Graffiti is now not only legal, but protected. If you clean graffiti off your property...

Graffiti is now not only legal, but protected. If you clean graffiti off your property, you will have to pay out millions to the vandal.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act
law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act#Application_and_effect
artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-meet-the-man-saving-l-a-s-street-art-one-mural-at-a-time
telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/3541901/Banksy-graffiti-doubles-derelict-pubs-value.html
fastcompany.com/3059595/how-street-art-raises-neighborhood-housing-prices
google.com/search?q=define:vandalize
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>1 post by this id

>an Australian shitposter

Saw this earlier on msn, what a dangerous precident to set in the courts. Will be over ruled in appeals

Remember the six million dollars that were lost to some nig hooligan.

>lmao great Photoshop fake article I bet half of Sup Forums will fall for it
>better just check on the slimmest chance that its real
>its real

Lockedup from niggers.

>Will be over ruled in appeals

One can only hope

((()))

Otherwise I'll just got spray my neighbors garage and Sue when they paint over it. Because what I think is art, is art. Subjective laws really fuck this place up

there is no way this ruling remains in appeal

the ruling is too insane on the right of private property for it not to be struck down. With this ruling you could go to BLM land erect "Art" and sue the government if they destroy it.

There are some really retarded judges in NYC, but this is not as much of a shut and dried case.

The artists sued first, THEN the building owner whitewashed the building before any court hearing. It's like going to a police station, dropping your pants, and shitting directly on the floor. How do you think they are going to react?

He whitewashed the artwork ten months before he got the permit to destroy the building and then did so. He then proceeded to be a total cocksucker to the judge and court.
>“If not for Wolkoff’s insolence, these damages would not have been assessed,” Block wrote. “If he did not destroy 5Pointz until he received his permits and demolished it 10 months later, the Court would not have found that he had acted willfully.” Court documents describe Wolkoff as a “difficult witness” and note: “He frequently ignored or challenged instructions by the Court. He was argumentative and prone to tangents and non-responsive answers. Eliciting coherent testimony was a chore and was only achieved after the Court threatened to hold him in contempt.” (His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

So the judge threw the fucking book at him.

Moral of the story: Don't be a dick to judges or they will fuck your shit up.

>"But there was not much order or control over the quality of the work — until one tenant, Jonathan Cohen, took charge."
Every fucking time

>ruled that 45 of them had enough artistic stature to merit being protected

So, shitty common graffito will be cleaned up but cities will slowly accumulate sweet-ass graffiti by big name artists, until everything is covered in awesome murals like an '80s futuristic dystopia

i'mokwiththis.jpeg

Lol no you dont understand what the government is. The government is a criminal organization which is above the "law"... Things that apply to business and citizens do not apply to government.

"We the people" means we the head gubbment employees

Doubtful. 5pointz was established in 1993 specifically for legal grafitti and to house 200 artists at below market rents. In 2009 NYC ordered the biggest building at the complex closed because it was falling apart and there were partitions built without permits.

The developer allowed the site to languish for 20 years with graffiti all over it as tons of newspaper, magazine, etc. articles were written about how unique culturally it was and it was art, then decides to redevelop it. He gets permission to build condos on the property in 2013 from NYC. Artists who contributed to 5points sue saying the artwork is protected under VARA.

Then, 10 months before he gets the permit to knock the existing structures down, AFTER the artists filed the lawsuit, BEFORE a judge ruled on the merit of the lawsuit - the developer whitewashes the graffiti. 11,000 murals all gone in an instant, needlessly early because the lawsuit was progressing and he didn't have the permit to knock down the building anyways.

Then as the court continues, the developer is a total cocksucker to the judge, eventually only complying with testimony when threatened with contempt of court.

Biggest mistake the guy made was whitewashing the grafitti. The building was uninhabitable anyways.

If your neighbor left dozens of murals on their garage for more than two decades, world renowned newspapers write about how iconic the art is, and then your neighbor paints over it while you're suing them over the fact that it might be considered protected art for how long it was there and how well it was known, then yeah, it's the same situation. Otherwise, not really.

niggers and kikes

whats new?

How would the graffiti artists have suffered financially in order for it to be deemed appropriate to pay them 7 million dollars, I don't get it.

>jumbled-up letters that no one can read
>iconic

How EXACTLY was this "Artwork" destroyed?

5pointz was not just block letters. There were a lot of murals too. Hell, OP pic has one of biggie.

>a blew blew I drew with crayon on the walls of somebody's private property and we need to let this building sit and rot for the next hundred years without bringing revenue to the area and attracting squatters and heroine users but at least it looks pretty

Fine.
>paintings of ugly rap niggers
>iconic

>developer leases building for over 40 years
>in 1993 he leases it to a guy who subleases the building to artists and allows them to legally grafitti the place
>in 2009 NYC shuts the building down for code, but it still stands
>in 2013, the owner of the building says let's make condos
>artists sue under a law that says the artwork may be protected
>dickbag developer whitewashes the grafitti AFTER a lawsuit is filed, BEFORE a judge rules on the merit of the artist's lawsuit, and BEFORE he needed to (he didn't get the permit to knock the building down for another 10 months)
>dickbag continues to be a dickbag to the judge
>judge throws the book at him awarding maximum damages

Dumbness squared. Had the developer left the grafitti there until a judge made a ruling on the case (like a summary judgment to dismiss being granted), or the grafitti was destroyed as part of the building being destroyed (a prerequisite to develop the site), he probably would have won. Instead he acted like a dick and he got dicked for it.

graffiti artists are notorious for painting over each other's stuff anyway so I don't see that it matters, it was never meant to be a permanent art form, by it's very nature

Meanwhile, historical monuments are being trashed, vandalized and removed.

Tossed on Appeal. This is a "Taking", pure and simple.

On the other hand I don't give a crap what happens to these New Yorkers because anyone who would vote Bill de Blasio into office deserves what they get.

I fucking hate graffiti so much.

Singapore has the right idea. Whip anyone caught doing it.

Who gives a flying fuck, he can buy his own property and deface it as he pleases.

The developer authorized a lease where the guy who subleased it allowed the graffiti to occur for 20 years legally.

He didn't have to wait for the rest of time to destroy the graffiti. The plan to build the condos was approved in 2013. However, he whitewashed all the graffiti on the existing uninhabitable buildings 10 months BEFORE he got permission to knock the buildings down and AFTER artists sued, BEFORE a judge ruled on whether or not a temporary restraining order could be granted or if the artist's suit had merit to go to trial.

>The artists sued first, THEN the building owner
>the building owner
While I can see the merits of getting some sort of permit before destroying a building, it's still his fucking building. If he wants to paint it neon pink, so be it. If he wants to erase a bunch of "art" from city trolls, that seems pretty well within his right.

That's literally not how the law works.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act
>Under VARA, works of art that meet certain requirements afford their authors additional rights in the works, regardless of any subsequent physical ownership of the work itself, or regardless of who holds the copyright to the work. For instance, a painter may insist on proper attribution of his painting, and in some instances may sue the owner of the physical painting for destroying the painting even if the owner of the painting lawfully owned it.

>If your neighbor left dozens of murals on their garage for more than two decades, world renowned newspapers write about how iconic the art is, and then your neighbor paints over it while you're suing them over the fact that it might be considered protected art for how long it was there and how well it was known, then yeah, it's the same situation. Otherwise, not really.
The only part that matters there is it's "their garage."

>VARA
Well, I wouldn't be surprised to see this one to go to the Supreme Court.

law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A
>(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.
This is one of those laws that sounds like a good idea, but has horrifying unintended consequences.

This was written with famous paintings in mind, of the kind you hang on a wall, not murals on the side of a building, that are famous because they're on the side of a building, that prevent it from ever being painted over or torn down.

And he probably could have gotten summary judgment to dismiss the lawsuit from the artists, but he basically flipped the bird to the judge/court and then acted as a total dick as it went to trial, barely avoiding being held in contempt.

Not really.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act#Application_and_effect
>VARA was the first federal copyright legislation to grant protection to moral rights. Under VARA, works of art that meet certain requirements afford their authors additional rights in the works, regardless of any subsequent physical ownership of the work itself, or regardless of who holds the copyright to the work. For instance, a painter may insist on proper attribution of his painting, and in some instances may sue the owner of the physical painting for destroying the painting even if the owner of the painting lawfully owned it.

>Additionally, authors of works of "recognized stature" may prohibit intentional or grossly negligent destruction of a work. Exceptions to VARA require a waiver from the author in writing. To date, "recognized stature" has managed to elude a precise definition.
>This has particularly been an issue for those that commission public sculptures. Absent a waiver, artists could effectively veto decisions to remove their structures from their benefactor's land. In a 2006 decision involving public sculptures that were removed from the park for which they were created, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that VARA does not protect location as a component of site-specific work. VARA covered works can be moved as long as the move does not constitute "destruction, distortion, or mutilation."[

You can think VARA is a stupid law that should be repealed, but it is still a federal law in the United States.

VARA has already been applied to murals.
artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-meet-the-man-saving-l-a-s-street-art-one-mural-at-a-time
>In late 2006, art conservator Scott Haskins received a call from the federal government. They were on the hunt for an expert witness, experienced in mural restoration, to provide testimony in an increasingly heated legal battle. Several months prior, in June, a beloved Downtown Los Angeles mural, painted by Kent Twitchell, was whitewashed—to the artist’s and the surrounding community’s surprise. The six-story, 70-foot-tall depiction of famed L.A. painter Ed Ruscha had been methodically composed by Twitchell over a span of nine years, between 1978 and 1987, with money from his own pocket.
>Twitchell told me that he first heard of the whitewashing on June 6, 2006, while in Northern California readying for his daughter’s wedding. Earlier that day, a friend had serendipitously passed the mural, only to find it mid-erasure. Twitchell immediately called a lawyer friend, Les Weinstein, who took up the case. The overpainting, it turned out, was in direct violation of the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), under which, by law, artists must be notified 90 days prior to a mural’s removal. Shortly thereafter, Twitchell sued the Department of Labor, who owned the building, along with other involved parties for $5.5 million. To this day, no one organization or individual has taken responsibility for giving the order to paint over the mural.

>You can think VARA is a stupid law that should be repealed, but it is still a federal law in the United States.
I absolutely do, it's a pretty clear violation of personal property rights.

>If he had just waited for the slow as fuck wheels of court to start and maybe not decide in his favor
It was his property, anyone defending this is a fucking piece of shit(you, you are a piece of shit).

here
Also see Phillips v. Pembroke Real Estate, Inc., 459 F.3d 128 (1st Circuit 2006).

>PL/artist was a sculptor that Pembroke hired to do work for a park that they had redesigned. Phillips was commissioned by Pembroke to create 27 sculptures in a Boston park. Pembroke later decided to redesign the park, which would remove or relocate almost all of Phillips' work.
>The lower court found that VARA applied to Phillip’s site-specific sculptures. But the court held that the art could be moved under VARA’s “public presentation exception” so long as the pieces were not altered, modified, or destroyed in the process. The court was dealing not just with VARA, but also with the Massachusetts Art Preservation Act. There was no preemption.

Even if he destroyed the building, it would have been permissible if the building were disected in a way that preserved the murals in a different location. He could have broken up the chunks by murals and then stored them in a fucking warehouse or the desert, or gotten permission from the artists to destroy their art. He did none of those.

Maybe bacause it's art and if you're not a boring fuck it can make life in a depressing place a little bit less boring.

Yeah honestly over those 20 years someone should have sorted out a plan to remove the graffiti from the building while conserving it. The developer should be allowed to tear the building down if conservators and artists can't find a way to get rid of it. I've worked in art conservation and this case would have been easy to sort out with a bit of funding from a gallery, shit people actually missed out on making money off this.

Possession is nine tenths of the law my friend. My house, my building, so long as I don't need a permit, I can do whatever I want whenever I want. The building was not considered a historic landmark and thusly could be altered at any time. Perhaps they should have filed a protective order for the art, then I'd agree with you. But the lawsuit was for destruction of the building, not painting over it.

He shouldn't be obligated to spend money to dissect a building in a conservation capacity. He should have lodged in someway or another for local government or the artists to fund it.

Going red in 3-2-1

I like how a third party is selling rights to a building they don't own. That's an entrepreneur if I've ever seen one

>>dickbag continues to be a dickbag to the judge
>>judge throws the book at him awarding maximum damages

welp....

The lawsuit was over the destruction of the art under VARA. Whether that was achieved by demolishing the building or painting over it is academic under VARA, as either constitutes illegal destruction of the art under that law.

>VARA has already been applied to murals.
Not to extract such a large amount of money from a private person, who is therefore motivated to fight it all the way.

There are other rights in play here, and constitutional limits on Federal authority. It's an unreasonable burden on a private property owner to require a mural, painted on a building of temporary usefulness and finite lifespan built on a site of lasting commercial value, to be maintained in perpetuity. Where in the constitution does it grant the Federal government this power?

The judge likely interpreted "a work of recognized stature" too broadly anyway.

>buy building
>niggers paint all over it
>plan to redevelop building
>not allowed to because of nigger drawings

the details are irrelevant. it's an absurd situation. if artists want their work preserved then they should paint on a wall that they own themselves

>he doesn't want his house doubling its price
telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/3541901/Banksy-graffiti-doubles-derelict-pubs-value.html
fastcompany.com/3059595/how-street-art-raises-neighborhood-housing-prices

VARA requires building owners to do so. You can think the law is dumb and damaging to legal tax paying property owners, but the law is the law.

An appeal is inevitable due to the amount of the award. The best chance he has on appeal is the vague nature of the "work of recognized stature".

>Where in the constitution does it grant the Federal government this power?
Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

Protection under VARA is limited to works of "recognized stature" and within the artists lifetime, which at this point, is a finite period for all human beings.

>Nigger art painted on private property of others is preserved
>Confederate statues erected by the government on public land is torn down

I'm done

How on earth could any judge rule that you have the right to deface someone else's property.
Fucking activist liberal judges need to be removed and imprisoned.

This can't possibly be real.

kill yourself

Was there a preservation order attached to the suit?

The owner leased the building to someone who openly announced that he was going to allow open graffiti on the structure legally and then the owner did nothing about said graffiti for 20 years.

If the owner had a history of painting over graffiti as it was made, it would have resulted in it not becoming a place famous for all of the graffiti and murals it had.

Leases can give broad or very restrictive rights to the lessee. The terms of the lease that the owner gave were broad and allowed the lessee to do so.

Its his fucking building. If niggers come vandalize your garage should you have to relocate your garage to the desert before you can get a clean one, or ask the niggers politely if you can scrub off their nigger art?

Not talking shit, just impressed that someone grabbed the opportunity

My landlord rents me an apartment. You are telling me that I can draw swastikas all over the walls with crayons, and as long as DailyStormer and Richard Spencer right some media pieces about, my landlord cant erase them after I move?

Sup Forums defending jew slum lords. I've seen everything now.

IF that is true.... then it wasn't actually graffiti... they had a legal right to have their paintings or whatever up there.

The law prohibited the judge from issuing a temporary restraining order to protect the art. However, civilly the owner was still liable for damages if he destroyed the art and then at trial the art was later found to be protected under VARA.

The building owner destroyed the art before a ruling was reached. The court later found much of the art to be protected under VARA. Thus he is liable for the destruction (initially by whitewashing, later by destroying the building).

The judge's discretion on the damage amounts is that the property owner deliberately had the building needlessly whitewashed when he wouldn't get the permit to knock the building down for another 10 months anyways.

let me guess.. You're the Cohen running the place?

as i said, details are irrelevant.

>it's ok to vandalize walls
>ok it's been 20 years we have to redevelop
>these our walls now white boi

it's a retarded situation
only exception would be if there was an explicit contact between the lessee, owner, and artist

>Protection under VARA is limited to works of "recognized stature" and within the artists lifetime
Nope. Read it:
law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106A
>subject to the limitations set forth in section 113(d), shall have the right
>(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.
>(d)Duration of Rights
>...the rights conferred by subsection (a)...
>...the rights conferred by subsection (a)...
>...the rights conferred by subsection (a)...
>...the rights conferred by subsection (a)...
That qualifier is in every limitation. Nothing limits the duration of rights conferred by subsection (b).

>Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
That is "exclusive right". Meaning restrictions on copying or applying. Furthermore, even in today's broad interpretation, this is only about information, not about the fate of any particular copy of the work. This doesn't grant the Federal government the power to make laws giving artists moral rights.

I feel the pressure each day. Elites outside of this shit prison world and us getting shit on more and more every day.

Where does VARA state so? The main issue with the case is he painted over the murals without advising the relevant parties. VARA only covers negligent destruction of artwork from my understanding. There is nothing about forced preservation, I don't bother with art outside of museums but the entire case would have been about how he just wiped it randomly.

A) They weren't vandals because they were authorized by the lessee to paint that art under the terms of the lease of the property owner. You can't vandalize something that someone gives you permission to modify.
B) If I let grafitti be on my garage for 20 years, let world renowned publications take pictures of it and write about it, let musical artists and TV shows use it as an iconic place for shooting media, etc. to the point where the art can be said to have renown, then yeah, I might be required to take measures to preserve the art, get permission from the artists to destroy it, or face civil penalties.

Your landlord most likely has terms in your lease prohibiting you from defacing it and not allowing you to sub-lease your apartment/condo/house. This building did not, it authorized sublease and authorized alteration of the property via graffiti/murals.

>a work of recognized stature
So the plaintiff goes out and finds an art expert, a 28 yr old graffiti and gender equality professor from Mostly Useless City College-Bronx, and now the graffiti has "recognized stature." The graffiti artists get their gibs(paid by taxpayers), developers are less likely to build or improve properties, tax revenue goes down, etc etc etc.

>authorizing alterations vs
>you have to let this building rot undeveloped and PAY TAXES on it until said artistic nigger is dead

actually defending this garbage

I'm not.

google.com/search?q=define:vandalize
>van·dal·ize
>ˈvandlˌīz/
>verb
>verb: vandalize; 3rd person present: vandalizes; past tense: vandalized; past participle: vandalized; gerund or present participle: vandalizing; verb: vandalise; 3rd person present: vandalises; past tense: vandalised; past participle: vandalised; gerund or present participle: vandalising

>deliberately destroy or damage (public or private property).
>"stations have been wrecked and vandalized beyond recognition"
You cannot vandalize something that you were authorized to paint on. The lease permitted the lessee to allow people to paint on the structure.

>only exception would be if there was an explicit contact between the lessee, owner, and artist
That's literally not how the law (VARA) works. You can think the law is dumb, but it's on the books and has been found applicable and constitutional by federal appeals courts.

Subsection D confers the limitation that the protections of VARA expire at the end of the author's life or the end of the life of the last author in collaborative works.

wew
my nigga knows real estate
you've got a good point bud, if the highest and best use of a property is for adaptive reuse, an owner should be able to sue the artist to obtain market rent for their entire building so they can pay for taxes, utilities and maintenance

>5pointz complex
K

...

>and in some instances may sue the owner of the physical painting for destroying the painting even if the owner of the painting lawfully owned it
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Fuck them. If they want to keep control over their artwork, paint it on their own canvas or property and don't sell it. Paint it on someone else's property or sell it and I have no sympathy for you when it gets destroyed.

>defending nigger art and kike judges over private property rights
Kill yourself

since when do you need demo permits to clean trash of off your own property?

you're a faggot and should kill yourself
i know how the law works, it's just retarded.
done with you

The owner should have claimed that his painting over the graffiti was a work of performance art called "Fuck you niggers!"

>but it is still a federal law in the United States.
Too bad its unconstitutional

i meant to post this though

Its going to be overturned in appeals court.
The property is NOT public property, therefore they have no fucking rights to vandalize nor trespass.

Someone should make the case to get that judge fired.

fuck off you commie faggot i hope you die in a slow burning fire. if the guy owns the building he should be free to do with it whatever the fuck he chooses.

>federal judge
>fired

>$6.7 million in gibs for painting over graffiti
You know the saying that property owners started using in the Pacific Northwest after the spotted owl became protected?
>"shoot, shovel and shut up"

hahahhahahaha

FORMER GRAFFITTI WRITER FROM NYC/NJ AMA

If some faggot sprays shit on your property you should have every legal right to remove it and the faggot who did it should be forced to remove it

This original mural was approved by Missouri's University of Science and Technology. The My Little Pony mural was repainted after the vandalism took place, and this cycle happened again two more times. After the third vandalism attempt, another student group decided to take the spot, and the original mural, which is a work of art, was whitewashed. Do you really think that should be the way it works? Protecting some stupid mural in a tunnel of xD so nerdy references? It's someone else's property, and the state should have no say in it. If niggers want to paint on walls, they should buy their own walls.

R U NIGGER?

are you a nigger?

Whats it like being a nigger?

There's a decent chance for a bullet unless what you painted it's better than what it was and as all art it's subjective, but in graffiti it's pretty obvious.

I like this law by the way you fuckers rather have brutalism than a little bit of art.

The Supreme Court hasn't granted certiorari in VARA cases. The law is considered constitutional by lower courts unless someone appeals to them (has happened), the Supreme Court decides to hear it (hasn't happened), and then rules in the majority that the law is unconstitutional.

I get and actually agree with the arguments over private property rights.

Courts are full of marxist kikes
Why dont you show me where in the constitution it grants the feds the authority to regulate painting a building

at least all the nigger scribbles is gone either way. he should have just burned it down.

>rule of law doesn’t apply to jerks
Fuck you and fuck big-headed judges.

>I get and actually agree with the arguments over private property rights
You are a faggot. I hope some person graffitis your home.