Press bemoan destruction of 'criminal' derivative art.

I find the press response to the "obliteration" of this Banksy work to be hugely encouraging. The removal of this work is a loss and I'm glad to see that the press are acknowledging that a technically illegal act has validity and worth.

The more Banksy becomes accepted as a valuable derivative artist, valuable enough to make people think twice about the criminality of vandalism, the more hope there is for other derivative works to gain acceptance and in turn for their criminality to be re-considered.

In many ways Banksy is an easy sell - it's art in a way that is an extension of many other well-regarded artists that came before. Mashups too are a natural extension of sampling and remixing. Machinima is trying a number of different angles, the one gaining the most mainstream acceptance being the use of computer game animation as the traditional animation with all the genres that implies. Derivative video works have a more problematic media tradition. The easiest sell at the moment is the video parody (trailer, political etc) which continues a strong tradition of spoofs in television and cinema. Re-narrativising through music videos, however, is more problematic. It's going to take longer to sell music video derivations to critics and the public as it doesn't naturally extend a kind of mass-consumed media - the similarities of derivative fan music videos to commerical music videos are few, despite attempts by studios to encourage this kind of user generated content.