Wal-Mart: If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission

It appears they’ve been taken down, but as of yesterday WalMart still thought it has not achieved greatness, prompting them to sell prints of a Banksy image and an almost-Banksy without permission.

This Salon article quotes the website, Death and Taxes, as stating that WalMart can do so because Banksy “doesn’t copyright his work.” Not so sure about that; under US law the “copyrightability” attaches the moment the work has been fixed in a tangible medium of expression (read: once the graffiti paint has hit the wall).

I think what Death & Taxes really meant was that Banksy may not police his works and enforce his copyrights. That’s a different story.

To add insult to injury, WalMart also misattributed another image to Banksy that was actually produced by Eddie Colla. The image in question is quite notorious, and some of our followers may remember it (it goes something like this…drum roll, please: “If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission.”) According to Salon, Colla plans on suing the beloved WalMart.

Just in: WalMart just released a statement regarding these screw-ups.

Wal-Mart has These items are sold through our Marketplace third-party sellers Wayfair and PlumStruck. We’ve taken action to disable the one item in question by Callo, and it will be unpublished later tonight around midnight PT.

We will also instruct Wayfair and Plumstruck to review their artwork to ensure the descriptions are accurate. They’ve provided great products and experiences to our customers and are contracted to comply with product copyright, safety, testing and certification requirements. We’ll work closely with them on the review.

They may want to work closely with them a bit more often.

Tags: art, banksy, Copyright, infringement, posters, prints, Wal Mart, website