Brickbat: Strong Property Rights
A federal judge in Brooklyn has awarded $6.7 million to graffiti artists whose work was destroyed when the owner of dilapidated warehouses they had painted in Queens, New York, tore the buildings down. The judge ruled Jerry Wolkoff, owner of the buildings, violated a federal law giving artists rights to their work, even when someone else owns the physical work, or in this case, the buildings the work was painted on. Wolkoff allowed the artists to paint the buildings but said they always understood he would tear the buildings down.
