Dear Angela,

your mail is interesting in some ways. There are some legal components, there is 
a marketing component (by using eMail) and of course, a technical component. 
Since some days, it is forbidden in Germany to use eMail as an advertising 
medium. The same happened with telefax some years ago. In the following years, 
very often at night, we received cryptic faxes from the Netherlands offering a 
"Car radar warner" - which is interesting because radar warners are unlegal in 
Germany and advertising them by fax was also forbidden.
The reason for this legal position is, of course, consumer`s protection. Like 
anywhere in the world, there is an exemption: eMail- and fax-ads are allowed, if 
there is a prior contact between the advertiser and the recipient.

For us here in Germany it would be a great help to learn from you the name and 
address of this company. There are not so many firms in this business and some 
of them are known to museums as using "strange methods" selling their stuff. For 
example, there is one, which calls its sale rooms "Museum" and gets it paid by a 
city as a museum.

It would also be a good service to receive from you the original "Business 
proposal".

Best regards


Dr. Christian Müller-Straten
Editor MUSEUM AKTUELL


> I received an interesting "business proposal" today via
> e-mail (I also check the web site to see if it was as bad as
> it sounded). Parts of it strike me as being possibly
> illegal, or at least on very shaky ground. I was wondering
> what you all thought of it.
>
> The company, located in Germany, paints pictures, in oil,
> and sells them to individuals and businesses. Fine. They
> will take commissions. Fine.
> However, they will paint ANY picture. They specialize in
> reproductions. They claim that a "perfect reproduction is
> guaranteed," and can do Old Masters as well as contemporary
> modern art. This is the part that strikes me as not so fine.
> For the Old Masters I am not too worried if they are using
> modern paints and canvases since there is no longer any
> copyright on such paintings and even if they are as good as
> they claim, a simple check of materials would stop any
> passing off as originals. However, don't modern paintings
> still have a copyright? "A perfect reproduction" would be as
> much of a copy as a xerox is of a journal article. Much more
> work goes into the painting, but it is not intended to be a
> creative exercise or another artist's interpretation of a
> painting. This strikes me as being a possible source of
> modern forgeries as well.
>
>
>                                                 Angela
> Putney, Ph.D.
>                                                 Physics
> Management Fellow
>                                                 American
> Institute of Physics
>                                                 [log in to unmask]

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