The Slashdot geeks are chewing over the copyright issues surrounding Anish Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” (aka “The Bean”). “Cloud Gate” is installed in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

Public Park Designated Copyrighted Space (You get one guess as to where the open-source crowd stands on the issue.)

I don’t have much more to say on it, except…

I wonder if Christo and Jeanne-Claude have security guards keeping professional photographers away from “The Gates”? I would really be interested to know their official stand on the copyright of images of “The Gates,” especially since they make all their money from images of the sculptures as opposed to the sculptures themselves (which many times cost them money). Part of this answer is at the bottom of this page. The artists say that they “have donated all merchandising rights” [emphasis theirs] to a charity and Central Park.

Granted, the two situations are totally different in terms of politics needed to be navigated in order to realize the piece. (Perhaps Christo and Jeanne-Claude had their arms twisted to donate the merchandising rights.) But in terms of copyright issues I don’t see that there would be much of a difference. permanent link to this post