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violating copyright: 2010

I first heard about Canada’s new Bill C-47 when I was printing off my artwork for this year’s graduation exhibition at the Emily Carr Institute. My artwork, the Transit Shelter Project, focuses on the current debates around the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and homelessness. As my artwork ran off the printer, the technician asked, “You know that these are illegal?” I replied that I had used different pantone colours and computer fonts so I wasn’t infringing upon any copyright laws.
“What I mean is VANOC has copyrighted the number 2010,” he added. I was completely floored and asked how anyone could copyright a number.

[more..] [via Geist]

5 Comments

  1. zura zura 2007-08-03

    Oh for crying out loud! I wonder if I get still get Pi… (rushes off to copyright office).

  2. Fred Smith Fred Smith 2007-08-03

    Hi there. I’ve reviewed Bill C-47 and VANOC would only consider reviewing your art if you were making a commercial association with the brand. In other words, if you were confusing the public by making an impression that you were officially and commercially affiliated with the Olympics – like a sponsor.

  3. Chris Hughes Chris Hughes 2007-08-03

    Can you patent the *idea* of copyrighting numbers?

  4. Hugh Hugh 2007-08-03

    @zura: we were doing a recording of pi for librivox, which means it must be public domain.

    @fred: have not read the doc, but i don’t trust copyright lawyers.

    @chris: not the idea, but the *process* …

Comments are closed.