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Who owns the rights to artistic work in today’s information based economy? That is one of the main questions in the project Who Makes and Owns Your Work that has going on for a year. The participants in the project are artists and other cultural producers. The project has evolved to test conceptual and political implications of openness foregrounding specific proposals. On Saturday 17th November a multi event will take place to report and discuss the outcome of the project.
Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy), the Swedish think tank against copyright, is one of the participant as well as one of the (former) sponsors. During the project the question if Piratbyrån could finance the printing of posters and flyers in exchange for Piratbyråns logotype on the posters and flyers where raised. Piratbyrån thought it was a great idea and accepted the request, but when the printing was done Konstnärsnämnden (Arts Grants Committee), one of the key founders of Who Makes and Owns Your Work, got noticed about this fact and demanded the logotyp to be removed.
Piratbyråns logotype is no longer allowed to be seen together with the logotype of Konstnärsnämnden. Since the print was already done a red or black dot had to be placed over the piratbyrån logotyp.
Ia Modin who is a jurist and works as administrator at Konstnärsnämden writes to explain that Konstnärsnämden can’t be associated with the anarchistic attitude of Piratbyrån by the explicit call for breaching intellectual property rights. As governmental authorities Modin argues that Konstfack (University Collage of Arts, Crafts and Design) and Konstnärsnämnden can’t take any grants from Piratbyrån and logotypes can’t be placed beside an organisations logotype who is calling for actions outside the pale of the law.
At first two items of the programme are completely rejected; “Steal this film Part II”, and “Ownage!”. “Steal this film Part II” is the sequal following “Steal this film Part I” that depicted the aftermath of the infamous crackdown on the torrent web page and tracker The Pirate Bay in 2006. “Steal this film Part II” takes a deeper look at the current historical opening of the peer economy. “Ownage” is a software art installation by Jossystem based on the searching and displaying Google for images found under the words like ownage in a random fashion.
After a while Modin accepts “Steal this film Part II”, but only on two conditions of which the first one is that the film will be presented by the lawyer at the Antipiratbyrån (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau) or some other proponent of Intellectual Property Rights. Second the film should be followed by a debate with a majority of persons against copyright infringement and with a moderator that is either neutral or has the stance of the current law.
Modin also claims that the second item on the programme “Ownage!” is infringing on Intellectual Property Rights of the owners of the pictures that will randomly be displayed from the internet. The stance of the Konstnärsnämnden is that such an event is not to be held under the sponsorship of Konstnärsnämnden.
During a meeting with the participants of Who Makes and Owns Your Work the days after a tweaking of a the text of the program Who Makes and Owns Your Work are decided to "please" Konstnärsnämnden in order to be able to go on with the project.
In a telephone conversation between Piratbyrån and Modin she still claims “Ownage!” to be illegal and are still rejecting the work but Ann Larsson the director of Konstnärsnämnden ok:s the work in opposition with Modin.
At end of the day you might ask yourself who actually owns the rights to the artistic works and we are very excited to see where this will end?
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