Just 3 weeks after a lone thief made off with five paintings worth 100 million euros, Le Musée d’Art Moderne (MAM) in Paris is set to reopen its doors on June 11, 2010. A heist of this magnitude conjures images — à la Hollywood — of a black clad sophisticate using high-tech gadgetry to navigate a labyrinth, disable cameras and perilously negotiate a laser grid.

This scenario couldn’t be further from the truth. Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the Worlds Largest Unsolved Art Theft recently sat down with Neal Conan on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to reveal the reality of high stakes art thieving. According to Boser, no “high-tech wizardry” was used at all. As it turns out, all that stood between our “gentleman thief” and a 100 million euro haul was a padlock and plate-glass window (broken and smashed respectively).

And our our perp? Not likely the type to retire with a martini after secreting away the paintings. As Boser notes, “the people who steal art are second-rate thugs. They’re out-of-work bank robbers. They’re aging drug dealers, and they steal art because it’s valuable and often because it’s quite easy.”

The Paris incident has brought worldwide attention to the inadequacies of museum security. The problem is two-fold according to Boser: funding and usability. “In the best of economic times,” he says, “museums don’t have the funds that they need” to implement better security. Secondly, museums are maintained for public enjoyment — set up so viewers can have access and appreciate the art — a “Catch 22″ that makes it difficult to thwart would be thieves.

By example, he notes the 1994 theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) from Norway’s National Gallery in Oslo. The thieves left a note in the gallery reading, “Thanks for the poor security.” It wasn’t until after the theft that the museum revamped its security.

Another one that comes to mind is the 2002 theft of two Van Gogh paintings from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Two men entered a second story window using a ladder left by groundskeepers. Armed with only a towel and a rope, they broke the glass, setting off alarms, but vanished before security guards could arrive. The paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen (1882) and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church at Nuenen (1884), worth upwards of $8 million, are still at large.

Motivations for such thefts are equally as dubious. “Enterprising criminals,” Boser says, try and collateralize stolen art by trading canvases for drugs or guns, using them as political bargaining chips or holding the work for ransom ($5 million being the largest amount paid). In the case of the two stolen Van Gogh paintings — a loophole in Dutch law means the men may be able to claim ownership of the works in 20 to 30 years.

Listen: Art Thieves Just Thugs, Not Thomas Crowns on NPR.

It’s campaign season and flaps between musicians and politicians are on the rise. Early last week we noted that Talking Heads frontman David Byrne sued Florida Governor Charlie Crist for releasing an attack ad using the band’s Road to Nowhere. The Crist camp posted the commercial on the campaign website and YouTube without first obtaining a license or permission.

It’s “extraordinary” the Byrne complaint notes (read here), that the then Republican Crist would use a song without permission after the Republican National Committee (RNC), Ohio Republican Party (ORP), and Senator John McCain pledged (2008), “in future election campaigns to respect and uphold the rights of artists and to obtain permissions and/or licenses for copyrighted works where appropriate.”

OK, maybe not as extraordinary as Byrne and his lawyer (the same that elicited the McCain apology above) would like you to think. In fact, these legal frays flourish between now and November.

Just prior to the Byrne suit, Crist’s opponent Marco Rubio was sent the following from Steve Miller after using Take the Money and Run in his attack ads:

It has come to my attention that Marco Rubio is using one of my songs in a campaign ad for US Senate.

The Steve Miller Band and Steve Miller do not endorse Marco Rubio’s campaign or any political candidates and respectfully request that Mr. Rubio learn more about publishing law and intellectual property rights.  I also ask that in the future he extends me the courtesy of asking permission before using my songs.

Yours,

Steve Miller

Understandably, musicians do not take kindly to unauthorized use of their recordings, but the political arena adds another interesting layer — the appearance of endorsement.  It was this misappropriation of endorsement that compelled liberal singer-songwriter Jackson Browne to sue the RNC, ORP and Senator McCain in 2008 for use of Running on Empty in anti-Obama propaganda.  The RNC, ORP and McCain would later settle with Browne for an undisclosed amount,  a public statement of apology and a pledge (above, in part) to seek the permission of music artists for use in future campaigns.

Recently, the label of Toronto prog-rock band Rush issued a cease and desist to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul for using two Rush songs; one at a rally and the other as background in a fundraising video. According the Louisville Courier-Journal, Paul’s campaign manager considers the use a “non-issue.”

It’s not just performances/endorsements getting musicians miffed. Don Henley recently won a suit against California senatorial candidate Chuck DeVore for his attempt to lampoon liberal Hollywood and his opponents. DeVore rewrote two Henley songs: All She Wants to Do is Tax (based on Henley’s All She Wants to Do is Dance) and After the Hope of November is Gone (based on Henley’s The Boys of Summer) and used them as the basis for campaign commercials posted on YouTube. Devore claimed First Amendment protection as political speech and fair use as parody (of Henley).

Perhaps the most famous musician versus politician feud came during Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign. Reagan misinterpreted Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA and proclaimed that America’s future “rests in the message of hope in songs of a man so many young Americans admire, New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen.”

Born in the USA was not actually used in the re-election effort, but what the incumbent President referred to as a “message of hope” was actually a protest song critical of government involvement in Vietnam and the hardship facing veterans of the war:

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

Born in the U.S.A….

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “Son if it was up to me”
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said “Son don’t you understand”

Born in the U.S.A….

Oh boy — someone in the Reagan camp should have read the liner notes before letting that one fly.

UPDATE: Daily Kos has a running list of 14 notable politician/musician scuffles.

An interesting conundrum to say the least. Detroit Free Press reports that a mural by notorious London street artist Banksy which was moved to a non-profit gallery has been removed from public viewing. The gallery, concerned by emails and phone calls threatening to deface the work, decided to move it until it could be safely displayed.

The piece (below), discovered last month amongst the ruins of the Detroit Packard Plant, was on display for 10 days at the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios. Its removal from the abandoned plant created an uproar, with many arguing that relocation of graffiti strips it of its intrinsic value.

This is not the first Banksy graffiti removal fray. No stranger to public controversy, he has bombed major cities around the globe, often to have the pieces effaced by local authorities. Notably, the Melbourne City Council removed a piece last month and the Westminster City Council removed a mural in October 2008. Nor is this the first removal of his work by a private party. In April, JetSet Graffiti reported that a Los Angeles piece was relocated by Ace Gallery.

At TEDxNYED, Lawrence Lessig gave a talk on the importance of balancing commercial and sharing culture through copyright. “Freedom,” he states, “is [the] opportunity to both have the commercial success of the [] works and the opportunity to build this different kind of culture — and for that to happen, you need ideas like fair use to be central and protected.” Making an analogy to conservative politics, Lessig notes that there are lessons to be learned about openness and sharing, notably:

(1) our lives are sharing, in part — which requires well protected spaces of fair use,
(2) this ecology of sharing needs freedom to create — without permission from anyone, and
(3) respect needs to be given to the creator [of remixes] through rights that are directly tied to them (e.g. copyright)

Watch Lawrence Lessig: Re-examining the remix:

More from TEDxNYED.

As anticipated, Voltage Pictures LLC, producers of The Hurt Locker have filed a copyright infringement suit against 5,000 unnamed defendants in federal court (Washington DC). Voltage is proceeding without naming the individual defendants, but is confident that discovery will yield the identity of each offender via Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Once identified, the complaint (below) will be amended to reflect the same.

A few weeks back, the producers announced their intent to pursue BitTorrent users who downloaded the film. Coincidentally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been recruiting attorneys in an effort to quash what it considers “spam-ligation.” It’s unknown whether this is the first in a series of suits to come from Voltage in what the Hollywood Reporter described as a massive lawsuit against an expected tens of thousands of individuals who pirated the film online.

dcd-04502992578

More from CNET.

I was just having a conversation about the joy of vintage NES clones and now this. The Tetris Company, LLC, licensee of various Tetris copyrights and Tetris trademark, sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice Tuesday demanding the removal of 35 games from the Android Market:

Google’s facilitation of the distribution, without permission, of  ‘Tetris’ games is [] in violation of trademark and unfair competition laws [...] also violate the copyright in the Tetris® game because thaty are substantially similar to [the Tetris Company LLC's] game.

As such, the Tetris Company demanded that Google immediately remove or disable access to the infringing games. As of 8PM on Thursday, the games mentioned in the notice (below) were suspended and absent from the Android Market.

More from Droid Gamers.

Looking for something to do in the New York area this weekend? Visit the RE/Mixed Media Festival 2010:

Sunday, May 30th 2010; 2 PM
Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street
DUMBO, Brooklyn
FREE! (21 and over)

Presented by the League of Independents (LOFI):

The RE/Mixed Media Festival is our way of contributing to the ongoing conversation about remixing, mashups, copyright law, fair use, and the freedom of artists to access their culture in order to add to and build upon it.  While there are numerous events addressing these issues, they are usually discussion-based, featuring lectures and panel discussions about policy.  We believe that one of the best ways to make the general public aware of these types of issues is by demonstrating all the types of art and culture that remix touches.

Visit RE/Mixed Media Festival for more information.

Less than 5 days after a controversial mural was removed, a second Shepard Fairey work was painted over in Cincinnati, OH. This time, however, police suspect the work of vandals. Sometime between 8PM and 10AM someone rolled cream-colored paint over the Los Angeles artist’s untitled mural.

Last week, a Fairey mural deemed too incendiary for some in a Covington, KY neighborhood was removed by the same business owner who approved its installation.

Fairey installed 14 murals in the greater Cincinnati area to coincide with his solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) (Feb 14 – August 22, 2010).

Read the whole story at Cincinnati.com.