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Above: We cannot show the sacred rocks of Kata-Tjuta. Reproducing images of the landscape is forbidden.
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Sydney, June, 2003. Filmmaker and artist Wim Wenders puts on a photographic exhibition. It's warmly received. Then, for no obvious reason, legal chaos erupts. One of the featured photographs is offensive. Sex? Violence? Brutality? No. The image displayed boulders and rocks. Wenders had shot the Olgas, or Kata-Tjuta, a spectacular landscape 19 miles west of Uluru (Ayers Rock). The landscape is sacred to the Anangu people, so are images of it. "There are certain sacred sites with strict viewing restrictions," says Uluru National Park Manager, Tony English. Breaking these sacred laws can traditionally be punished with a spear through the leg. Without knowing, Wenders had disrespected local customs and broken a law - the first one in the world - protecting image rights to an internationally recognized natural landmark. To avoid the $55,000 fine, he apologized and removed the picture from the exhibition.
Image wars
This is just one of a growing number of instances where imagery is becoming a source of legal, cultural and economic conflict. Our information economy means that images have never been so important. In Auvergne, France, private landowners threatened to sue several companies for using pictures of Pariou. Pariou has become very popular as the volcano featured on the labels of Volvic mineral water. "Pariou has been so damaged by tourists that it's in a disastrous state," says landowner Andre Lastique, as reported in UK's The Guardian. "If things go on like this we'll have to close it to the public. Companies are making money on our backs. We've had enough. We're going to sue." For tourist economies, beautiful images are prime assets.
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Does this just reflect the general rise in litigation? Creative Researcher Lisa Storch explains the elaborate cases which people construct around their own 'image rights'.
"One guy called up and insisted that he recognized himself in an image shot in a urinal - two guys urinating, one checking out the other. This guy insisted he was one of the men in the shot, although it was our own shoot and we had model releases for both guys. This guy wasn't easily brushed off. He had a lawyer, and claimed he recognized his ear."
In Australia some critics have accused the Uluru National Park of "cashing in" because commercial photographers need advance permission and have to pay a fee.
Uluru Park Manager Tony English disagrees. "The fees barely cover the administrative cost of enforcing the permit system," says English, "which doesn't leave a lot to go back into the Park. The system is as much to protect against inappropriate use of commercial photography."
The Anangu are legal landowners of Australia's most visited landmarks, and to help protect them, the Government granted legal image rights to the Park. For the Anangu, image rights aren't about copyright, or privacy or economics, they're about protecting their unique way of life.
Moral rights
Even the most modern societies have sacred images. George W. Bush's re-election bid got into trouble for using images of the destroyed World Trade Center. "It's absolutely inappropriate," Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill on 9/11, told AP. "There are certain memories and certain images that I consider sacred." In this case the moral rights of the bereaved outweighed the legal rights of the Bush campaign, and the image was
subsequently withdrawn.
Image rights to public spaces and landmarks could be the next big battleground. When governments privatize the running of public buildings and landmarks, the issue of who owns the image gets messy. In France the Eiffel Tower's lighting design is copyrighted by a lighting company. The age of 'freedom of imagery' has passed. For the Anangu this is a positive step. In an image culture, legal protection is necessary. We are surrounded by branding, even though we're not consciously aware of it. As Laura Malone points out, "The power of branding has pushed many trademarks into the subliminal, we don't even know that we're looking at a trademark sometimes, which can lead to errors. For this reason we avoid the use of single trademarks in our imagery."
Our public space is a dense network of brands, logos and trademarks. The big copyright battles of the last few years have been about audio rights, MP3 and file sharing. The stakes are about to be raised in the battles around image rights.
Also visit: deh.gov.au/parks, un.org.
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