PARADOXES OF COPYRIGHT
Week 42: 14 - 18 October, 2024
Location: ZT 5.D02
Abstract:
Contemporary art’s relation to copyright is paradoxical. Copyright gives artists a claim of ownership over their own work. Yet, it enforces a type of individual original authorship that poorly fits contemporary artistic practices, which are often collaborative, generative, and building on the works of others. Since Dada, many avant-garde movements intended to undermine the notion of artistic control and originality. At least since the 1960s, numerous artists and activists have explored this paradox in their works, coming into conflict with copyright, exposing the weakness of its conceptual foundations in the digital domain, instigating collective practices and, recently, through blockchain-based mechanisms (NFTs) pioneered notions of “ownership” that seemingly abandons copyright entirely. In this module, we approach copyright not as fixed legal system, but as a contested cultural domain, in which artists play a key role in developing new models for 21st century. We will focus on artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Cornelia Sollfrank, Elaine Sturtevant, and on movements such as “copy-left”and look into the strange case of the model Emily Ratajkowski who sold ownership rights to an image of herself she probably doesn’t own. We will also look at the rise (and possible fall) of NFTs as the latest incarnation of the paradoxes of copyright.
Course requirements:
Attendance (80%)
Participation in reading, discussions, and group presentations
Monday: Basics of Copyright Law & Edge Cases
Morning
Background: History of Copyright Wikipedia
Ulitarian vs author rights argument
- ArtI.S8.C8.1 Overview of Congress's Power Over Intellectual Property (1789) (US Congress)
- Diderot's Letter on the book trade (1763) (PRIMARY SOURCES ON COPYRIGHT, 1450-1900), Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–1772)
Swiss Copyright law
Bundesgesetz über das Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte
Art. 2: “Werke sind, unabhängig von ihrem Wert oder Zweck, geistige Schöpfungen der Literatur und Kunst, die individuellen Charakter haben.”
Art. 6: “Urheber oder Urheberin ist die natürliche Person, die das Werk geschaffen hat.”
Art. 10: “Der Urheber oder die Urheberin hat das ausschliessliche Recht zu bestimmen, ob, wann und wie das Werk verwendet wird.”
Art. 11: Der Urheber oder die Urheberin hat das ausschliessliche Recht zu bestimmen; (a) ob, wann und wie das Werk geändert werden darf.
Afternoon
Defining the edges of copyright: When a photo is not “individual”
- Gisela Blau: Bild von Christoph Meili, 1997
- Bundesgrichtsurteil: Gisela Blau Guggenheim vs BBC, 19. April 2004
- Lichtbildschutz, URG Revision, 1. April 2020 (Artikel 2 Abs. 3bis)
Can a non-human be an author?
Animals
Fobar, Rachel. „A Person or a Thing? Inside the Fight for Animal Personhood“. National Geographic, 4. August 2021
Machines
Recker, Jane. „U.S. Copyright Office Rules A.I. Art Can’t Be Copyrighted“. Smithsonian Magazine (March 24), 2022.
Künstliche Intelligenz: Können KI-Tools Urheberrecht verletzen? Institut für Geistiges Eigentum, Bern (02.2023)
Wem gehört das Gedicht, das Chat-GPT geschrieben hat? Das sagen die Gesetze, NZZ (29.04.2023)
Bundesministerium der Justiz (DE).Künstliche Intelligenz und Urheberrecht - Fragen und Antworten(März 2024)
The twisted case of Emily Ratajkowski
- How many layers of copyright infringement are in Emily Ratajkowski’s new NFT? The Verge, 21.03.2021
- Emily Ratajkowski Buying Myself Back When does a model own her own image The Cut, 15.09.2020
Tuesday: Aesthetics, Authorship and counter-movements
Morning
Ortland, Eberhard. 2008. “The Aesthetics of Copyright:” In Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy, 227–32. Philosophy Documentation Center. https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp22200811225 PDF
Stalder, Felix. 2014. “Urheberrecht - Wenn das Recht kunstfeindlich wird.” Kunstbulletin, 2014. PDF
Barthes, Roland. 1967. “The Death of the Author.” Aspen, 1967. https://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/index.html
Foucault, Michel. 1968. “What Is an Author?” PDF
Afternoon: Group Reading
Woodmansee, Martha. 1992. “On the Author Effect: Recovering Collectivity.” Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 10: 279–92 PDF
Martin, Tom. „Authorship in Age of AI: From Authors of Words to Authors of Intent“, 20. Mai 2024. https://www.lawdroidmanifesto.com
Gibson, Johanna. „Page against the machine: the death of the author and the rise of the producer?“ Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property 13, Nr. 3 (12. Oktober 2023): 275–84. https://doi.org/10.4337/qmjip.2023.03.00.
Free Licenses, Copyleft and Creative Commons
Free Software Foundation. What is Free Software?
Digital Commons
Dulong de Rosnay, Melanie, und Felix Stalder. „Digital Commons“. Internet Policy Review 9, Nr. 4 (2020).
Stalder, Felix, und Cornelia Sollfrank. „Introduction“. In Aesthetics of the Commons, herausgegeben von Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder, und Shusha Niederberger, 11–38. Zurich / Berlin: Diaphanes, 2021.
Blockchain & NFTs
Stalder, Felix. „From Commons to NFTs: Digital Objects and Radical Imagination“. Makery (31.01), 2022.
Wednesday: Appropriation: Motives and Strategies
Jean-Luc Godard: »It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.« source
Elaine Sturtevant (1924 – 2014)
Introduction to Elaine Sturtevant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015, 3 Min
“Hans-Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with Elaine Sturtevant.” 2008. https://032c.com/magazine/elaine-sturtevant
Lobel, Michael. „Sturtevant: Inappropriate Appropriation“. Parkett, 2005. [PDF
Heartney, Eleanor, and Eleanor Heartney. 2014. “Re-Creating Sturtevant.” ARTnews.Com (blog). November 1, 2014. https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/re-creating-sturtevant-63492
Phelan, Richard. 2015. “The Counter Feats of Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014).” E-Rea, no. 13.1 (December). https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.4567
Jeff Koons
- Banality Series, 1988 Tate Modern
- - Rogers vs Koons (1992)
- NYT Article on the case, Sept. 19, 1991
Fair Use (US Copyright) Copyright and Fair Use (Standford Library): What Is Fair Use? | Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors
Richard Prince
- Cowboys, 1989, Untitled (Cowboy): Behind Richard Prince's Photographs & Appropriation, Time Magazine, 2016, 14 Min
- "Canal Zone." Gagosian Galery, 2008
- Patrick Carriou. 2000. Yes Rasta.
- 1. Trial: Leigh Anne Miller (2011). Judge Rules Against Richard Prince in Appropriation Case Art in America (March 22)
- Appeal: Prince vs. Carriou, The question of fair use The ‘Transformation’ of Fair Use After Prince v. Cariou 2014
- Goldsmith, Kenneth. 2012. “Richard Prince’s Latest Act of Appropriation: The Catcher in the Rye.” Poetry Foundation
- New Portraits Gagosian Gallery 2014
- Review of New Portaits. Brooklyn Rail, 2014
- Richard Prince Disowns His Ivanka Trump Portrait, Possibly Increasing Its Value. Hyperallergic, Jan. 2017
Harrison, Nate. „The Pictures Generation, the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Reassertion of Authorship in Postmodernity“. Art & Education (blog), 2012. (archive.org) PDF
Nate Harrison Can I Get An Amen?, 2004
Further Reading:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, 2009
- Jerry Saltz Great Artists Steal, ArtNet, 2009
Evans, David, ed. 2009. Appropriation. Documents of Contemporary Art. London : Cambridge, Mass: Whitechapel ; MIT Press. Read Introduction. p.12-23
Replicas. Originality on Trial in and around Olivier Mosset’s Collection. 30.06 –29.10.2017. Musée Des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-De-Fonds. Catalogue
– Additional Artists we talked about —
JSG Boggs drawing money: Piepenbring, Dan. „One Fundred Dollars“. The Paris Review (blog), 1. Februar 2017.
Zaal, Reindert van der. „Legal Review Plesner vs. Louis Vuitton Judgment: Artistic Freedom Prevails Over IP-Rights“. Mediareport (blog), 5. Mai 2011. .
Thursday: Paradoxes of machine creativity
Cornelia Sollfrank and the net-art Generator
Warhol's Flowers:
Patricia Caulfield Hibiscus Blossoms (1964) – Andy Warhol Flowers (1964) – Elaine Sturtevant Warhol Flowers (1967) – Cornelia Sollfrank. Anonymous Warhol Flowers (2004 -). OG flowers (2010-2021).
Legal Perspective, 2004
I don't know, 1968/2006
Readings Net.Art Generator:
Sollfrank, Cornelia, and Winnie Soon. 2021. Fix My Code. Berlin: EECLECTIC. Introduction & Chapter 3, Ebook Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Jacob Lillemose. 2009. Keep on Generating. On Cornelia Sollfrank's Multiple Authorships. In: Himmelsbach, Sabine (ed) Expanded original: Cornelia Sollfrank [anlässlich der Ausstellung “Cornelia Sollfrank. Originale und Andere Fälschungen”, Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, 24. Januar bis 19. April 2009]. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.
Sollfrank, Cornelia. 2010. Anonymous Warhol Flowers: Urheberrecht als Material und Gegenstand der Kunst. Irights.Info
Guest: Cornelia Sollfrank, via Zoom 15:30
Collaborating with AI
- Dirk Knemeyer and Jonathan Follett (2020). Making Art with AI. Human and Machine Collaboration for Unexplored Territory. towardsdatascience.com (Dec. 11)
- Marche, Stephen. 2021. “The Computers Are Getting Better at Writing.” The New Yorker, April 30, 2021. (archived, full version)
Infinite Conversation: an AI generated, never-ending discussion between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek.
Friday: The Copyright Case of Training Data and Generative AI
Artist against a provider of a training data set
Reflections on Kneschke v. LAION, Hamburg Regional Court 09.2024
Massive Data Sets, eg. LAION vs small and curated data sets, eg. Source.plus
Artists against AI Companies (Stability.ai and others)
Edwards, Benj. „Artists File Class-Action Lawsuit against AI Image Generator Companies“. Ars Technica, 16. Januar 2023.
Belanger, Ashley. „Artists Claim “Big” Win in Copyright Suit Fighting AI Image Generators“. Ars Technica, 14. August 2024.
Malevé, Nicolas. „Style and Revenge: The Vagaries of the Artistic Class in Generative AI“. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 33, Nr. 67 (23. August 2024).
Phillip Schmidt: https://humans-of.ai