Permissions, a Survival Guide: Blunt Talk About Art as Intellectual Property (review)

Susan Bielstein has walked the walk in the shadow of many authors, scholars, and other users confronted with the copyright clearance of images. As University of Chicago Press executive editor for works in art architecture, and film studies, among other specialities, Bielstein has looked at the issues of art permissions from more perspectives than most.

In a work that is engaging and enlightening, Bielstein provides background, analysis, and some practical tools for understanding the process of securing rights to artwork protected by legitimate rights holders as well as by parties whose claims to rights are more questionable.

Three main topics make up the backbone of the book: an introduction to copyright ; an overview of use, encompassing not only copyright, but issues of privacy, publicity, and integrity; and a discussion of the image, referring to acquiring the actual image in reproducible form.

Detracting from Bielstein's overall humour and insight is her dismal, often condescending assessment of the people who labour 'behind the blue door' – the metaphor she uses for the intricate and arcane world of rights and permissions. The expertise that enables rights and permissions people to function like players in a three-dimensional chess game in the analysis and licensing of rights should be a valued skill set in the digital distribution marketplace. But there are two major obstacles to valuing or repurposing the expertise of rights and permissions personnel: the amalgamation of creative works and the digital demand for solutions that are either 'truckload solutions' or code-driven solutions for rights clearance.

There have always been creative works that are the result of the oft-cited 'standing on the shoulders of giants' approach to literary, artistic, and cultural expression. Technology, however, has enabled the proliferation of amalgamated works through mashing, collaging, assemblage, and cut-and-paste culture. Such works, overlaid with paint-like layers of ownership, attribution, and provenance, are inherently frustrating to the effort of looking for 'truckload' or code-driven solutions.

While the means for reproducing and repurposing creative expression of ideas have been compressed and popularized, the genius, talent, and time required to create an original literary or artistic work have not been correspondingly digitized.

In a lively introduction to the historical background of copyright, Bielstein articulates that 'the incentives of copyright in the United States have always been more deeply rooted in the growth of commerce than in the moral right of the author' (17). The market provenance of US practice plays out quite differently in assessing the status of copyright in this country in contrast to the sacrosanct author–artists' connection to their creation in many other countries. The prime example Bielstein cites is the 'publication standard' measuring copyright terms prior to 1978, in contrast to the 'creation standard' used by many other countries and in some of the post-1978 revisions to the Copyright Law in the United States.

Bielstein labels restoration of copyright 'almost habitual,' but in fact it is actually extensions of copyright terms that have muddied the already turbid waters of copyright duration (35).

At this stage in the evolution (or lack of evolution) of copyright law and practices, it is ironic that in the United States, with expansive fair use and relative lack of compulsory licensing, the same mechanisms that allow for compensation often preserve the integrity of the reproduced image as well as its provenance. That mechanism in 2006 is still the licence.

Many accept as inevitable the hassles, formalities, and complex statutes regarding the purchase of land, personal property such as a car, a cell-phone calling plan, or health insurance coverage. When faced with cost of time or money in accessing, reproducing, or transmitting art, text, or other creative output originated in part or whole by another, however, the same people recoil in distress and outrage. Why is it that intellectual property is perceived as uniquely important...