Artwork Re-Sells Itself Weekly On eBay 372
Lanxon writes "How much would you pay for a piece of artwork that you could only own for a week? A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an embedded Internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transport, says the creator, Caleb Larsen. Larsen tells Wired UK: 'Inside the black box is a micro controller and an Ethernet adapter that contacts a script running on [a] server [every] 10 minutes. The server script checks to see if the box currently has an active auction, and if it doesn't, it creates a new auction for the work.'" Another condition of sale is that the artist gets 15% each time the piece is sold. Maybe the First Sale Doctrine works differently in the UK.
Erm....15 % each time its sold? (Score:5, Informative)
according to the article '....give Larsen 15 percent of any increase in value ...', which is slightly different to what the story summary implies. I wonder, should the value decrease, does the seller get 15% back of any decrease?...I guess not!
Re:Sounds like a pyramid scheme (Score:5, Informative)
Not 15% on every sale (Score:4, Informative)
TFA says that the artist gets 15% of the INCREASE in value, not 15% of the entire value.
Re:Sounds like a pyramid scheme (Score:2, Informative)
Not unless the artist makes more than one of them.
The market won't bear arbitrary price increases.
Of course, if successful, the more hands the thing changes, the more notorious the piece of art will be, and the greater the value the market will bear...
The difference is a pyramid scheme seeks to involve as many people as possible. With an item such as this, it's only one buyer.
And the terms prohibit pricing the item above what the market will bear.
So there's a great deal of risk involved for the buyer..... the 'value of the item' could go down..
Re:Art? (Score:5, Informative)
Frank Zappa had a good point. He claimed that the only thing art required was a frame .
With all due respect to Zappa, it's Marcel Duchamp who understood this first, around 1913.
!art (Score:1, Informative)
It's not artwork. It's just a computer in a black cubic case.
Re:No such thing as 1st Sale Doctrine outside USA (Score:4, Informative)
Oh for craps sake. It does exist. From the wikipedia article you linked to:
Exhaustion of rights - A concept in EU law similar to the US "First-sale doctrine
Gee... sounds an awful lot like a first sale doctrine that works differently. Did you even notice the other wild-ass assumptions in your post?
Why do Americans, and Slashdotters in particular, assume that the world's legal systems are based on the USA's?
Errr... We do?
you'd think you'd realise that your laws are an amalgam of what's gone before - and that Common Law or other branches were around a long time before your country existed.
That's kinda obvious. I mean, the only other alternative is that the founding fathers knew no history or systems of government other than monarchies when they drafted the constitution. That's just seems silly.
The whole world doesn't want to be American you know.
OMGWTFBBQ?
Strong statements require strong proof, and the only proof you offered us for your wack-ass statements is a single unrelated quote from the /. summary.