A bit more than two years ago I did a performance / installation work that I called “running myself“. It consists of a web page showing photos of myself running through Joachimstraße und Steinstraße in Berlin Mitte and of a map in which the route I took is marked with red dots. The Map I took from Stadtplandienst.de, a german map service by “Euro-Cities AG“.
Linking to a dynamic map, as I would have preferred, was no option since I could only link to an address, not to a route. I knew that better solutions like Google Maps existed, but I chose Stadtplandienst mostly for its square and pseudo official name (“city map service”). I see myself more in the tradition of conceptual art than in the young tradition of web art and words matter to me.
Last week I received a letter from their lawyers, demanding that I sign a paper stating that I will remove the picture with the map from my site, pay a fee of €225 for using the map and €189 for the lawyer.
It may not have a legal impact, but as a matter of fact, if anything, I promoted their service. The map was accompanied with a link to their site, and I indicated the copyright properly. I was very aware that Stadtplandienst was doomed for lack of innovation and because of tough competition. (I used to work for a location based services company and I almost felt a bit sorry for Stadtplandienst, the local competitor that I used to keep an eye on as part of my job as a conceptual designer. Not sorry enough though to pay a ridiculous sum in order to realize a strictly non-commercial piece of work).
Not being allowed to use the map and having to worry about claims of this kind, I see my artistic freedom limited to an extend that I don’t believe can be justified with the copyright claims. It is part of my artistic practice to experiment with anything I can get my hand on. I generally don’t produce commodities. Doing what I do on the internet, resembles the practice of street artists and graffiti artists only that it is hard to argue that I damage other people’s property. An artist who created collages with printed maps from Stadtplandienst, no matter, if he put them up public space or in a gallery, would hardly have to fear copyright claims. On the internet however, the notion of artistic work does not seem to exist, at least not legally.
Two years ago I was not aware, that going after copyright violations systematically would become a proper business model for certain lawyers and for operations that aren’t fit for the web 2.0. Stadtplandienst, lacking any kind of community feature is obviously one of them. Ironically a friend had told me about their practice a while ago one morning when we were running. Of course I remembered that I had the map on the “Running Myself” page. Frankly, I did not think about taking it down for a second.
I read on the Stadtplandienst site that they are planning on offering the service in Austria soon. Instead of coming up with attractive features and an up to date business model, their sole strategy seems to be extension of “Lebensraum”. Soon they can sue Austrians.