What will happen to the spirit of the internet when independent websites created by ardent fans and devoted to artists, musicians, authors and all noteworthy people of the past are no longer permitted? We will have a boring world wide web limited to the dry, predictable and totally one-sided viewpoint of those that represent any dead artist's estate. 
This is not a prediction, this has already begun to happen. We can understand heirs getting upset when the website defames the artist or when it is just set up to make a profit out of artistic property, but when it is a website of a laudatory or even objectively educational nature, what is the harm?

Basquiat.net was such a website.  Created by John Seed an Art Historian who teaches at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, basquiat.net was his practical response to students' complaints there was no educational website on this popular artist. Unlike many who create websites about famous artists,  Mr Seed actually knew Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) briefly before the artist died at the age of twenty-seven.
Basquiat.net was innocent enough, with the sole purpose of furthering Basquiat's already considerable fame by giving internet users a didactic and personalised presentation of his work. It was not a commercial website selling products related to Jean-Michel Basquiat's own image or images of his work.

Anyone visiting the site could not avoid seeing the following disclaimer :
 

"(Basquiat.net)  is meant to provide information, images, and insights to create a greater public appreciation and understanding of his life and work.  This site and its author have no connection to the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, his dealers, collectors, or family. The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat is represented by: The Tony Shafrazi Gallery Any images displayed on this site are for education only, and are displayed under the "fair use"; provisions of copyright law. The images may not be copied for any commercial use. For information about the lawful use and licensing of Basquiat images, please contact the Artist's Rights Society."

Inadvertently, the website worked as free advertising for Mr Shafrazi and his swish New York gallery. 
A letter threatening legal action from the Basquiat estate's Manhattan lawyer Mr Robert Cinque was the only thanks Mr Seed received and he was forced by this action to close down the website on 9th February 2000 thus depriving thousands of art students worldwide a valuable source of information on this much studied artist. 
Originally  Mr Seed had tried to contact the estate by directly writing to Gerard Basquiat, Jean's father, and by having Darla Decker of the Artist's Rights Society try to contact the estate.  "There was no response." said Mr Seed. "I knew and worked for Jean in 1983 and have some vivid memories of him. I created the website after having a small page about Basquiat on my personal homepage for a year, and getting a very strong response. A graduate student from Russia who is writing a Phd paper on Basquiat asked if I would be his thesis advisor, and said to me "You really should do a better website on Basquiat, so that people like me worldwide can have better information"

Whilst the Basquiat estate saw fit to allow a farcical commercial film (1995) on Jean-Michel's life to be made starring David Bowie as Andy Warhol and directed by the master of smashed plate painting, Julian Schnabel - it would seem an educational website did not fit into their plans for preserving the integrity of the artist's life and work, which surely must be their aim?