Canada Artist Copyrights His Land to Stop Oil Companies

"Artist Peter von Tiesenhausen puts his imagination to work overtime when oil companies try to enter his northwestern Albert sanctuary...

...Von Tiesenhausen has kept wells, compressors and pipelines off the three square kilometres of fields and trees--a notable feat for his location that has attracted quiet visits from pillars of corporate Alberta...

...The spread von Tiesenhausen inherited from his parents, a former family farm 80 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, sits atop a natural gas hot spot known as the 'deep basin.'  Industry has been in aggressive growth mode in the area since Calgarian Jim Gray...discovered rich geological formations in the early 1970s...

...The artist's peaceful method of fending off gas production is a basic right as well established in his field--copyright--as the legal underpinnings of Alberta's energy industry.

He accepts that he only owns the surface of his land.  The buried treasure belongs to the provincial government.  It has rights to sell the resources and make him let companies onto his property to extract them, so long as hie is compensated for the disturbance...

...Around his home and studio, his property is studded with artwork such as a-metre-long ship sculpted with willow stalks, winter ice forms, nest-like structures in trees, statuesque towers and a 'lifeline' or visual autobiography composed as a white picket fence built in annual sections left to weather naturally.

His legal move vastly increased the amount of compensation he is potentially entitled to demand from any oil or pipeline company wanting access to his place, because changing his property would be copyright infringement.

'Now instead of maybe $200 a year for crop losses, we'd have to be paid for maybe $600,000 or more in artistic property disturbance.'

Lawsuits have been threatened several times.  But no oil and gas companies have risked a winner-take-all court case that would attract public attention and start other landowners thinking...

...Von Tiesenhausen emphasizes his message in the language of corporations--money.  Taking a page from the books of business consultants, he demands $500 an hour from companies that want to take up his time talking to him about his land.  'I demand $500 an hour.  They pay.  It keeps the meetings really short and they don't do it nearly as often as they used to,' the artist said."

eye'm thynkin':  I really hope he continues to prevail.  It's a brilliant and beautiful idea.

Read more at Canada.com