Lawsuit between origami enthusiasts unfolds
scpr.org
scpr.org
Why is everyone now on the side of the original content creator, despite the fact that (unlike "Kind of Blue") Lang's crease patterns aren't culturally revered, nor were they ever reserved for commercial use?
Looking at this case, it really doesn't look like she did much of anything. They are not a new medium and seem quite like a small alteration. If it was a painting of the final origami then I would be all for the defense (change in medium always struck me as good enough), but it isn't.
The whole kerfuffle was with the cover art, which was not licensed, and Jay Meisel has said the he would not license. It's unclear if he would have prevailed in court, but that was potentially far more expensive for both parties than the settlement that wound up happening.
I think you just answered your own question. The fair use argument is a lot stronger for something that's culturally iconic (and it means no-one's going to mistake the remix for an original work), and we have a lot more sympathy for someone who just wants recognition for their work than for someone trying to maximize their profits.
They are? I'm not. It's pretty clear fair use to me - you can't fold the painting, it's not intended for that.
It's not a matter of similarity, or independent creation - The painter Sarah Morris directly copied the original artist's work, removed the lines and colored in the voids.
Since there's no question that copying took place, the case will hinge on whether the copying was "fair use" - that's where the issue of whether the copying was "transformative" comes in.
Morris is copying his crease patterns and treating them as an end in themselves; the way she turns them into abstract color fields is very different from what Lang has done with them. Although on the other hand I will quite happily bag on people like Shepard Fairey (the Obey Giant dude) for tracing images without attribution.
I dunno, I've got some of Lang's books in my library, he is amazing and I totally respect him as an artist, but I think that Morris is doing something interesting here too. Citing her sources would help a lot though.
In his books, he typically has both detailed step-by-step instructions for each model, as well as an "overview" image that shows where all of the creases will end up on the original sheet of paper (seen in image 3 and 7 at the top of the article, as well as example [1]); it's paintings of some of these overview images that are in question. He seems to treat both those overview images and the final products as art, not mere "instructions", in prior interviews (they are actually quite useless as instructions.)
This will be a critical point in the case: do the crease overview images count as art? If so, Lang has a certain amount of say-so in how they are used.
[0] he authored the proof of completeness of the Huzita-Hatori axioms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huzita%E2%80%93Hatori_axioms [1] http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/17/Scorpion.jpg
The artist looked at his crease patterns and painted them. His work created color symmetries in a field of symmetries. The colors bring their own message to the art. Had he taken a couple of Lang's folded animals (or folded one himself or had it folded) then set it on a table with some fruit or even by itself, painted it as 'still' art, the artist has created new art.
When you paint a scene in the park, and you paint in the people who are sitting around enjoying the park, you don't have to get signed releases from them to paint them into your painting, even if someone who was at the park might recognize themselves or someone they know by a particular geometry that person has and what they were wearing that day.
My belief is that no jury in the world is going to look at Lang's actual folded stuff, and see this abstract pattern stuff, and say there was infringement.
Our cultural heritage is being strangled enough due to overly strict copyright. We don't need to add to it.
[fragmented quote] Morris has claimed in interviews and promotional materials that the Origami series is based on "found diagrams,” "found designs,” and "traditional origami diagrams.” ..... Morris has created confusion as to the authorship of Plaintiffs’ Works [/quote]
Copyright law explicitly grants rights holders the right to be credited for their work. So even if the concept of "transformativeness" [0] holds (which I'm not convinced of), I suspect Morris' failure to credit the original authors will be ruled as a violation of copyright.
Fine art is really about invisible distinctions between existing objects, the difference between Duchamp's urinal and any other urinal. Contextualizing something in a contemporary art museum, even a much more direct appropriation than this, radically transforms it. In my view, applying intellectual property violations to contemporary artworks is at least as insane as any of the software patent shenanigans we have seen. No one is happening upon Morris's work and thinking she is a great origami designer.
Why would that give someone a pass on copyright law that would, were the copy not deemed fine art, get someone in a mess of legal trouble?
I see a weird connection here with claims of exemptions to copyright violations from people saying that the avi file they have is really just a very large integer.
If you're not into origami, you may think a crease pattern is just an unintended byproduct -- what you happen to get when you unfold a model. This isn't the case, as the article explains. These things are carefully designed, and are the heart of the engineering process. Models in books or on display sometimes come with diagrams of the pattern. Receiving a model as a gift, one may very well unfold it flat to look at the crease pattern and see how it was done.
So I guess this is sort of like finding a pretty geometric pattern in someone's source code (that they put there!), and painting it.
I think it's too much of a shortcut to just take his crease patterns without attribution. She's an artist; she can learn the art and make her own. It's not as though it's a unique insight on her part that the useful patterns are beautiful in an abstract, geometric way. We (origami enthusiasts) all think they are. The paintings are beautiful and intriguing, but the art that makes them so isn't hers; it's Lang's.
I'm all for remixing and free information, but . . . I think at a minimum, attribution would be polite.
Though, I absolutely agree that at a minimum, permission and attribution would be polite. I can't imagine on what ground the painter thinks they are standing on, as the 'inspiration' is so overwhelmingly overt. But as an origami 'enthusiast' myself, I'll watch this with an interested and slightly sad eye.
There is no question in my mind that the resulting origami is art. There is no question in my mind that the paintings are art. The question is whether the crease pattern is fundamentally a copyrightable work, or a set of mechanical instructions. Software copyright exists in a similar space, and I'd be interested to hear a real lawyer comment on the parallels.
I'm not planning to commit murder, but if I ever do I'm going to decapitate the corpse and stash the headless body in a topless bar.
From a non-legal standpoint, it's pretty sleazy to take someone's design, paint over it exactly (with some color modifications) and not give that person any amount of credit. Did she transform it? Perhaps. But she didn't just get inspiration from it, she literally used the design, verbatim, as her own. I take issue with this.
I'm all for people using each other's work and art progressing as a whole, but I also think it's bad form to not give credit where it's due. I definitely think this is a case where it's due.
I'm interested to see what the courts think, although something tells me it won't get to court.
Can I really just take someone else's artwork, change the colours around, and then call it my own and sell it in a gallery?
How hard is it to proofread the introduction to an article?