Art Theft, Vandalism, and copyright issues Podcast Review

"Art, Crime and Criminals: Painting Fresh Pictures of Art Theft, Fraud and Plunder." Review. Http://www.law.qmul.ac.uk/events/podcasts/painting-fresh-pictures-of-art-theft-fraud-and-plunder/ (audio blog), June 21, 2016. Accessed April 4, 2018. http://www.law.qmul.ac.uk/events/podcasts/painting-fresh-pictures-of-art-theft-fraud-and-         plunder/.

               This seminar was based more on actual art theft than the intellectual side of art theft. However, many of the points that were brought up were applicable to both types of art theft. The main topics of this seminar were about art theft, vandalism, and copying of someone else’s work. There were many speakers from law schools, the FBI, Interpol, Universities, lawyers, police, and art recovery specialist and insurance agents.  They were each allotted twenty minutes to speak. They came from Germany, France, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. There was a quite a large amount of question and answers sessions. They covered all the different kinds of theft and how the retrieval and how they are processed through the law on the private sector and the public sector.

               The general item that almost all the speakers spoke on was databases and the good and bad benefits of the databases. There was interest in a database that shared the info of all art that is stolen, missing, or in dispute or copyrighted. However, they all said that they didn’t believe this could ever happen since all the major countries were not willing to share information on their antiquities. France, Italy, German, United Kingdom, and Iraq were some of the top countries that shared information that were mentioned a few times. The Italian speaker from Interpol stated that the United States used to share their info but had recently changed their opinions and had stopped participating in the group database. Most of the speakers stated that the databases would never be enough and never be complete because of the lack of cooperation from some of the larger countries. IN the second part of the day there was a lawyer that had previously taught at NYU Law School and had since moved to London. He began a business in 2015 and spent 800,000.00 creating a database that encompassed all the different kinds of art theft, vandalism, disputed art, copyright issues. The lawyer stated that he had helped recover art and cleared title disputes to the tune of 500 million dollars. This new database that he created he lets the police use for free many churches can use as free, and anyone he deems unable to pay the fee. He stated that it was the most technically advanced database that was available. Every stolen item that is registered in his database must provide a police report, paperwork, and details about the theft. He stated that his database had five hundred fields of searchable material.  If their site finds a stolen piece of art, then they inform the police and if the police state that they are not going to pursue criminal charges then he contacts the owner. Once the owner is contacted then he gives them the opportunity to chose if they want the police, insurance company, or them selves to retrieve the item. They also have the option to hire Art Recovery the company that owns and runs the database. The database has extremely high-grade image recovery software on their system to help determine if the art has been altered or not. The creator also spoke about how they never pay ransoms. Some criminals think they are being smart and try to ransom the works of art to the company to get a payout. The insurance companies are allowed by law to offer a reward for the piece of art however, he has chosen to never pay a ransom for any piece of art. A student asked the question if he ever thought that we would have databases that spoke to one another. He stated that he believed that it was possible but would never be complete without the full cooperation of all the countries.

               Another big conversation was about pillaging and looting art from World War II to the most recent Iraq freedom war. Many thieves use thieves in other countries to do the initial theft then they import or export them to another country. The Hague Convention was another topic when discussing the war-torn areas and how the art theft hurts them and how they believe they need to change the rules about cultural artifacts that were acquired during a time of conflict. The also talked about how laws have changed recently however, there needs to be more and stricter laws. They say it is harder to prosecute because you must prove they had mental awareness that they were committing the theft. Some other areas that they touched on was the vandalism of art. There have been several cases where people have purposely poked holes in the paintings, scratched them, or even destroyed them with scissors when they had the painting in their possession and got caught. An officer in the Italian military that is part of a small art theft group within the military he spoke on how counterfeiting is the biggest issue that they deal with. Especially with all the new modern art techniques and how they can replicate the art to a very close almost undiscernible eye could tell them apart. The last thing that really stood out to me was the speaker from Germany. She spoke about how she believes that their open borders make art theft more difficult to catch. This is because someone can steal something and freely walk over the border and then the art is never found again. The Italian officer spoke about how most art is taken, stolen, or copied from someone that you know. One example might be that they had a theft of twenty paintings. Tied up two employees and after the fact it was found out that the security guard knew them and was charged as part of the theft group.

               The biggest lesson that was learned by me is that whenever you buy art you need to do your due diligence and verify the linage and the paper trail of the piece of art. It is your responsibility to verify that the piece of art that you are purchasing is not stolen or copied. The German speaker also spoke about how their laws needed to be updated. Their current law states that a breaking and entering must have occurred for it to be art theft. However, this leads me to question when something is a mental something or a piece of paper that you drew it on and someone took it that is not breaking and entering so is that where some of the dispute about sharing between countries comes from? I also began to think about how different the intellectual freedom act is going to hinder us in the United States more than help us. This podcast was extremely informative and kept my interest most of the time. I learned a lot about how they can keep track and locate stolen art. There were several different speakers and some of the accents were hard to understand however, they all seemed knowledgeable and ready to help anyone there to understand what was the different topics that they spoke on. I feel like this podcast would be an extremely good tool and continuing education for police, museum staff, and interested parties. This podcast has prompted my mind to research some information on how the intellectual freedom laws transfer between countries and if a copyright holds up in another country of just the United States.