It certainly sounds like it. [More info here and here]

I don’t agree with Cory Doctorow that Chicagoans should ‘melt the thing down for slag.’ It’s a very beautiful sculpture and there is never a good reason to destroy art no matter how ignorant or greedy the creator is perceived.

Whenever I hear anyone advocating the destruction of art it really makes me get queasy in the gut. It’s an extremely ugly thing to advocate.

What would probably be more helpful is to contact the artist’s representatives and urge them politely to council the artist to adopt a non-commercial creative commons license for this public art work.

He’s represented by Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Lisson Gallery, London.

update:
This is the email I sent to Ivy Crewdson, director of Barbara Gladstone Gallery. I urge others to contact the gallery as well.

Subject: Cloud Gate copyright
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:50:05 -0500

Hello Ivy Crewdson,

I’m writing to urge you to council Anish Kapoor to consider adopting a less restrictive copyright concerning his work ‘Cloud Gate’ in Chicago.

Non-commercial images of this art work should be allowed to be taken by the general public. I’m sure you would agree that the public good is served by allowing citizens to take photos and video of this beautiful art work. The piece is destined to become one of the major landmarks of Chicago but only if the public is allowed to enjoy it fully.

Perhaps using a Creative Commons [http://www.creativecommons.org] license would help you solve this matter. I suggest using a license entitled the “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License”. This license protects the work from commercial uses and derivative works.

There is a bit of online direct protest happening regarding this matter. See this web site for more information: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/07/¬
please_add_photos_of.html

update the 2nd:
I changed the links at the top of the page to pages that provide more information. permanent link to this post