Geeklawyer, a UK IP Barrister, blogs about the coming "resale right" in the UK, which entitles artists to a cut of the proceeds of sales of their work — e.g., if I sell you a painting and you sell it to someone else in 50 years, I get a cut of it. As I've blogged before, the market in used goods is well-understood to drive up the price of new goods (would you spend as much on a new car if you didn't think you could sell it used, or if you believed that you'd have to cut the manufacturer in for a piece of the action when you did?). London and Amsterdam are the European capitals for art-sales, precisely because they don't have this right — when the UK enacts this right, it will merely shift that market to New York, thus depriving UK artists of any remedy under UK law for sales of their works.
It's said that it will protect the vulnerable young artist from predatory collectors, galleries and patrons. It won't. It won't always protect him from abusive patrons, since the right only applies to dealings other than between private individuals. If the collector sells to anyone other than a business, or as an act of business, then he won't be liable to pay the royalty.
Indeed it might even make the position of the vulnerable artist worse. When negotiating the price the buyer may say that since he will have to pay a resale royalty he must pay a lower initial price as compensation for this extra burden.
Lastly the protection will be trivial to circumvent, it only applies to art businesses in the UK. All you'd need to do to avoid the charge is assign the ownership of the painting, for a nominal consideration, to a non-EU company and have them sell it at Sotheby's in New York. Or you could sell it to a confederate at less than the 3000 Euro limit, which would avoid the provision, have them sell it for you. This works because there are no provision as to resale at a deliberate undervalue, or much other anti-circumvention language.
