Bullied by Gallery Owner

As you know, I run graffitipix.com, a site that sells pictures of graffiti street art. I recently received a disturbing email from a French gallery owner claiming to speak for all these graffiti artists - who shall remain nameless for the time being - threatening all sorts of actions; going to far as to suggest even "bigger" consequences than legal actions! I dunno, maybe they plan to come to my apartment and beat me up...

This comes from some misleading (intentional?) notion that a gallery owner showing some pictures from an artist somehow 'owns' the rights to anything and everything that artist might have done!

Now let me say, I respect intellectual property. And an artists rights. But we're talking graffiti here! Art intentionally put into the public domain! First, unless you are the photographer, you can no more claim copyright to a picture of the side of a building than you can to a picture of the statue of liberty! Does Michael Jackson write to People Magazine when they publish a Paparazzi's picture on their cover??

Second, what copyright? - graffiti is illegal in most places.

Now in fairness, we inadvertantly posted pictures of some works that were not public access public space pictures. We apologized, and they are all in the process of being removed. But to knowlingly try and bully us away from something we have every right to do, suggesting some dangerous "big" consequences, flies right in the face of what graffiti is all about! Graffiti is about free expression, about transcending boundries, and yes, thumbing their nose at the establishment.

Now that the establishment is making a buck from it, all of a sudden greed kicks in - and worse yet, under the guise of "what the artist wants"! What the artist wanted, at least before the gallery owners got there, was free creative expression. What happened?

Molly