Segway guards public parks and copyright

David Bollier is sad to have found another example of copyright overreaching.

"Now comes word from the Chicago Reader (January 28; subscribers only) that the managers of Chicago's Millennium Park require a permit and payment of a fee in order to take photos in a Chicago park. In a story by Ben Joravsky, “The Bean Police,” we learn that Warren Wimmer was trying to take a picture of Cloud Gate, a massive sclupture knoown known locally as “The Bean,” when two security guards on Segways cruised up to him and asked if he had a permit – “a permit that lets you take pictures of the park.”...

Wimmer hit upon a familiar Chicago resolution: he slipped the guard $20. He then spent another 15 minutes shooting photos, and left...

When the Chicago Reader approached Ed Uhlir, the project director for Millennium Park, to ask about all this, his press assistant responded:

“The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park [i.e., the Bean, the band shell, the fountain, gardens and other features] are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist.” The press aide also said, “Artists are increasingly sophisticated about copyrights and this is standard practice for today’s artists….This was not the case years ago.”

So there you have it: even some of our most obviously public places are not really public any more; they are private property. I can only imagine what's coming next – making micro-payments via wireless devices for glimpses of public landmarks? Why not -- the city could use the money, right? What I want to know is whether the artists and architects involved have paid everyone who has every flitted across their creative consciousness. A sad story. The market pathology clearly goes deeper than most of us had imagined. This is not the way to revive our public spaces or make cities convivial places to be."