The Abode of Chaos and freedom of artistic expression

The Cassation Court’s criminal chamber presiding over a second appeal delivered an order dated 15 December 2009 for the destruction of the 3,123 works of art forming the corpus of the Demeure du Chaos created by the artist and sculptor thierry Ehrmann in 1999.

Founded by the conceptual act of thierry Ehrmann on 9 December 1999, the Abode of Chaos (per the NYT) is an œuvre au noir (nigredo) inspired by the alchemical chaos of the 21st Century, whose tragic and yet sumptuous embers were ignited on 11 September 2001.

Between February 2006 and June 2008, under its E.R.P. status (Etablissement Recevant du Public) status, the Abode of Chaos attracted 437,130 visitors of whom 21% came from outside France. The place also hosts a number of artists in residence.

Since 1999, the local authority of Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d’Or (where the Abode is located) has been pursuing a crusade of artistic negation against the Abode of Chaos and continues to call for “the restoration of the building to its original state”… which means effectively means the complete destruction of the Abode.

The case will now be submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in the framework of Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The wording of the Cassation Court’s rejection of the appeal clearly reflects its concern to uphold French building regulations, and their application by the Grenoble Appeal Court, as being coherent with the freedoms of expression guaranteed in Article 10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

Thierry Ehrmann considers that this decision violates his freedom of expression and that this freedom cannot be uniquely subjected to Building Regulations since artistic expression has been a national and universal right since the beginning of time.

From a copyright viewpoint, the issue is to what extent, if any, could the Abode of Chaos claim any sort of copyright protection and what, in commercial and moral rights terms, might be the outer limits of its protection.

Follow the news direct from the Abode of Chaos on:http://blog.ehrmann.org/ and http://www.demeureduchaos.org/ and http://www.abodeofchaos.org/

Finnish CSS case application lodged in the European Court of Human Rights

Finnish Activist Mikko Rauhala has lodged an application to the European Court of Human Rights versus the Finnish state, regarding his right to freedom of expression.

The appeal is a follow up to the lengthy court process against Mr. Rauhala in Finland. The process started when Mr. Rauhala started a discussion board on the Internet, on which people could talk about the DVD copy protection method Content Scrambling System (CSS). Mr. Rauhala's motivation for this act was to criticize the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive in Finland which came into force in 2006. According to the implementation of the directive, "organized discussion" regarding circumventing technological protection measures, like the CSS, was prohibited.

The Police started its investigation and soon thereafter, the case was referred to the Helsinki District Court which decided, in Rauhala's favour, that CSS was not a type of protection measure covered by the Directive and therefore the ban did not apply. The district attorney appealed to the Helsinki Appellate Court, which stated that Mr. Rauhala was guilty of illegally circumventing a technological protection measure and of providing an illegal service for the circumvention of protection measures. The Supreme Court of Finland denied Mr. Rauhala's application.

Mr. Rauhala then made an application to the European Court of Human Rights, because in all the court instances his argument that the discussion he was administering was within the confines of the Right to Freedom of Speech, as enshrined in the Finnish Constitution, was not considered.

Source: EDRI