Category: issues

In L.A., officials don’t think they have the right to clean graffiti off the city’s famous murals – and that’s just the tip of the confusion iceberg where visual arts copyright law is concerned. Why all the dithering?

“Germany will face up to a bloody chapter of its colonial past Friday when it hands back 20 skulls spirited away after what many historians call the first genocide of the 20th century.”

“The No. 1 problem facing liberal arts colleges is demand. An increasing number of people don’t think they are valuable. In the past, people never really thought, ‘What I want is liberal arts education.’ They thought, ‘I want a degree from Williams or Swarthmore.’ Now that more people see college as an investment, asking what they can get out of it, they are choosing vocational majors. “

“Many internet, copyright and legal experts say Canada has gone too far in appeasing the corporate interests that use the locks at the expense of consumers, who are entitled to use copyrighted content lawfully but prevented from doing so by the excessively restrictive digital lock amendments.”

“Humanities research is often derided as gauzy and esoteric, and therefore undeserving of tax dollars. Amid financial crises, humanities departments at many public universities have been razed. But even amid cuts, there has been a surge in interest in the digital humanities — a branch of scholarship that takes the computational rigor that has long undergirded the sciences and applies it the study of history, language, art and culture.”

“In particular, many groups are concerned about provisions dealing with digital locks or technical means of “copy protection.” Bill C-32 would have made it illegal to break or circumvent digital locks for any reason, even to exercise other rights under the Copyright Act.”

The arts sector cannot rely on “traditional culture vultures” and highly educated and affluent city-dwellers alone as audiences for the future, Arts Council England’s director of public engagement has warned.

“This particular case is about whether the U.S. Constitution allows for copyright protection of foreign works to be restored to works that previously had been in the public domain.”

“But uselessness is a good thing. I don’t mean useless in sense that it doesn’t advantage you. I mean studying something you don’t have to so you are focused on the act of learning instead of what you are learning it for. That’s huge. That’s the most important reason why people who have a liberal arts education do well.”

“Google and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem have partnered to launch a new website that allows the public the ability to examine the Dead Sea Scrolls in fine detail. The site provides searchable, high-resolution images of the scrolls, plus explanatory videos and background on the foundational texts.”