A “reknowned” American artist currently has an exhibit at a not obscure New York gallery featuring exactly the type of tacky appropriation everyone imagines when they think of “counterfeiting”. Yet, he’s getting press, because 1) people did not “know” what they were knocking off 2) the word “counterfeit” was never mentioned. The two justifications clearly counteract each other as: no reason to think what they were doing was wrong if they had no idea they were knocking off something.

This comes a week after NYPD arrested a man who sold designer goods in papier mache for “copyright infringement”.

Isn’t it convenient? This could turn into a thesis on the cultural bias of copyright, non?