in Canada) after van Gogh's death in 1890.
The battle of the van Gogh Web sites highlights a type of dispute that
is increasingly common in the age of digital reproduction, according
to David J. Powsner, an intellectual-property lawyer with the Boston
firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish. ``There's an assumption we have that
you can simply copy things off the Web,'' he said.
After discovering About Van Gogh Art, Brooks called the site's owner
to complain. The owner turned out to be Ernst Coors, a tennis
instructor turned Internet entrepreneur in Amsterdam. According to
Brooks, their conversations began pleasantly enough. But Brooks says
that as he pressed Coors further, the conversations turned
increasingly nasty.
Coors, reached by telephone from Amsterdam, disputed Brooks' version
of the conversations.
Coors' lawyer, Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, conceded that the images
were taken from Brooks' site. But he added that Coors did nothing
wrong and that Brooks is trying to exert rights over material he
doesn't own.
[Fwd by a friend, source unknown.]
Schizoid Man
>what he discovered, he says, is that copying Web sites can be
>completely legal.
>
>The images that he had collected and posted had entered the public
>domain 70 years (50 years in Canada) after van Gogh's death in 1890.
>Coors' lawyer, Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, conceded that the images
>were taken from Brooks' site. But he added that Coors did nothing
>wrong and that Brooks is trying to exert rights over material he
>doesn't own.
Reminds me of a flame war that took place on one of the "nude
celebrities" groups in the alt.binaries.* heirarchy, in which some
were complaining that others were taking their scans, cropping
and-or resizing them, adding logos or identifiers of their own,
and reposting them. The gist of the argument of those who were
doing the complaining was that their work was being tampered
with, their pictures were being altered. But since they did not,
in fact, own the copyright to these pictures in the first place,
there was ultimately nothing they could do other than loudly
and shrilly whine and complain about it...
Now, if the *text* of the web site was being copied as well, then
there might be a case... but the images themselves, being in
the public domain, were fair game.
StrawberryYin
outcome of whether NIKKEN took pics or not from the trial?...<g>...
You know who!