More on the library
Over the weekend, approximately 18,000 people lined up to visit the Grande Bibliotheque du Quebec. Not bad considering that today is the first day where you can actually take something out. This building is supposed to contain the entire repository of French Canadian culture including everything written by Quebecers or about our province since 1760.
I didn’t go myself since I have a thing about lining up and large crowds but I will most certainly pay them a visit in the near future. Of course I’ll be taking pictures but I am also interested in the map room. According to my neighbor, a river used to run through the park behind my house and I just have to go and check this out.
For those of us who missed it, Sylvain Carle has published a large collection of 71 photographs. Unfortunately they were taken with a camera phone but each one is individually annotated.
The last one, a no photography sign, left me gaping in amazement. Isn’t this a public building that’s paid out of my own taxes? It turns out that this prohibition applies “only” to an art exhibition in the main atrium. Maybe Chris can answer that one but what is it with artists and cameras? 99.99999% of photographers are not going to make any money out of this (even those who want to) and God forbid we should publicize their efforts by making people realize that they might be missing something good. Maybe they feel that their work can only be properly enjoyed in its proper context and that it will be permanently diminished if we first experience it as a small image.
An often heard argument is that most people are too stupid to turn off their flash. Fine, just haul them off to jail for all I care.
Howdy!
It ain’t got anything to with artists, it has everything to do with the lawyers and the current state of copyrights. The RIAA is the US is suing customers; the CRAA here in Canada wants to sue customers. If the Bay started suing their customers, they’d be in worse shape than they already are.
Basically, because the lawyers for Walt Disney and George Gershwin have been able to convince the US congress that Mickey Mouse and Porgy & Bess should never ever fall into the Public Domain, the rest of the world falls in step in a knee jerk reaction.
The thinking goes along the lines of “I don’t want someone to do anything with my intellectual property without my consent, because I think that they are likely to be a lying, thieving, conniving cheat who will make a gazillion bucks off of my hard work, and then won’t even offer to invite me to their Mediterranean villa for a weekend.”
If there are any IP lawyers reading this who lean slightly to the left, or are bent completely hard right, (and I mean way further than anything Conservative) launching a suit to get this overturned would be an easy no-brainer. I haven’t paid a visit yet, but I would imagine that there are photocopy machines at the library…