grabffiti.com – a website dedicated to Visual Satirical Journalism – operates, in good faith, under protection of the (universal) doctrine of “fair use” and the doctrine (some countries) of “satire exception” w.r.t. any copyrighted work.

graBffiti = GRAB a F* (image) and FIT a TI ( 体 = substance) into it

The operators and users of this site dedicate genuine effort to publish only grabffiti art that “transforms” material (grabffiti’s “base”) taken from copyrighted work of other creators. That is, any grabffiti art piece aims to serve a different purpose than the original – generally it is satire as understood by the very creator of the piece in question. In other words, grabffiti art never aims to repeat such work for the same intent and value as the copyrighted “base”. This original “base” art – and this must be stressed foremost – is the innate and unavoidable part of any grabffiti by its definition (as a brick wall, a train carriage or a billboard could be for graffiti art in the “analog” world).

Fine Print:

Each grabffiti artwork shown here is deemed a personal creation of an individual who submitted it – anonymously or not – to grabffiti.com. It doesn’t speak for this website, nor it’s hosting entity. On the author’s side, it does not speak for the author’s employers, partners or affiliates, or even his or her friends or family. This should be clearly self-evident, but just in case you’re one of those lawyer types who can’t see that, you’ve been just forced to see it. (Need a magnifying glass?)

Quote:

“Because most laws are forced on us – the people – there is an obligation for every common individual to look at the laws-of-the-land from a different perspective constantly. This is humanity indispensable instrument for controlling the “Power Elite”, the people who will always try to bend the laws to suit their own needs.” BoWe_2011

DIY Small Print Legalities

Note: Our No-Budget-Budget would not even allow grabffiti.com to buy a lunch for a lawyer. As a result, the following is Do-It-Yourself (DIY) verbalization of “legalities” in question.

We summon to our defense: a) precedents and b) reason (common sense)

Precedent One – the Bible (Genesis 3:6 NIV)

We are proud descendants of Adam. Adam did not bite the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge for nothing.

Precedent Two – UDHR (Article 19)

The Article 19 – the most trampled (abused) one* – of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Reasoning:

R1 – All human culture and science – the progress of your civilizations ! Stupid – is in fact one continuous process of plagiarism. We “steal” from each other. All poets must read a poem before they write their very first one. Before you write your first novel, you without doubt happened to read work of other writers, or you happened to listen to stories told you by some strangers. Science giants like Newton stood on top of other giant born before him. And so on … so on.

R2 – Our current digital age is in fact the age of massive, rampant “stealing” (“borrowing”) of code (snippets – if the thief is “moral”) from each other. The Internet – all the code on its foundation and all the media on top of it – is one giant treasure cove of pirated code, images, videos, parts or whole writings, ideas, just name it.

R3 – You are a photographer. You claim copyright (and money) for your picture of a beautiful building. But wait! What about the architect who designed the building. What about the craftsmen who labored to materialized that beauty. In grabffiti’s understanding, “the beauty” should be copyrighted, not a photograph. Show us any photographer who for a second would consider sharing his or her financial gains with the others creators of that “beauty” he or she just captured on film or digits?

R4 -The Constitution (the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of expression) takes precedent from lesser later laws (e.g. DRM) because – if not – why to have a Constitution?

And there are many more Rs to consider when dealing with the copyright issue, but we stop here and

Foot-notes:

F* – Gotcha! It is not what you think – F* stands for “free” and “fine”

* Re. “The Article 19 – the most trampled (abused) one – …” – Quote: “It is tragic irony that (UN) the same body of people who in 1948 made Article 19 the universal law, 50 years later mostly consist of people who will do everything, including killing other humans, to suppress it.” BoWe_2000

leGalities

graBffiti = GRAB a F* (image) and FIT a TI ( 体 = substance) into it