Copyright issues

[Curtis Clark]

At 08:46 PM 7/14/99 -0700, Kipling Will wrote:
>1. Does a museum that claims copyrights to all images of its specimens
>*really* think it has a lean on all the images that have ever been
>produced? How do they plan on policing "misuse" of images?

I'm not an attorney (thank the gods), but from what I have read, if you
take a photo of an artwork in a museum, you can copyright the image, but
you cannot distribute it without the museum's permission, because it is a
derivative work (there are additional laws regarding photos of private
property, but I know nothing more about them). Likewise the museum has no
rights to your photo without your permission, because you have copyrighted
it.

To me the issue is that the museum in question has appropriated rights from
the collector that the collector may not have granted. It is a slippery
slope, leading inevitably to collectors preferentially depositing specimens
in those museums that have the most liberal licensing agreements.

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Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department             Voice: (909) 869-4062
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Pomona CA 91768-4032  USA                  jcclark at csupomona.edu