I’m tempted to add a new category to my blog just for articles about things as silly as this one on New (Sub)Urbanist. Basically, it says that the image of the centerpiece statue in Chicago’s Millenium Park, commonly referred to as The Bean are copyrighted and may not be taken.

This whole mess seems fundamentally “broken” to me. First, the City of Chicago bought a very shiny new sculpture to put in their shiny new park. But, the story goes, they managed to separate the Image Rights (the copyright) from the sculpture itself. So now I’m to believe the City owns the large piece of metal decorating their park, but not the right to photograph it for commecial purposes–that belongs to the sculptor.

If the City were merely banning all commercial photography of The Bean, that would at least be consistent with their claims of upholding the copyright protections according to the law. Any issues relating to whether the City was smart or dumb in not obtaining those rights is a separate discussion.

But what they’re really doing is forcing commercial photographers to purchase (expensive) permits to take their pictures (and it’s just commercial, according to the original article which is linked from New (Sub)Urbanist above). So is the City forwarding any permit fees they collect on to the rightsholder? If so, how do they determine what proportion of those permit fees go to which sculptor, assuming that more than one is involved?

But if they aren’t forwarding those fees on, then the city is now selling something they don’t own, violating the very copyright license they claim to be enforcing! So which is it? Does the city have a franchise to sell Commercial Photography permits for The Bean or doesn’t it?

Is the City of Chicago merely an especially-inept contract negotiator, or are they also Copyright Scofflaws, as well?

P.S. Boing-Boing is getting in on this bit of silliness, as well.