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Texas court says state institutions can use copyrighted material for free

16 Jun

A Texas appeals court has ruled that the University of Houston does not have to pay the photographer of a picture it has been using in online and print promotional materials. Houston photographer Jim Olive says the university removed copyright markings from an image downloaded from his stock library, failed to credit him when it was used and wouldn’t pay when he sent a bill, but the university claims it has sovereign immunity and that it can’t be sued.

The case surrounds an aerial image Olive shot from a helicopter hired specifically for making pictures for his library. In an online image search, he found the university was using it on its website and then in printed materials. When it failed to pay an invoice he sent for the usage Olive tried to sue the university, but it claimed that under the Eleventh Amendment it couldn’t be sued as it is a state institution.

In an attempt to get around this Olive tried to sue the University of Houston for taking his property – in which case even government agencies would have to compensate the owner. The Court of Appeals though has said that the university’s actions didn’t comprise ‘taking’ and that Olive will have to pay the university’s legal costs.

The Court of Appeals though has said that the university’s actions didn’t comprise ‘taking’ and that Olive will have to pay the university’s legal costs.

According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, which described the success of the university as ‘a big win’, Olive said ‘It just doesn’t seem fair to me.’

If this ruling is allowed to stand it would seem that any state institution can use images and other intellectual property without having to pay the originators, a precedent that would be damaging to photographers across the country, because if that’s the case in Texas, it may well be true in all other states covered by the Eleventh Amendment.

The detailed ruling concerning the appeal heard in the Court of Appeals for The First District of Texas by Justice Richard Hightower can be read on CaseText, and the applications from the start of the case can be seen on the Copyright Alliance website. Ironically, the university has a page on its site to allow users to report copyright infringements – and to request permission to use UH intellectual Property.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Clever Land Artist Copyrighted Earth to Beat an Oil Pipeline

19 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

land artwork surface copyright

Canadian land artist and sculptor Peter von Tiesenhausen occupies a stretch of land in Alberta covered with his artworks, but it was not until he turned the top six layers of the soil on his 800 acres of land itself from private to intellectual property that he was able to fend off encroaching corporate interests.

land sculpture water figures

In Canada, a landowner has surface rights but must allow the government to grant paid subterranean access, allowing companies to create or mine passageways, pipelines, minerals or other natural resources below the ground.

land art hole breach

They are compensated, per This.org, and “this compensation is usually for lost harvests and inconvenience, but, Tiesenhausen reasoned, what if instead of a field of crops these companies were destroying the life’s work of an acclaimed visual artist? Wouldn’t the compensation have to be exponentially higher?”

land artwork gallery bridge

Effectively, by contacting a lawyer and protecting the surface of his land as intellectual property, he has prevented anyone from breaching that surface without compensation, which, for a work of art, could be essentially any amount. While oil companies could contest his claim, so far they have settled for costly reroutes, perhaps to avoid losing and setting a precedent that could hurt them more in the long run.

land art gallery installation

“I’m not trying to get money for my land, I’m just trying to relate to these companies on their level,” says Tiesenhausen from his home near Demmitt, Alberta. “Once I started charging $ 500 an hour for oil companies to come talk to me, the meetings got shorter and few and far between.”

land art hanging museum

Now an artist, Tiesenhausen has a great deal of experience with natural resource companies, having worked in oil fields, mining gold and even crushing boulders for airstrips earlier in life before turning to large-scale works of land and installation art and sculpture.

land art wood sculpture

Cantech Letter notes of the clever strategy, “This is eerily similar to the defense Portia deploys against Shylock in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in which he is legally entitled to extract a pound of flesh from a debtor who can’t pay, so long as he doesn’t extract a single drop of blood or marrow or bone.”