Here are the issues. You may not use elements of another's copyright work without permission. The exception to this is that art that has fallen into public domain. For those that are still privately owned 1) You may quote small portions of work or bodies of work for the sole purpose of education and criticsm. 2) You may not have financial gain from making use of someone else's work. 3) You may not widely circulate a portion of another person's work unless it is for criticsm. Google fails the circulation test. Fails the financial gain test (although we could argue about this). And it clearly wasn't using Miro's elements for the sole purpose of education or critiscm. This is even the case if you couldn't redially see where the elements came from.

Simply because you can devine where the elements were taken from over an Internet optimized image of the artwork, doesn't mean its not true.

They were in the wrong and, while I can't abide by the tactics taken by groups like ARS/RIAA/MPAA, this action was perfectly fair.

Thanks for the informative comment.

I did Google "Twittering Machine", but Google thinks it's a work by Paul Klee, not Miro.

More to the point, though, I also Googled the three paintings that are alleged to have been copied. Google's logo allegedly incorporated images from Miro's “The Escape Ladder,'' 1940, “Nocture,'' 1940, and “The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers,'' 1941.

I don't see it. I don't think most people would either. Their logo doesn't appear to be derivative, nor does it appear to overtly include any recognizable elements of the three paintings. Something similar to the eyeball in the logo appears as one of many eyeballs in the third painting.

I'm shocked that you didn't know about Miro. Google "Twittering Machine".

I disagree with you on the Fair Use notion. I am not a lawyer either–but I am an artist and I did teach a University class in copyright law in the arts.

What Google did is the creation of a "Derivative Work". Copyright protects the notion is that artists have the right to control the use of their work. Derivative work is covered under the Artist's copyright. Fair Use assumes that there will not be mass delivery of that has the potential to harm the artist (or estate's) ability to enjoy the benefits of creation (selling work). Google DID stand to gain by use of Miro's work through secondary advertising revenue.

Google's use of Miro's imagery clearly did not fall under the umbrella of Fair Use because of its mass circulation of the work and the possiblity of monetary gain from that circulation.

I don't like the MPAA or RIAA attack on fair use (I should be able to make a legal copy of a movie I bought as a back up. I should be able to listen to music I bought legally from my iPod or on my stereo in the CD player). But I shouldn't be allowed to share that music with thousands of others. I shouldn't even be allowed to share PART of that music with thousands of others without permission. The same goes for art work. If they had created their own unique Miro-like images instead of using pieces of existing work, they would have been fine.

Google should have requested permission from Miro's estate. They probably would have recieved it.

And yes, I agree that creating a corporate logo out of someone's art would be bad behaviour. My view of this instance in which the modified Google logo was used for one day of the year to celebrate the artists birthday is that it's more like an individual creating a personally relevant greeting card for an admired person than a corporate rip-off of copyrighted material. Whew… how's that for run-on sentence?

Honestly though, the case is weak anyway. I am not a lawyer either, but you can't copyright an idea or a style. It has to be something in a fixed medium. They weren't trying to pretend that Miro painted the logo, kind of hard sine Miro died in '83, nor were they indicating a relationship that didn't exist. I don't see much grounds for copyright, trademark or any other kind of infringement.

Certainly though, any potential case is overshadowed by the benefit it could do to the Miro name.

It's just a case of a rights clearinghouse earning their keep by sabotaging the artists they are supposed to represent. It's a bad move for everyone.