Hawkmoon, the key phrase in my post was I didn't see overreach
on the Judge's part.The artists sued under the
Visual Artists Rights Act.* Which, among other things, says:
the author of a work of visual art—
(1) shall have the right—
(A) to claim authorship of that work, and
(B) to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work of visual art which he or she did not create;
(2) shall have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation; and
(3) subject to the limitations set forth in section 113(d), shall have the right—
(A) to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right, and
(B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right.
Bolding mine. That law is DEFINATLY an overreach, but it is the law, and the judge needs to rule on the law as it is written. The artists also have the right to make the case that their art falls under that (overreaching) law's protection. Most of us here, most of the time, agree that Judges shouldn't make up laws or novel interpretations of them, and that separation of powers is a good thing.
If you don't think graffiti artists should get a say in private property that they have arted all over (I agree) take it up with congress.
*I have been calling this a New York law, it's apparently a Federal law. Yea! just what we needed to legislate at the Federal Level.
**I may have been incorrect on the time line post. It's not super clear without a lot of googling, but it's possible the lawsuit hadn't been filed at the time of whitewashing, and where he lost was "willfully" failing to give the notice required by the VARA before the graffiti's destruction. Going through articles from Oct of 2013 it seems like several people had brought up VARA as a way to save the murals and his response was to paint over them in the middle of the night.
ETA: If the above is true, i.e the 6.7mil was damages solely from the destruction of the murals, as opposed to extra fines for disrespecting the courts, I am less OK with it. One should be spanked hard for telling the justice system to "F off". getting hit with $148,000 for each of 45 pictures for failing to give legal notice does seem a bit outlandish. Unfortunately Google is so so full of artsy NY sites crowing in pleasure I can't find definitive details on how exactly it went down.
TLDR: Yeah the law that says he can't paint his own wall sucks, I agree. But it exists, and there's a lot of evidence that he knew about it, and just said *expletive deleted*ck You to the law and the artists. That opened him to the civil liability.
