Art School's Expensive Art History Textbook Contains No Actual Art 371
Dr Herbert West writes "Students at Ontario College of Art and Design were forced to buy a $180 textbook filled with blank squares. Instead of images of paintings and sculpture throughout history (that presumably would fall under fair-use) the textbook for 'Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800' features placeholders with a link to an online image. A letter from the school's dean stated that had they decided to clear all the images for copyright to print, the book would have cost a whopping $800. The screengrabs are pretty hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view."
Original Source (Score:5, Informative)
Link from summary - Salon: "This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic. "
Hyperallergic - "What is this, October!? According to a blog post"
Original Source: http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2012/09/16/copyright-and-the-pictureless-art-history-textbook/
Re:Forced? (Score:5, Informative)
They've since invented codes that go along with the book - required to view online information and submit assignments, if the teacher is using their online framework.
Naturally the code is only functional for a single semester, so even if you buy a used book, or share a book, you need your own code to submit assignments.
They'll gladly sell you just the code, for the low fee of... almost as much as a new book+code cost.
Cancerous as hell...
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
They seem to believe that a url where you can see it online is as good as having it printed right in fromt of you. Were I one of those parents I would just hand then a piece of paper with a link to a picture of $180. Fair is fair.
Oh, I don't know... a printed image in a book has a pretty limited resolution. An on-line image can offer a lot more... take a look at the very high resolution imagery provided by http://googleartproject.com./ [googleartproject.com.] You can see the work as a whole or if you'd like to you can zoom in to see more detail than you could see if you were standing in front of the real piece.
OTOH, I have to agree that having the images the text is discussing right next to the images would be much more useful if you want to, for example, study art history.
Re:College textbooks a scam? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that list is relevant to colleges and universities.
The Trillium guide explains that "School boards may select textbooks from the Trillium List and approve them for use in their schools." but the Ontario College of Art & Design is a university with a board of governors (6 individuals appointed by the Ontario government, 2 elected by the OCAD U Alumni, and 9 by the Board itself), not a school with a school board.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. From the Art Institute of Chicago...
Photography
You are welcome to take photographs of the permanent collection and selected loan exhibitions. Please respect signage in exhibitions prohibiting photography of specific works of art. Photographs must use existing light (no flash photography) and are allowed with the condition that the images are for personal, nondistributional, noncommercial use. Flashes, tripods, and video cameras are prohibited.
Members of the media should contact our Department of Public Affairs at (312) 443-3626 or aicpublicaffairs@artic.edu to arrange shoots for still photography and film.
Emphasis mine. I'm not sure what the arrangements would look like for commercial use, but I'd guess they're usually expensive and very specific. As a side note, any school that makes it mandatory to purchase a $180 art book with no photos should suffer a lack of enrollment. That's disgusting, even beyond the usual, disgusting text book scam.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:4, Informative)
Incorrect. As the GP stated, the art is out of copyright, and their vague sign has no force of law (if they could even prove you saw and/or agreed to it), Even trying to come after you for Breach of Contract would be fruitless; there are no actual damages they can prove (they don't hold copyright to the paintings, so they can't claim damages for copying), so the worst they could do is refuse to let you back in.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:4, Informative)
They don't let you use flash because it can cause chemical degradation to the pieces. Many xenon discharge flashes are many times brighter than the sun, so over time people photographing the works with flash illumination would be just as devestating as leaving the works in the sun.
Re:Getting caught has nothing to do with it (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually fairly common to have enforcible contracts where some terms are not evident until after the parties have agreed to enter it. So long as there is an opportunity to exit the agreement after having had a chance to review the additional terms, with the parties being restored to their pre-contract conditions, then it's considered acceptable.
Of course, adhesive contracts is an area of law that is badly in need of strong consumer protection reforms, but good luck with that these days.
Re:Museums don't let you (Score:4, Informative)
Choice of lighting, positioning, focus, shutter speed, filters used, etc. all can have a significant difference to how a photograph turns out, and that's before you do anything drastic. It's not hard to show that there's a lot of creative effort involved in a good photograph.