Hi Jeremy,

I'm an artist, not a lawyer or a curator; but occasionally my art is 
collaborative internet art, and in such instances I wind up acting 
like a kind of virtual curator.

I don't intentionally make work "about" copyright issues per se; I 
just remix a lot of other people's source media. The one instance in 
which my work has come up against international copyright issues 
involved a collaborative internet art project:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://playdamage.org/getty/

You can read the thrilling details at the link above, but, iIn short:
A Russian artist took a copyrighted stock photo image managed by 
Getty Images, remixed it into an animated gif, and stored it on 
server account in Perm, Russia owned by an orphanage there (I can 
only assume the artist was also the designers of the orphanage's web 
site).

I then linked to that file as part of my collaborative art project 
from an html page hosted on a server in the US.

I got a cease and desist from Getty, but:
a. I had not made the image
b. I wasn't storing the image on my server
c. I didn't even know the identity of the people who made the image 
(they had submitted their art anonymously).

They sent a cease and desist to the non-profit Russian orphanage (so 
classy), but the people running the orphanage had no idea that the 
file was even stored on their server space. They probably didn't even 
know how to logistically remove it. And I'm guessing the 
artist/designer who uploaded it thought the whole thing was hilarious 
and just left it running.

Eventually, Getty threatened the people in the US hosting my page 
which linked to the image on the Russian server. If I insisted on 
keeping the link on the page active, they were legally obliged to 
comply and remove the link, and then put it up after a week, and then 
Getty could begin the process of suing me.

MY RESPONSE was to take the link down and replace it with the 
correspondence between me, Getty's representative, the Russian 
orphanage, and my host. In that correspondence, I still linked to the 
"illegal" animated gif, but in this new context, my link was now 
arguably in the context of journalistic reportage, and guarded under 
fair use. (Interesting that the image as stand-alone "art" is 
sueable, but the image as illustrative support for text is not.)

I chose not to force a direct legal confrontation with Getty because 
that piece was not really conceptually "about" international 
copyright law. Along the way, I got some legal input from Brad 
Templeton (of the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and artist Joy 
Garnett.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sorry for all the gory details, but it seems an instructive example. 
de Certeau's analysis (in "The Practice of Everyday Life") of tactics 
vs. strategies seems particularly relevant. This concept was famously 
championed by Geert Lovink, then taken up by the Critical Art 
Ensemble, and has been incorporated into a "tactical media" approach 
to such issues. As an artist, I can choose to make work 
in/along/throughout/astride liminal and dispersed spaces. A 
corporation can go after 1 artist in 1 nation hosting 1 file on 1 
server. But things get stranger when there are multiple artists and 
multiple files on multiple servers in multiple countries (wikileaks, 
bit torrent/gnutella peer-to-peer networks).

As noted by Deleuze (In his "Postscript on Control Societies"), 
corporations are not limited to institutional brick-and-mortar 
buildings or space-centric strategies. They too can and do use 
nomadic tactics. In the US, for example, corporations have figured 
out how to acquire the "basic rights" of the individual human without 
all of the messy/inconvenient attendant civil accountabilities of the 
individual human. You go to sue "some" "one" responsible for the 
chemical spill in your backyard, and the corporation vaporizes.

In the end though (at least on the internet), despite all the 
ethereal myths to the contrary, there is always going to be some 
physical server existing in some discrete time and space. And that is 
what  can always get sued.

Curt




At 7:37 PM +0100 10/16/11, Jeremy Pilcher wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I have been thinking about how well new media artists, curators and 
>lawyers are able to deal with issues that stem from disputes that 
>arise out of the international nature of communication on the 
>internet. Curt wrote:
>
>"from this perspective, one could argue that copyright is a 
>capitalistic reification of the overwhelming, underlying desire for 
>(the myth of) im-mediate, un-mediated communication -- a desire for 
>lossless transference a la Vulcan mind-meld. if i can't by any means 
>control the ways in which you subjectively receive my source media, 
>and least i can keep you from externalizing your bastardized 
>reception of it, to prevent your "wrong" bastardization of my "pure" 
>source intention from further contaminating the minds of others!"
>
>Allegations of externalised "bastardized reception" have become a 
>pressing international issue. So my questions relate to how new 
>media artists and curators try to deal with (the possibility of) 
>international disputes?
>
>My interest is not only in which country's intellectual property 
>right laws are understood to apply; but also which nation's legal 
>system will govern the procedural resolution of disputes over 
>intellectual property? Many legal authors have suggested that the 
>traditional rules used to decide which set of national laws should 
>be used to deal with disputes are not suitable for internet 
>cross-border disputes. This isn't simply a matter of court 
>proceedings but affects other means of resolving disputes, such as 
>mediation and arbitration.
>
>One author (H Perritt) has commented "Impediments to localization 
>[on the Internet] create uncertainty and controversy over assertions 
>of jurisdiction". Perrit identifies two results: communities resent 
>not being able to protect local victims from conduct occurring in a 
>distant country; and secondly anyone using the internet may be 
>subject to the jurisdiction of "nearly 200 countries in the world". 
>These issues did not arrive with the internet but have been around 
>since cross-border media and modern communications technology 
>generally. But, they have become more pressing.
>
>As we have been discussing, the existence of intellectual property 
>means that we may not be able to use another's ideas as expressed 
>because of the cost of doing so. However,  a decision not to use 
>material may be made because the other person has threatened legal 
>proceedings and it is not desirable to face the risk and costs of 
>contesting the issue  (Lawrence Lessig gives some great examples  in 
>'Free Culture'). So, are artists and curators in a position to deal 
>with a multi-national corporate threatening legal proceedings in an 
>overseas jurisdiction?
>
>Best
>Jeremy