the crossword thingy was not unmodified but more of a collage. one part of the test if something is a work of art under the terms of the copyright law is the intent. thought the threshold is rather low (Kleine Münze [small change] in German legalese) an uninvolved third party* has to recognize**
an individual creation of the artist
an intellectual content
a perceivable design
an expression of the artist’s individuality
decide for yourself if your example fits the bill : )
luckily I am not a lawyer, so I don’t have to know all the grotesque details and implications of the UrhG as well as attached commentaries and case law
* i.e. judge
** according to the legal commentary of Loewenheim, to the best of my knowledge the accepted authority for this topic
Well, thanks for the commentary and taking seriously my less than serious japes at the margins of German IP law.
To take the joke too far perhaps; then if I deigned to interfere with the viewers of my hypothetical wall-hanging by choosing for them a bass or treble clef(maybe throwing in a single note for free), thereby interfering with their own will-to-power just a smidge I’d be golden for securing my rights under the test you cite, right?
(Meanwhile secretly abhorring to the fullest extent protected by law the very idea of spoiling my beautiful non-composition with their awful scratchings.)
But beyond the merely legal: I’d be free with my pals at the gallery to set a value of 90,000 monetary units on my composition and, having baited the trap, could sit back with a surveillance camera and grow rich on the inevitable damages that would flow my way.
It would be a far greater opus than any of Bernie Madoff’s…
Apart from the fact that she’s claiming sole ownership rather than joint ownership, I find this part the most confusing - most copyright violation claims demand removal of copyrighted content, rather than demand that it be actively broadcast and maintained against the violater’s will…
I’m not sure if right/wrong even matter, to be honest. Whether she has a valid copyright claim is irrelevant. I can take a book that I own (but copyrighted by someone else), and burn it. It’s my book. Copyright controls the right to copy, not the right to destroy.
If I graffiti your house, I could reasonably claim copyright on the artwork that I’ve authored. But I can’t claim ownership, or part-ownership of your house, or stop you cleaning it off. I would only have a valid claim over preventing you copying the artwork.
VARA exclusively grants authors of works that fall under the protection of the Act the following rights:
[…]
right to prevent distortion, mutilation, or modification that would prejudice the author’s honor or reputation
Additionally, authors of works of “recognized stature” may prohibit intentional or grossly negligent destruction of a work.
Now, I doubt any of these apply to the work in question (especially since that’s an American law and this happened in Germany), but it’s not quite so cut-and-dry as you make it seem.
That is interesting - I hadn’t seen that before. But it does seem more apt to be used against her (re: the original work she defaced) than in her favour.
I missed whether the original artist and/or gallery are bringing any charges against her. If they are, this could all be construed as a rather inventive defence. If not … I’d wager she’s received some pretty terrible advice.
Accidentally making artwork more valuable by defacing it doesn’t entitle you a goddam thing, ya goddam bastard. You might get some job opportunites out of it but that’s less likely if you’re the type of bumbag that tries to sue everyone.
Also it aint a collaboration if you force yourself into the collaboration without consent from the established artist whose piece it is that you’re wrecking.
What a goddam bastard.
Aside from the leverage provided by any charges local law might allow for vandalizing an expensive piece of art; isn’t she pretty much dead in the water because the work she is claiming copyright on is an unauthorized derivative work of a work that is itself copyrighted?
It was my (definitely layman’s) understanding that, in most if not all Berne Convention signatories, works that would otherwise be copyrighted will not be if they are unauthorized derivatives of copyrighted works(which makes a certain amount of sense, since otherwise you could score an almost-as-good-as-the-real-thing copyright to any copyrighted work just by making a few ‘creative’ changes and asserting copyright on the result, which would make the copyright on the original pretty useless).
