Imagine you own a modest house in the countryside. You go there with your family on the weekends, fleeing the noisy and congested atmosphere of the city. Your husband and you are still paying back the mortgage you took a few years ago to purchase the house, working hard to make ends meet.

Now imagine that one day you find that the facade of your beautiful dwelling has been graffitied by a renowned artist whose paintings are considered art treasures by experts. Because it's your property, you don't hesitate for a second and immediately start cleaning the front of your house. A few days later, you find out you have been sued for breaking a law that protects public art of "recognized stature." You are finally condemned to pay a large fine to the artist for erasing his work of art.

If you are thinking this could never happen in the U.S., where private property rights are allegedly protected by the Fifth Amendment, you are wrong. Last week the New York Times reported that a real estate developer had been condemned to pay $6.7M for whitewashing, back in 2013, dozens of artistic murals on the walls of his buildings. Apparently, some of these murals were under the protection of the Visual Artists Rights Act for their "recognized artistic stature."