— By Jack Morse (@jmorse_) |
Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate cares about San Francisco. Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate cares about community. Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate cares about artists in the community, especially muralists, and thinks what they do is “really cool.” So cool, in fact, that real estate company Zephyr Real Estate decided to appropriate a bunch of local muralists’ work, without permission or compensation, for a 2013 promotional calender used to help sell multi-million dollar homes. Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate doesn’t understand why the artists would be upset by this.
Courthouse News Service has the story:
SAN JOSE (CN) - In a lawsuit that spotlights tensions over soaring prices and gentrification in San Francisco, the creators of several iconic city murals sued a real estate company for using their art to advertise “luxury homes.”
Eight artists accuse Zephyr Real Estate, the city’s largest independent real estate firm, of infringing on their copyrights by reproducing their work in a 2013 promotional calendar without asking for permission.
“It just rankles that a company that is selling multimillion-dollar homes and really contributing to the gentrification of the city uses these beautiful pieces of public art for their private profit,” said attorney Brooke Oliver, of 50 Balmy Law, who spoke to Courthouse News on behalf of the plaintiffs.
The images in the calendar come from neighborhoods all around the city, including Chinatown, Dubose Triangle and the Mission. […]
Zephyr president Randall Kostick said he’s surprised the issue has come to a lawsuit. He said the company tried to resolve the problem after an artist complained. “After I researched I found out that, yes, we should have gotten permission - it’s a technicality of the law I was unfamiliar with - and we apologized,” he told Courthouse News in an interview. […]
“They’re cool calendars,” [Kostick] said. “They try to take one aspect of the city that is really cool and highlight it every year.” […]
“The artists can say, ‘You guys are involved in the gentrification that’s taking place,’ but the bottom line is we’re not creating that gentrification. We love the art, that’s why we published it. And it’s a little bit hard for me to understand why an artist doesn’t want their art published.”
Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate didn’t realize it was doing anything wrong. Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate thinks that even if they did do something wrong, well, they apologized, and really isn’t that what counts? Real estate company Zephyr Real Estate just doesn’t understand why artists wouldn’t want their work used to sell luxury homes.
Maybe real estate company Zephyr Real Estate should stick to things it does understand, like its 2010 calendar featuring “the setting for the invention of Chicken Tetrazzini.”
Update January 9th, 11:00am:
Uptown Almanac has obtained part of the calendar in question, and it is easy to see why the artists are so offended. Take the below page—right next to the reproduction of Mona Caron’s mural is a house, rendered in the style of the mural, that Zephyr sold. In a time when many artists are being forced to leave San Francisco due (in part) to exorbitant housing costs, using an artist’s work (without permission) to market a home as “an exceptional investment opportunity” seems particularly tone deaf and offensive.
The mural pictured at the top of the post is by Mona Caron, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and has since been removed. The other artists/plaintiffs are Francisco Aquino, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Jetro Martinez, Sirron Norris, Henry Sultan, Jennifer Badger Sultan and Martin Travers.
[Photo: Mona Caron | h/t Capp Street Crap]
Comments (28)
Hope you got permission to run that photo. And every other one you run. Credit alone isn’t enough.
Before anyone goes all “fair use!” “News reporting!” on me. Yes, yes. I was just entertained by running a picture that someone is suing someone else for running.
Caron’s murals have her name and a copyright notice. Did they even look at the murals before putting them in the calendar?
Please note that the mural pictured has, regrettably, been removed. The entire switching structure on which Mona painted that wonder was replaced by a new gray box….
kkopp–thanks for the reminder. I updated the post to reflect that.
The mural remains but the box has been removed. Two separate pieces of art that when viewed from one angle became one.
What I found mind-boggling was the statement “it’s a technicality of the law I was unfamiliar with” – he makes it seem as if this was some obscure legal provision no one had ever heard of. In fact, it’s one of the most basic things you would consider when clearing photos or video footage to be used for a commercial purpose. My company has an ad agency that produces TV commercials for us, and you can bet one of us lawyers sits down and watches every single one to make sure there isn’t, for example, a shot of a painting on the wall of a fake living room that the ad agency didn’t clear the rights for.
Zephyr has an empty house for sale down the street. I think I’ll move in because I LOVE houses. Don’t worry, I won’t make any money off of it via AirBNB or anything. I just like living in cool houses and I like to highlight them by inviting my friends over and stuff.
I don’t understand why a real estate agent wouldn’t want somebody to move into their house.
A speculator/real estate agent for one of the “luxury” buildings that backs up to Balmy Alley tore out a mural so he could build a patio for his monstrosity. He commissioned some Urban Outfitters fake Navajo print mural in its place. These people are the worst. http://cjjc.org/en/news/51-housing-justice/558-harrison-st-tenants-prote…
Welp. According to the freetards, the original mural was still where the artist put it, and so they can’t claim that anything was “stolen”, right?
im actually neighbors with the one of the ladies suing zephyr, from what I understand they tried to find the artists and ask permission but most of the art on the street wasn’t even registered therefore considered not legal. The lady is the girlfriend of one of the artists and just loves to sue everybody left and right. Not a nice person either.
Where, exactly, does one “register” art so it can be considered “legal?”Due diligence in attempting to contact an artist does not grant one permission to use artwork when there is no reply. The fact that the lawyer loves to sue people and is not a nice person is irrelevant.
You register with the US Copyright Office, just like any other creative work.
If the artist is going to display their work on someone else’s property without attribution then it’s pretty lulz for them to get all butthurt when someone uses it.
Besides, I doubt they’d be crying so hard if it were, say, some nonprofit environmentalist organization. But it’s a Bad Person who we Don’t Like and suddenly artists’ rights and shit are super fucking important.
How’d you feel if someone you didn’t like started representing themselves with your work?
Welcome to the Libertarian Party, brother. Here’s your free gun and your complimentary doobie.
Copyright is automatically granted to the creator of any work without registering at the copyright office. A person inherently owns the copyright to what they create. It is illegal for someone else to reproduce that work without permission. If someone else doesn’t know who created a work, it doesn’t give them the right to reproduce that work.
This is not some obscure technicality, this is the core of copyright law. It’s right there in the name - copyright - the right to copy.
I don’t mind that you are so dense, but don’t go spreading it to other people, keep it to yourself.
not considered legal? copyright is automatic, no registration required.
its irrelevant that the lawyer is the artists girlfriend and that zephyr said they would make a huge donation to help the artists but was turned down because this lawyer just wants to cash out. This has nothing to do with doing the right thing, or the artists would have taken the donation.
Yes. It is irrelevant that the lawyer is (one of) the artist’s girlfriend – and to be honest, I think most people would rather be represented by a lawyer that is a close friend or family.Perhaps your definition of ”huge” is different than the artists that had their work used without permission by a for-profit entity who they find politically and/or ethically reprehensible.
It has everything to do with doing the right thing. Zephyr did the WRONG thing, not the artists. Quit trying to flip the tables. Also, maybe I missed the part about this whole “donation” thing. Where is that mentioned?
When does refusing a[n alleged] payoff constitute doing the right thing? And where does Zephyr get off thinking they can just dump money on the situation to make it go away? This is a big part of the disagreement, that people are illegally appropriating copyrighted art to enrich themselves. Sharing some of that enrichment post hoc, and under threat of litigation, is hardly “doing the right thing.”
What else are they supposed to do? It’s not as though the artists cared about getting credit for their work, otherwise they’d have left some sort of contact information. But now that it looks like there’s some cash involved, hey wow all of a sudden it’s real goddamn important that artists’ rights be respected.
Not that they gave two shits about the rights of the owners of the property they painted all over, but hey, rich people can just buy their own fucking rights and property owners are all super rich because otherwise they wouldn’t own property, right?
By the way, the drawing of the Duboce Triangle building being represented by Zephyr, next to Mona’s mural was done by an artist who has been doing these drawings for about 30 years-way before digital photos.
“rendered in the style of the mural”
Not even close to the same style.
The lawyer is not related to the artists.
Hey Hunny Bunny, The lawyer is the girlfriend artist, and she wants something like $800,000 in retribution. Sounds totally fair, they tried to pay a massive donation to a non profit that supports artists but was turned down because Artists Girlfriend Lawyer lady wants near a million dollars
I really don’t understand your perspective on this.Maybe it’s because I make my living as an artist but if some company that makes millions of dollars in revenue (while actively fucking over people like me) stole my work to promote themselves why would them donating to a non-profit placate me in any way? I still wouldn’t get any compensation for my work and they get a big old tax deduction. That makes zero sense. If I wanted to support a non-profit for artists then I would donate them to directly.
Also, what is the name of this non-profit that supports artists? Because I would like to sign-up to get some of this support.Lastly, $800,000 split between a half-dozen artists seems pretty reasonable to me.
Hey Dan, Instead of being a random commenter throwing out false info get it together. The Lawyer suing Zephyr is the Long time Girlfriend of one of the artists.