A few days ago one of his earlier pieces was removed from the wall it was painted on. Or rather, the wall was removed. The owner of the cultural centre it was on decided to sell it off to repair the rest of the building:
There one on a wall near where I live, well, there’s a whole bunch near where I live, but this one is just a single stencil on someone’s garden wall, and they’ve put a frame with a bit of plexiglass over the top. I like it because it’s not one of the famous ones, and probably almost no one realises that it’s there.
How is the issue not simply that receiving stolen property is the thing that degrades value?
The whole idea of one person being able to control an entire market by rights management stinks in all the ways that Cory Doctorow had railed against here. The whole idea of ‘markets’ is that the buyers and sellers are the ones who decide value.
Monty Python would have included this guy in their sketch.
“A Mr. ‘Blank’ from Brighton , in possession of stolen artwork. Call us now!”
“Alright, ‘Jerry’, enough brick-laying at Chalmers & Sons, time to give us a ring!”
“Perhaps your wife Edna is unaware of what you did. She’ll soon get a knock at the kitchen window.”
And that can be extended to all forms of human endeavor. No need to think about truth, justice, ethics, politics, love, beauty-- simply let the market decide.
