“The National Portrait Gallery has threatened legal proceedings for breach of copyright against a man who downloaded thousands of high-resolution images from its website, and placed them in an archive of free-to-use images on Wikipedia. There has been no formal response from the internet encyclopedia but Derrick Coetzee, who downloaded the images, promptly uploaded the letter from the London lawyers Farrar and Co, ‘to enable public discourse on the issue’.”
Tag: 07.14.09
Australia Proposes Ending Controls On Imported Books, And Australian Authors Cry Foul
Prime minister Paul Rudd’s government wants to change a law which bans Australian booksellers from importing a given title if a domestic publisher is to release that title within 30 days of its publication elsewhere. The Australian Society of Authors responds that “[r]emoving the territorial copyright of books will simply destroy our hard-won literary culture.”
Shepard Fairey To Publish Art For Obama Coffee-Table Book
The 176-page volume, whose full title is Art for Obama: Designing for Manifest Hope and the Campaign for Change, “will feature 150 full-color illustrations of art work that depicts or was inspired by Barack Obama and the 2008 presidential election. Some of the artists featured in the book are Ron English, David Choe, Kwaku Alston, Maya Hayuk, Justin Hampton, and Shel Starkman – and of course, work by Fairey.”
Lost Graham Greene Novel To Be Serialized In The Strand
“A newly discovered but unfinished novel by Graham Greene … is being serialized in The Strand magazine beginning this week and will appear in four more quarterly installments. The magazine hopes to commission someone to write an ending for the novel, a murder mystery called The Empty Chair that Greene began in 1926 and then apparently abandoned.”
Music Can Aid Recovery From Surgery: Studies
“The research papers, which describe a pilot study of cardiac surgery patients and an experiment featuring older adults undergoing hip or knee surgery, are both published in the inaugural issue of the journal Music and Medicine. Together, they suggest the much-discussed healing power of music can play a valuable role in the postoperative healing process.”
Underground Art Star Dash Snow Dead At 27
“Hard-living, cop-dodging New York collage artist, photographer, and graffiti writer Dash Snow has died of a drug overdose at 27.” According to his grandmother, art collector Christophe de Menil, Snow had been in rehab this spring and had only recently slipped back into heroin use.
No More Journalists Voting For Tonys
“[T]he Tony Management Committee announced Tuesday evening that about 100 theater critics and journalists – about one-eighth of all Tony voters – will no longer be eligible to vote in the competition for Broadway’s most prestigious honor.”
Why We Can’t Resist Watching People Dance
“It seems that every few weeks or so brings a new YouTube video sensation that features people dancing in public, usually in unison and in large groups. … The popularity of these videos speaks to something innately attractive about watching random people subsume themselves into a larger mass of synchronized bodies. Is the appeal instinctual? Sociological? Psychological?”
22 Philly-Area Groups Split $5M From New Grant Initiative
“The first 22 recipients of the $5 million PNC Arts Alive grant initiative will be announced today, providing funding for the expansion of audiences, programming and technology in the region’s cultural arena, according to PNC Foundation officials. Announced in March, Arts Alive is a five-year pilot for PNC Financial Services’ charitable arm. If it is deemed a success in and around Philadelphia, the bank intends to start it up elsewhere.”
In Emotional Resonance, Physical Formats Trump Digital
“Fan response to [Michael] Jackson’s death has illuminated the distinct needs that physical and digital formats serve. The immediacy and near-universal accessibility of digital music has made it the form of choice for millions today. But physical media still offer an emotional connection that digital music has yet to replace.”