laws of the land regarding art......and property.....read on?

Question

let me put this propostion before you, and you tell me how the law would see the situation.
i make art but i want to create new ownership rules for my art to make it accessible to everyone.
to distinguish it from whats gone before, i give to all the future creations i wish to be governed by these new rules , the name "aat".

all works of aat will have imbedded in them some isotope or other identification feature that identifies them as aat and not art.

the rules[ i know there will be unexplained points and inconsistencies, but i dont wish you to examine them- they are just used to illustrate the gist of my idea]
so,
the rules: no work of aat has or can have at any future time a financial value.
anyone can request the tempory ownership of any piece of aat,
and upon request, the current owner must surrender possession to the new applicant, who may possess the art untill such time as thia piece of art is requested by someone else.

some form of administration would have to process applications.
now if i set up legally binding contractual regulations among a group of friends and one of us refused to surrender the work of aat [for the purposes of creating a test case]and was taken to court by the others, would the courts uphold my legally binding regulations, and set a precedent that something can be of common ownership, but have no price value put on it....
or would the courts try to assign ownership of it to to some individual or the group

THE MAIN QUESTIONS ARE:

CAN I DICTATE THE RULES GOVERNING THE POSSESSION OF SOMETHING I CREATED.

CAN THE LAW OF THE LAND OVER-RIDE WHAT I WANT TO HAPPEN TO SOMETHING I HAVE CREATED.

WOULD THERE BE ANY DIFFERENCE IF I WAS LIVING OR DEAD AS LONG AS MY INTENTIONS WERE MADE CLEAR WHILE STILL ALIVE?

Answer 1

>> CAN I DICTATE THE RULES GOVERNING THE POSSESSION OF SOMETHING I CREATED. <<

Yes, provided you continue to own it: That is you do not permanently give up the right to possess it to another; either by gift or by sale. Essentially you are entering into a contract with those whom you have allowed to temporarily possess your work of "aat."

>> CAN THE LAW OF THE LAND OVER-RIDE WHAT I WANT TO HAPPEN TO SOMETHING I HAVE CREATED. <<

Yes, but assuming you & your "aat" are in the US or any other non-communist western country, nothing you've suggested would violate any laws of ownership of personal property.

>> WOULD THERE BE ANY DIFFERENCE IF I WAS LIVING OR DEAD AS LONG AS MY INTENTIONS WERE MADE CLEAR WHILE STILL ALIVE? <<

Yes. In Common Law countries & most other civilized countries the intentions of the dead must have been expressed by them in writing either by creation of a trust or by a will, both of which involve various formalities to be effective. Failing that your intentions disappear at death & ownership of your property passes to your heirs or the beneficiaries of your will.

If you want your "aat" to be possessed in this serially collective manner you would have to establish a trust to own the piece and appoint a trustee to carry out your intentions. You will have to come up with some sort of funding if you want a trustee and successive trustees to expend the time & effort of administering this successive possession & to enforce the obligation to deliver it upon the inevitable possessor who doesn't cooperate.

Answer 2

Two aspects.

First, if you truly create something, then you have exclusive rights of ownership, with all that entails. As long as you own the property, you can do whatever you want with it. Your ownership only lasts for your lifetime, unless the property is transferred into a charitable trust, which would handle the administration concerns. But even then, you would still have issues with the rule against perpetuities and the charitable purposes hurdles. But let's assume that the trust will last at least for your lifetime, +X years.

The second issue is whether the usage by others is phrased as "temporary ownership" or a "license to use". If it is a license, then it remains owned by the trust, with beneficial ownership shifting according to the terms of the trust (the rules of transfer) specified.

If it is a temporary ownership, outside a trust, then you have a series of shifting and springing executory interests or powers of termination, each allow for the transfer to a new undefined later temporary owner. This runs into all sorts of rule against perpetuities problems, plus possible restraints on alienation, and is probably a very bad way to try to handle it.

The final snag is the "no financial value". That's not enforceable, because no court will require the value to be treated as zero. Property has an inherent financial value, based on market estimates. And that value may be affected by how you've structured the trust-license scheme and/or the future interests, but it would almost never be zero.