Vandalism, copyright and business

The last weekend of July, I was with two friends in Bristol. A city we would never have visited, had it not been for museum exhibition of Bristol graffiti artist Banksy.

The exhibition is the most popular the museum has held over the last hundred years. Eeven though we went a few weeks after the opening, we still had to queue for about  half an hour to get in. How often do you see that at a museum?

A BBC report also stated that business in the city benefited. Like us, many people were visiting Bristol especially for the exhibition, and they all needed  somewhere to eat, drink and sleep. There are even hotels with special "Banksy arrangements’ for the guests.

Banksy is good for the city, said a member of "Destination Bristol" proudly to camera. But the weird thing is that the city has not treated him well in the past. When we asked someone where we could find some original “street works” of Banksy, we were pointed on the map to a number of places where the city had painted out his works .

According to The Times, "Wall & Piece", a book collection of Banksy’s work is the best-selling art book ever. People come from far and wide and queue for hours to see his work in a museum. And how does the city respond? It is happy to paint over your original works. It’s as if Amsterdam had expunged Rembrandt – his paintings don’t belong here. And with the current city council, that might not surprise anyone…..

England is not the only country facing this problem. The Raval district in Barcelona, for years one of my favorites because of the rich graffiti on the streets, is having a difficult time. The city has started a major cleaning-up operation, and that district has now lost most of its charm for me and my friends. It has now become "just another neighborhood", with a few interesting streets. Resulting, of course, in there being less reason to visit Barcelona.

These city governments are missing business opportunities. Online you’ll see the same problem. Sometimes I’m happy to find a particular song on YouTube, just to discover that I can only play the  video – the audio has been turned off because of copyright infringement. Wonderful!

What’s stupid is that there are countless videos on YouTube with a link to the iTunes music store, so the song can be bought directly online. Removing the audio is ultimately helping no one. Consumers will download the song for free from elsewhere, and the artist is missing out on any potential revenues.

Whether it’s the ‘vandalism’ of Banksy or copyright infringement on YouTube, the two examples show that there is a huge potential market. But people have to see that market – and do something with it.  But the removal of audio or the rubbing out of graffiti on walls may seem much easier than inventing a business model from which everyone can benefit.

UPDATE: The Google Blog is a good example of how a popular video with copyrighted music has ensured that song suddenly like sells like hot cakes went. So it works.