Re: : Artists Rights Society Asks Google to Remove Logo

From: Amalyah Keshet <akeshet[_at_]imj.org.il>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:26:30 -0400

• Original Message ----- From: "Vance R. Koven" <vrkoven[_at_]gmail.com> To: "CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property" <CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org> Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 7:25 PM Subject: [CNI-(C)] Re: [CNI-(C)] Re: Artists Rights Society Asks Google to Remove Logo

It would be interesting to see how the estate could establish that Miró's reputation was in any way injured by this "distortion."

Under US law, this would not be covered by our "moral rights lite" statute, but even elsewhere one does have to make some showing of reputational injury, no?

Vance

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My understanding, for what it's worth, is that moral rights (the European heavy-duty version) not only protect the integrity of the artist's name and reputation, but the integrity of his / her works of art. That is, moral rights protect against cropping, manipulation or color distortion of any sort that would change the way an artist had decided a work of art should look. On that basis, the Miro heirs and ARS had basis for objecting to the Google pastiche. Technically. What I'm curious about is whether the Google artist wasn't "quoting" from Miro's work, and whether that would be defensible.

I saw the Miro logo the day it appeared. My 10-year-old called me over to the home computer and said "Look at this one! Wow - who's that?" Google has done many artists' birthday logos. My kids have come to expect it, and are always excited to see a new one. They click, and there's a canned Google search with about 1,410,012 entries on the artist. My kids may not read all those entries, but the operative word is "wow." Today, it seems, you're not a famous artist unless you've had a Google birthday logo. There's food for thought.

What's interesting is that while the Miro heirs and ARS are technically correct, they've succeeded in turning the best freebie marketing tool in the universe into a public relations disaster. Perhaps Google should put a link to the relevant artists' rights agency at the top of the list of links for future birthday logo artists. That might prevent problems of this sort. If I were handling Miro's copyrights, and I obviously am not, so here comes the chutzpah, I would have waited a few days after spotting the logo to see if licensing requests increased. If they didn't, I could then have contacted Google and said "Next time, please ask." Of course, next time, Google could decide to charge me for all this amazing PR and that top link placement...

Amalyah Keshet
Head of Image Resources & Copyright Management The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
fax 02-670-8064
tel 02-670-8874
akeshet[_at_]imj.org.il Received on Fri Apr 28 2006 - 02:26:30 GMT