Copyright issues

[Frederick W. Schueler]

Stinger wrote:
>
> 1. Copyrightable works on or in media must be just that.  Sec. 101 of
> the US Code Title 17 is clear on what "works" are protected and goes on
> to explain what they are in great detail - herbarium specimens clearly
> don't come under this definition.  If a US museum wants to protect the
> use of actual specimens, then maybe they must patent them.  The
> specimens cannot reasonably be considered under copyright law
> because they are specimens, not works, especially work on or in media.
> Thus you can't file for copyright on specimens.

* this brings up a point in this whole discussion. To generalize
broadly, the law, of which copyright is a subcategory, works by means of
litigation, a kind of combat which assumes individuals have divergent
goals. A museum administration can make any unreasonable claim they want
about 'ownership' of data, or of images, or of images of data, or figures
derived from images of data, or anything, but the only test of the
legality of these claims is litigation.

Scholarship on the other hand, maintains order through shame, assuming
that all participants have a common goal, and will be embarassed by
failing to give their colleagues their due, partly because of fear of the
drubbing they'll take in the review proess, and partly the fear that
they'll be the one neglected next time.

If we want to go even deeper into these murky waters, there's nothing
like a shame-based system of exchange to make a combat-based system
angry and guilty: look at how governments reacted to potlaches along the
Pacific coast. So one wonders if this "intellectual property rights"
thing is just an attempt to supress the culture of scholarship.

fred.
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         Eastern    Ontario    Biodiversity    Museum
                Grenville Co, Ontario, Canada
(RR#2 Oxford Station, K0G 1T0) (613)258-3107   bckcdb at istar.ca
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