Publishing
Louis Vuitton, Corporate Wraithlords
Louis Vuitton are suing Danish art student Nadia Plesner for copyright infringement. Not for making the usual knock-off copies of their bags that can be seen on most high streets, but for something much more disturbing.
Plesner created the artwork for fund-raising t-shirts after reading the book ”Not On Our Watch” by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. “I felt horrified”, she says, “by the fact that even with the genocide and other ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Paris Hilton was the one getting all the attention. Is it possible that show business have outruled common sense?”
Louis Vuitton are demanding 5,000 euros damages for each day she continues to sell the t-shirts (about $7,700).
Apart from depicting Louis Vuitton as a bunch of voraciously greedy wraithlords, more interested in their obscene profits than in the fate of human beings (or indeed, art) – there is another aspect to this case, too.
Imagine what would have happened if Campbells had sued Andy Warhol for copyright infringement.
What was unthinkinable in those days is now very much on the corporate IP agenda.
Today, multinationals want to own, and perpetually exploit, rights in everything. “Fair use” is being squeezed, sidelined and salamied.
This is a huge issue. We agents – who have to be white knights fighting for the rights of the creative individual against the corporate monolith – have never been more desperately needed.
I hope my colleagues are paying close attention.
On this day…
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I think the bigger thing the multinationals miss is the upside of the publicity. Warhol painting the Campbell’s label made a statement about the soup company as a cultural icon. They’d have been fools to complain.
It seems to me getting one’s logo on anything is good, so long as it doesn’t make a negative statement about the quality of the product or conduct of the corporation.