Art and The Law

I am intrerested in talking to any artists of curators who have had any
legal trouble. This includes anything from "Officer Friendly Dropping By
With A Little Kindly Advice" to full blown civil or criminal threats. I am
also interested in these things in other parts of the world other than the
US, CANADA. AUSTRALIA and the UK.

Awhile ado I have heard of the still ongoing Steve Kurtz and CAE Case,
here in the US, which is heating up again because there has been another
Grand Jury Subpoena for another CAE Member Steve Barnes is subpoena'd
before the Grand Jury. It is an open question if the FBI and Federal
Prosecutors will try to get a "bioterrorism" indictment. Note well
although the current indictment was for mail fraud because Steve Kurtz and
Robert Ferrel went around some fussy procedures that one supplier of
Microrganisms uses. Note University Labs do this all the time.

What is sad in this case is that with a little searching on the Internet
Steve Kurtz could have ordered the Microganisms he wanted. After the Grand
Jury failed to find a true bill on bioterrorism it would have all
collapsed.

Note to those artists who want to do "out there" stuff please make sure
that you do everything on the up and up and be reasonably careful. All of
this started me reading through Federal Court Cases and what I became
interested in was the "not so little consolation prizes" that Federal
Prosecutors seem to often get. In this case "Mail Fraud". What happens is
that when something is a federal case. They everything you have, letters,
computer files, stuff laying around your house etc. and if the main thing
fails what seems to happen as far as I can tell is they go looking through
everything to find out if this person could have possibly done anything
wrong and nail 'em for that. Or that is what from my now extended layman's
understanding.

I have always been interested in the CAE type stuff as I am another one of
those folks who had a major in biology and art. I think in this case what
people should do is point out where it is possible to legitmately get kind
of neat science and art materials and their safe use and any laws one
might trip over. Note in the old days where painters compounded their own
pigments tha artists dealt with toxic materials all the time. Painters
primed their caanvases with white lead, which when mixed looks like a kind
of creamy shake but is very toxic. So I am sure we artists and techies can
deal with this sort of stuff.

But this has piqued my interest in general, how many art types have had
encounters with the legal system. I am going to add improvements to the
Santa Cruz Bill of Right Defense Comittee web site as we have discussed in
meeting and I would foresee adding a moderately big subsection as art is
major part of our freedom of expression.

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Thank You and Have Fun,
Sends Steve Kudlak