Digital Rights advocate and protector of all things awesome Lawrence Lessig was happily surprised to find that the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts are actually supporting the visual arts, rather than taking a nod from ostensibly art-interested businesses and going lawsuit crazy.

Lessig reports in an article on the Wired News site that, like us, he just naturally expected these financial heirs to the wild, wacky world of Warhol to dig their heels in and start peppering the world with cease and desists like confetti when it comes to people using bits and pieces of Warhol's work. He writes:

I've grown so cynical about these copyright and culture debates that I wouldn't have thought an organization in the Warhol Foundation's position would even ask such questions. Of course it would exercise its right to maximize control. Rabid intellectual property protectionism - IP extremism - is so rampant that if the foundation demanded that future Warhols pay for permission to build on Warhol's art, most people wouldn't even notice the hypocrisy.

The hypocrisy would, of course, be blaring - seeing as Warhol's paintings were often artistic representations and interpretations born from cultural emblems held under copyright. It would have been the perfect thing for me to complain about - but the Warhol Foundation seem to be on the side of the good guys. Lessig continues:

The Warhol Foundation is "vigorous in enforcing our rights when it comes to people wanting to use Warhol's art for commercial purposes," Wachs said. But when it comes to artists and scholars, the rules are very different. "We permit artists to use and reference Warhol work without charge and without challenge." And "we let scholars use Warhol imagery for just a nominal fee to cover the cost of administering the rights." Wachs told me later, "We're Lessig when it comes to artists and scholars" and "Disney when it comes to commercial use."

So if you want to create a derivative work of a Warhol piece, fear not, unlike a lot of businesses who I shan't name now but who have come up previously in the blog, the Warhol Foundation are not dangerous jerks.