How to outlaw the Guernica

Nadia Plesner painted Darfurnica, a modern version of Picasso's Guernica. On her website she explains: "In our time, the boundaries between the editorial and advertising departments in the media are disappearing and entertainment stories about the lives of Hollywood celebrities have become breaking news. Apparantly a genocide in Darfur can be happening RIGHT NOW without being important enough to make headlines. This is unacceptable and I refuse to turn the blind eye to what is happening. In Darfurnica I have mixed some of the horrible stories I have learned about Darfur over the past years with some of the Hollywood gossip stories which made headlines during the same time period." An important political statement.

As she returned to Holland in the beginning of February 2011, she had received a verdict in a new court case started by Louis Vuitton: "They are very angry about the bag that the boy in the middle is carrying. They claim again that I infringe their design rights on the pattern used in their 'audra' bag and they had the court in Hague put 5000 euro penalties for each day I continue to show this painting on my website or in galleries or anywhere else. They have been counting since January 28, so at the moment the amount is higher than 300.000 euros (!)"

The same court that ordered seizures of essential medicines destined for developing countries now forbids Nadia Plesner from including the image of the boy with the Louis Vuitton look-a-like bag and Paris Hilton dog in her painting Darfurnica and on her website. "Nadia believes this court order is a gross violation of her right to free speech and artistic freedom under Section 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights."

Design rights are not meant to target paintings. And IPRED's ex parte procedures, injunctions and high damages should not be used against artists.


De Goya's Shootings on Third of May is a famous political painting. Imagine that De Goya would have painted this version, including a Vuitton bag.

De Goya would have ended broke, we would not have known his painting. Neither would he have have had the money to paint the Black Paintings, etc.

This version of the Guernica would have been outlawed:

And this isn't possible either as a painting that can be sold. (The non-commercial usage in this document is possible.)

In the case of seizures of essential medicines the Commission issued a statement saying that EU laws had been interpreted wrongly. Now the Commission should issue such a statement as well. Intellectual property rights should not interfere with freedom of speech.

And EU law has to be rewritten to make such awful attacks on the freedom of speech impossible.

Part 1: Shakespeare 2.0