hedwards: Um, paints have a copyright, virtually every form of expression has copyright. The only exceptions are things that aren't recorded. So, you can't copyright performances, just the recordings of the performance.
rtcvb32: Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci was before copyright started, and long before technology could capture such performances or before the printed press or copy machines, but if you wanted a painting you got a painting, not a replica or items made in bulk. Yes everyone honored his work because like an artist, he signed his work to mark it as his (
which we could then identify), but he didn't make money years and years after he sold his painting... Or am i wrong?
The idea of copyright is a nice thing, but it's current perverted form is an ugly mass of festering bile. It's not to stimulate creative works, but to punish anyone for being creative on anything halfway resembling someone else's work, or prevent another's work entirely because copyrighted items never go into the public domain anymore. Only corporations have anything to gain by long copyrights, milking them long after the creators of such works is long dead...
I don't think copyright existed at the time. If you wanted a career in art you had to convince somebody to bankroll it and you'd be mostly producing what they wanted you to produce. Hence why Michaelangelo was producing those "women" in his art despite a complete lack of interest on his part in women.
Most of the great works have already fallen into the public domain which makes it legal for anybody to create post cards from those works. But, they lack the essence of the original. There's no brush strokes or just rw-peen of having the original.
hedwards: Um, paints have a copyright, virtually every form of expression has copyright. The only exceptions are things that aren't recorded. So, you can't copyright performances, just the recordings of the performance.
amok: What is fun about classic paintings. The are mostly out of copyright (too old) but a reproduction of one is not (if it is recent enough). This means that Mona Lisa itself is not copyrighted, but if you take a picture of the painting your picture is. If anyone wonders why it is not allowed to take pictures in many museums, but you can buy the pictures on postcards in the shops...
You can take pictures, the rule against that is the Museum's rule, not copyright. It would be a derivative work, but since nobody owns the rights to the original, you can do what you will with the picture you take.
The reason why people don't generally bother is that no reproduction of the Mona Lisa is going to be protected by copyright. If it looks like the Mona Lisa, then it's not going to be protected.
rtcvb32: Maybe, but having a postcard/Jpeg of the Mona Lisa has a much lower value than the actual painting itself... Unless of course you can somehow charge and profit enough from the Jpeg to make it worth more than the actual work. Vintage painting's value can range in the millions afterall. And it's safe to say if you took a picture of the Mona-Lisa, i highly doubt anyone would believe you own copyright over it or the instance of the Jpeg; The best you could do is claim to have taken the picture and nothing more (
regardless how high quality a picture it was). It's also inherently different looking at a tiny representation of something and actually seeing it for yourself.
[..]
amok: not so much about value (time to bring in Benjamin :)), but the fact that if you have been on holiday at the Louvre, you are not allowed to place a picture of Mona Lisa on your Facebook page so other people can see it, they have to travel there themselves. If you could scan Mona Lisa (or take a picture of here yourself) you can place that on your Facebook ( as it is out of copyright), but you are not allowed to scan the post card reproduction and place there.
Bullshit, they might say that, but it's not true. Good luck actually getting a court to enforce that. The Mona Lisa doesn't have any protection in that respect,.
RWarehall: To be fair, at one time, one of the main reasons to prevent photography of art is that old paintings are sensitive to light and with thousands of pictures taken it would have had its toll. That was in the days of flash photography.
I assume you're joking.
That's highly unlikely, the energy in a flash from a camera is just not high enough to do any damage. Now if people were using UV light and UV sensitive film, that would be a different story.
The paintings receive far more damage from people breathing and shaking the floor than they do from flashes.
