Talk:Altered book

Sounds more like vandalism to me than art. A book is a work of art in its own right. For someone else to modify it without the consent of the writers, illustrators and photographers seems to be a very rude and arrogant act! Why don't we just paint a moustache on the Mona Lisa? 209.209.223.98 22:24, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It's a similar idea to scrap booking, except instead of starting with an empty book of blank pages, you use a normal book. It also allows for 3d objects to be added by opening more space through the ripping or cutting of pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.28.221 (talk) 23:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I fully understand the point against this art form, and as a writer/book lover I at first cringed at the idea of a book being so destroyed. I realized, however, that a book is nothing compared to the words within it. A book is binding, paper, ink, almost nothing in literary value. Print is not the art of a bookwriter, words are. A book has no value compared to the idea the words possess, and as long as those words exist in some form they too have value. If someone made such an art with the last copy in the world of a given book, that would be inarguably bad,, but with the technologies we've developed and our means of communication, knowledge has become essentially immortal. To return to the Mona Lisa example, drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa would be atrocious. Drawing a mustache on a copy of the Mona Lisa is harmless, because as long as copies exist, nothing is truly being destroyed. Quasnoflaut (talk) 17:51, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Idea to Expand Article with Examples
Would it benefit this article to start a list of artists creating altered books? E.g., Brian Dettmer. For other examples, see also the book New Directions in Altered Books by Gabe Cyr. Klyber (talk) 21:20, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

What copyright issue?
Altered books shouldn't face a copyright issue so long as they aren't reproduced. As the name suggests, copyright controls if you can copy a work. Altered books take legal copies and change them, but they don't reproduce anything. The publisher legally sold it to you, so you cannot make a copy of it in whole or part, but other than that they have no legal claim to whatever else you do with it. 66.41.66.213 (talk) 18:26, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that an altered book would most likely be a deemed a "derivative work" of the original book. Under copyright law (17 USC 106), the copyright owner has the exclusive right to "make" a derivative work, which does not necessarily require that a copy be made.  Moreover, if one wanted to photograph or otherwise reproduce the altered book, the reproduction right is also implicated.  So, yes, there are copyright issues.  (You may enjoy reading this page: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/claw/lhooq0.htm, which references Duchamp's mustache on the Mona Lisa, as suggested above).  Klyber (talk) 00:56, 17 December 2007 (UTC)