copyright

[Anita F. Cholewa]

Friends,
It seems to me that there are two or three issues underlying the
copyright issue.
1. The objects being photographed cannot be copyrighted but
the artistic work using the object as subject can be.  So it is the
photographs or illustrations that are of concern here.  Now in nearly
all cases
museum specimens are being held partly for research purposes so
researchers
should have access and not be charged a fee.  Simple acknowledgement of
the
museum in any publication, report, etc. has often been sufficient in the
past to
maintain relations with the research community.  However, it is the user
who
profits from his/her use of museum specimens that is really of concern
...
2. Thus we come back to the often discussed issue of businesses and
government
agencies using museum specimens to profit without acknowledging the
museum in any substantial way.  Acknowledgement of course is important
when the govt agency gets funding but not the musuem.  (And I don't mean
to
open up that issue again).
3. But there is also the issue of natural history museums setting up
policies (legal
of course) that would control access to specimens with respect to
illustrating.  I
would think that if a museum has a policy that any kind of illustrating
needs to be
cleared with the musuem beforehand, then the museum could request some
kind
of "contract" that would deal with assignment of copyright of that
illustration/photo.
The museum in essence would be screening requests for using specimens
for
illustration purposes and I would guess that academics would largely be
unaffected
but other requests would undergo some perhaps formal consideration.  In
many
ways most museums already have some kind of informal means of deciding
who
has physical access to specimens.  This would be only an extention of
that.
4. However, I would like to hear from someone directly connected to
copyright laws.
Anita
--
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Anita F. Cholewa, Ph.D.            *       Visit our plant web pages:
Curator of Vascular Plants         *       biosci.cbs.umn.edu/herbarium/

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