Peter Marshall, the British writer/photographer who produced hundreds (thousands?) of articles on photography for About.com, has some thoughtful comments about my recent posts on intellectual-property issues (see #1, #2, and #3) up at his blog, >Re: PHOTO, in his November 9, 2009 post, “Writing for Free.” Though he’s not a full-time working writer, Marshall did […]
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Given that a single Steichen print went for close to $3 million just a few years back, and a single Gursky sold for over $3 million shortly thereafter, the notion that no one in what Maneker calls “the photography market” can afford to buy the Polaroid Collection is laughable on its face. If price is no object, then what is? This brings me to the logical conclusion that every potential buyer has discovered in examining the collection’s documentation that the bulk of it is contractually encumbered in ways that prohibit (or at least problematize) its sale, thus also making perilous its purchase as a whole. . . . […] I don’t know if something’s rotten in the state of Denmark, but something’s definitely off in the state of Minnesota. Evidence accumulates that Polaroid has known all along that it never owned most of the work in its collection outright, yet the contents of that collection now move toward the auction block with the approval of the Minnesota Bankruptcy Court. . . . […] The idea for the PCCA came out of a decade’s observation of and engagement with content aggregation and delivery via the web. Many of the instances and examples had proved negative, primary among them the massive Lexis-Nexis infringement (including work of mine) that led to the landmark Tasini vs. Times Supreme Court decision and the much smaller-scale looting of dozens of essays from dozens of writers by the Paul Kopeikin Gallery (also including work of mine). Many content aggregators did it wrong, from my standpoint, starting with their basic assumption that they could and should get their content free of charge. How, then, could one do it right? . . . […] |
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Polaroid Collection: Update 9
In effect, if not by intent, several iterations of the corporate entity known as the Polaroid Corporation have used the bankruptcy courts of Delaware and Minnesota to launder the world-famous Polaroid Collection by legally severing it in toto from any binding, enduring contractual relationships with the picture-makers whose work it contains. In so doing, the court has endorsed the seller’s effective breach of contract in relation to thousands of artworks by hundreds of artists. As precedent, this decision will have ramifications and resonances that the court clearly has failed to envision. . . . […]