I don't consider any of that to be bad faith.

The alternative view is that the owner allowed graffiti artists many years of free usage of the space and they're trying to penalize him for it by preventing him from rescinding that offer. The tax status of the building isn't relevant. Every graffiti artist that tagged that building knew it could come down at any time. They knew they could be either replaced or entirely removed. To claim some ownership to the exterior now that he wants to tear it down is ludicrous.

If anything, I see this type of litigation to have a chilling effect on landlords allowing public usage of their property. I wouldn't want to open myself up to future litigation just because I allowed some artists to paint a mural.

> the owner allowed graffiti artists many years of free usage of the space

It wasn't free

> they're trying to penalize him for it by preventing him from rescinding that offer.

No, they're suing because he destroyed installed art.

> The tax status of the building isn't relevant.

It is, because it does imply he was acting in bad faith, especially given the broader context.

> Every graffiti artist that tagged that building knew it could come down at any time. They knew they could be either replaced or entirely removed.

This is not the legal standard that installation art is held to.

> Every graffiti artist that tagged that building knew it could come down at any time. They knew they could be either replaced or entirely removed.

> This is not the legal standard that installation art is held to.

It is not unreasonable that it should be, absent any agreement to the contrary. At least, it is not unreasonable that the standard could be reexamined.

> It is not unreasonable that it should be

It actually is, and if you're interested in understanding why, I'd invite you to read up on installation art and the copious case law surrounding it, both in New York City (where a lot of that precedent was initially set, incidentally) and across the country (since this is a federal lawsuit).

> At least, it is not unreasonable that the standard could be reexamined.

That's not how common law works. When there's a clear legal precedent (which there is, in this case), it's not the responsibility of the judge to legislate from the bench and overturn existing standards (either codified standards - like this one is - or standards set by case law).

The question in this suit is whether the legal standard applies; the jury determined that it did.

You are repeatedly quoting the law to avoid discussing whether there are any ethical issues here, but if this were purely a matter of the law, it would be uninteresting.

> You are repeatedly quoting the law to avoid discussing whether there are any ethical issues here

That's a pretty great distance to move the goalposts. The original comment questions legal matters (whether the owner acted in bad faith, whether the law was broken, and which side the judge [should] decide to be correct). Hence why we're discussing the legal standards.

If you want to discuss ethical issues, I'd suggest a new comment thread, because that hasn't come up at all in this one.

You might have taken a look before you wrote that, as the original post in this thread is pretty clearly about the ethical issues beyond the narrow facts of the law.

However, the artists would paint over previous works, so it's not like they were permanent installations, they lasted from days to on occasion a year.

There was impermanence about the art. So, i think it's mostly about not wanting to lose their "canvass" than to preserve the art. Given that the canvass was a building owned by someone else, I don't see much of a case.

> However, the artists would paint over previous works, so it's not like they were permanent installations, they lasted from days to on occasion a year.

That's not true. Some of the works were permanent installations, including tribute and memorial works from artists who have died. Only some spaces were designated for temporary installation.

> There was impermanence about the art. So, i think it's mostly about not wanting to lose their "canvass" than to preserve the art.

There's no need to put "canvas" in scare quotes. There's plenty of case law that helps define what an installation is, in the context of art. This isn't a novel concept.

> Given that the canvass was a building owned by someone else, I don't see much of a case.

The owner agreed to let them use the space (and even charged them for it, along with double-dipping into tax write-offs for the building). Legally, that gives them a pretty strong claim to the space.

Still, its a traditionally impermanent art form - so the injury to the artists is not the same as, for instance, destroying a statue or slashing a painting.

On a tangent, statues can be moved, murals can be moved, castles can be moved, bridges can be moved, etc. I can see, if someone wanted to buy up the structure and move it to some alternate location, that could have been an option, however, I'm not sure that was pursued as an option.

> Still, its a traditionally impermanent art form

The entire point of 5Pointz and their argument is that it's not an inherently impermanent art form, any more than other installation art (which is already established legally not to be impermanent).

yet, graffiti is always an installation art form, and the vast majority is inevitably destroyed over time. So I argue its traditionally impermanent.

The graffiti community is very diverse and organic, lacking formal definitions or standards- ha! Also, things from the inside can/are perceived differently than from the outside. I have friends that make a distinction, broadly, between graffiti writers and graffiti artists. The ones I call orthodox think it’s only graffiti if you do it on a train, everything else is “street art”- and that being a derogatory term. Train, as a medium, is accepted to be pretty ephemeral. Then you have the bomber mindset, which focuses on difficulty of placement and quantity, also understood to be ephemeral. Then there’s walls and graffiti artists, which do legal walls more often and do expect more permanent installations... the only spot where I’ve seen different kind of writers converge were Walls of Fame, which always felt more organized and with more explicit rules around them and more permanent. 5pointz was both a legal wall and a sorts of Wall of Fame, known to the graffiti community- at large- around the world.

Regarding 5pointz, the only part that I find interesting is the debate around the owner benefiting from tax breaks.

As I understand the situation; the owner was claiming the building was art to get tax cuts, then decided to sell and argued the building was not art. I feel graffiti is irrelevant here.

Agreed. Even in the heyday of the 70s and 80s, people sprayed over each others paint, be they the owners or other rival taggers. So, historically, it has been impermanent.

Historically, the contested real estate would be taken back if the crossing writer was a toy who lacked respect for the art and understanding for the intention for the piece to stay up. It shouldn't be hard to find ten year old pieces, in New York surely older.