CARFAC has won such battles as the right to exhibition fees from public art galleries, the recognition of artists as the primary producers of culture and the institutionalization of “moral rights” to protect artists from exploitation. With independent regional affiliates in several provinces and territories, they have spent decades working to organize, and bargain on behalf of, the country’s professional visual and media artists–including those artists which the CARFAC petition represents.
CARFAC’s response, entitled “Copyright Law and the Visual Artist,” starts by asking, “What do artists want from copyright reform?” They assert that current Canadian law does not protect “appropriation without permission” under any circumstances, and that this is in artists’ best interests. They continue to encourage new restrictions on use, including paying artists for resale of their work and bringing Canada “in line with the World Intellectual Property Organization agreements.” In response to collage artists’ concerns about legal reforms eradicating their practice, they advise artists “to seek permissions, to pay the contributors and to credit them.”
Jonathan Culp: Cutting Out Collage
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