copyright issues

[Tom Parker]

Thu, 15 Jul 1999 11:27:32 -0700
 From:
 Tom Parker <tparker at lacsd.org>
Organization:LACSD
         To: Denis Brothers <brothers at zoology.unp.ac.za>
 References: 1


Denis Brothers wrote:
>
> To my mind there seems to have been some confusion about what is
> actually involved in this copyright of images business. As I understood
> the original message, it was that the Natural History Museum (perhaps
> amongst others) claims copyright on any image of one of "their" type
> specimens no matter who took the photograph. That seems to me to be
> stretching the concept a bit far! Surely, if I have photographed their
> specimen with the knowledge (or even the explicit permission) of the
> curator responsible, I should be able to use MY photograph as I need to
> - it's not THEIR photograph!
>
>
Greetings:

I'm not sure of the laws that govern your country or the international
laws that over-arch these issues....but in the U.S. if I purchase a book
that is copyrighted, own it outright and can do anything with it
(include burn in up), but instead I xerox multiple copies of passages
from the book and distriubte these to friends and co-workers, I have
then violated the copyright license of the book I own.

I know that some museums are private, some are public and therefore may
have different copyright authority.  Many technical documents have
expired copyrights and for things like papers from the Smithsonian
Institution these are often fundamentally free of copyright license.

I suspect that if I took some stunning photos of specimens from a
museum  collection (with their permission) and later re-used those
photos to make a spectacularly lucrative t shirt or greeting card
business...the museum might consider that my economic use of these
images should have included at least a payment of copyright license
fees.  If business use is good for the end user...shouldn't the
copyright holder be allowed enforcement of their own business rights?

bye for now

Tom Parker
<tparker at lacsd.org>