Bill Graham smackdown

[the hipoisie]

Maybe this has been discussed before, but does anyone know what's up with this?
http://www.sixtiesposters.com/
"SADLY, Sixties Posters is no longer displaying ANY images of Bill Graham/Fillmore items that we own on this website. We have recently been notified by the current owner of the Bill Graham Archives that displaying images of the Bill Graham items that we own violates the copyright that he holds on these images. So, for the time being, and on the advice of our attorneys, we are removing the images from the website."
Is it because it's a commercial site? I hope something similar doesn't happen to gigposters and expressobeans.

[DenisMutter]

Wolfgang's Vault is the joint that owns all those copyrights - do a search on GP to read the previous threads and gnashing of teeth surrounding this crock of shit.

No offense to wolfgang, or any gang, but it is what it is.

[Finch]

I'm far from being a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that you can't display an image of something that you own...even if you are selling it.

Could Ford say that someone couldn't feature a photo of their '72 Mustang in an eBay auction...?

[JayJaySerious]

Yeah, that makes no sense to me either. But the ways the laws are in this country, if you can't afford to fight them in a lawsuit, you don't have much choice but to comply with a cease and desist.

[Brendan Jordan]

I'm far from being a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that you can't display an image of something that you own...even if you are selling it.

Could Ford say that someone couldn't feature a photo of their '72 Mustang in an eBay auction...?

I don't know man . . . when my sister bought her Warhols they got a letter from the Warhol Society reminding them that they could not publish the images of their prints in any form.

Seems a bit harsh.

[DenisMutter]

Ironic, coming from the society dedicated to an artist who made much of his rep on co-opting images from the mainstream and re-contextualizing them to suit his own "artistis" vision.

Cambell's Soup Can anyone?

[Brendan Jordan]

Ironic, coming from the society dedicated to an artist who made much of his rep on co-opting images from the mainstream and re-contextualizing them to suit his own "artistis" vision.

Cambell's Soup Can anyone?

Even more ironic is that the pieces they purchased were actually two of his Campbell Soup Cans

[Shmogger]

I'm far from being a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that you can't display an image of something that you own...even if you are selling it.

Could Ford say that someone couldn't feature a photo of their '72 Mustang in an eBay auction...?

Though I definitely don't condone the unmitigated gall of Wolfgang's Vault and their copyright thuggery, I'd point out that the '72 Mustang is not a copyrighted item. (The picture of it is, but whoever took the picture owns the copyright on that... but that's beside the point.)

I think the legal theory WV bases their offensive position on is that under copyright laws of many countries, you can infringe by making a copyrighted image publicly available for others to infringe. Because of the nature of the Internet, any time someone posts an image of a poster, even if there's no infringement by that posting, it's making it available for others to copy and put to some infringing use. So WV is pre-empting potential infringement by slamming down on anybody putting their images on the net.

Personally, I feel this is a classic example of overprotection of intellectual property. If the Internet's utilitarian benefits were valued more by people writing copyright legislation, this kind of infringement would probably be much more narrowly defined. But both the 1998 US revision of the Copyright Act (the DMCA) and the EU Copyright Directives of the last few years have taken corporate-friendly slants on the "making available" type of infringement on the Internet. That's the deck we're currently playing with.

[ferg2001]

I'm far from being a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that you can't display an image of something that you own...even if you are selling it.

Could Ford say that someone couldn't feature a photo of their '72 Mustang in an eBay auction...?

I don't know man . . . when my sister bought her Warhols they got a letter from the Warhol Society reminding them that they could not publish the images of their prints in any form.

Seems a bit harsh.

your sister has warhols? rad

[Brendan Jordan]

I'm far from being a lawyer, but I find it hard to believe that you can't display an image of something that you own...even if you are selling it.

Could Ford say that someone couldn't feature a photo of their '72 Mustang in an eBay auction...?

I don't know man . . . when my sister bought her Warhols they got a letter from the Warhol Society reminding them that they could not publish the images of their prints in any form.

Seems a bit harsh.

your sister has warhols? rad

Yeah, two. Both of them hang in the kitchen of their Greenwich Village Apartment . . . Floated Framing.

She also got (last Christmas) an Artist's Proof of one of Picasso's peices. It looks like pen and ink, but Picasso worked primarily in black and white during the time period he did it, so I guess it could be paint I really don't know. It was in his studio when he died, and my brother-in-law bought it from his daughter's collection.

Her and her husband like to invest in art. They have a dealer that gives them a 'heads-up' when something like that becomes available.