[pp.int.general] A major French exhibition censored by IP office

[Valentin Villenave]

Hi guys,
thought you might have a look:

today a major French exhibition has opened at the prestigious "City of
Sciences and Industry"[1]. It is a public museum and venue for
children, students and general public.

This exhibition is called "Contrefaçon"[2] (counterfeiting) and deals
in a pedagogical manner with counterfeit goods : counterfeit money,
fake furniture, clothes, etc... While that could certainly be
entertaining and interesting, counterfeiting is actually exclusively
presented as a "danger" from which people have to learn how to
"protect" themselves. Interstingly enough, one of its sponsors is the
French Intellectual Property Office (INPI)[3].

This shouldn't come as a surprise: the exhibition does make quite a
big deal about illegal copies of cultural works, and basically aims to
"educate" children and teenagers (with quizzs, children-oriented
activities, etc.) to the idea that "copying is theft". Up to the point
where one could wonder if this wasn't the actual purpose of the whole
thing.

As we all know, there (still) are legal ways of copying some works,
partially or entirely: public domain, fair use, free licenses.
Isabelle Vodjdani, an artist, university professor, and Libre
advocate, was initially asked to write a short, free-licensed text[4]
about the Libre movement and the new possibilities it offers. However,
this didn't turn out well: just hours before the opening, the
exhibition's chief commissioner withdraw this proposal and apologized
to her, saying that "their main sponsor, the INPI, fiercely opposed
the idea that any place whatsoever could be given to advocates of the
Libre movement". So her text and the (however small) place of the
exhibition it was related to were scraped out altogether.

Such a decision demonstrates at least two things: the first one is how
blatant the opposition between the IP-system and the Free movement has
become (neither rights-management-organizations nor IP institutes seem
to wrap it up in diplomatic lingo any longer). The second one is that,
at least in France, public exhibitions are now an important political
battleground (as demonstrated by another recent censorship over a
contemporary artist[5]).

Refs:
[1] http://www.cite-sciences.fr/en/cite-des-sciences
[2] http://www.cite-sciences.fr/francais/ala_cite/expositions/contrefacon/
{3] http://www.inpi.fr/
[4] http://www.transactiv-exe.org/spip.php?article141
[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/12/sarkozy-art-row

Cheers,
Valentin