Copyright issues

[Kent Perkins]

>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?

Curtis Clark wrote in response:
>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.

The issue here is not just monetary, it is control.  Do control issues
extend into copyright law if no monetary loss can be claimed?  Perhaps not,
but control might be maintained via a contract.  The arrangement mentioned
in Clark's 1st paragraph would seem reasonable and could be executed with a
contract.  This might allow a museum to keep a picture of a rare specimen
with its exact location from being published in a national newspaper. Of
course there is really nothing much to prevent someone from breaking a
contract.



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|Kent D. Perkins                  |Ph: 352-392-1767 /SUNCOM 622-1767 |
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