I also saw that article and had some issue with it, too. I'm pretty pro-CC and free-use in most cases, but as Amalyah said, museums don't always (or usually) have the option to make everything fair-use. It's really out of our hands. And so I find it intensely frustrating that a lot of copyfighters insist on blaming the museum for copyright on artwork. It undermines public perception of the museum as a publicly-funded space, with numerous complaints by photographers about why a public institution doesn't allow the public to photograph within modern and contemporary art galleries.
Case in point: a couple of years ago I wrote a scathing letter in response to this blog post by a well-known photography blogger: http://thomashawk.com/2004/08/editorial-on-camera-policies-in.html He did respond to me, but was unwilling to accept my argument that SFMOMA had no copyright control over many of the images in their galleries. Honestly, I have to wonder if some sort of public education campaign is in order, as this sort of stuff makes us look bad. Ok, off my soapbox now... ~Perian Amalyah Keshet wrote: > Richard: > > At first glance, the article contains quite a few mistakes regarding legal > issues. > Example: "When we absolve curators of responsibility for defending our fair > use rights..." Well, we do NOT have a fair use right to photograph, without > the artist's permission, works protected by copyright -- wherever they are > displayed -- except for certain very limited purposes, and property, privacy, > and contract law may indeed preempt that. Only a court of law can determine > whether the purpose of the photography was fair use or not. (And it could be > argued that a curator's repsonsibility is to keep his or her museum away from > courts of law.) > > Yes, that's the problem with the fair use concept as currently expressed in > the US copyright code, but that's another article altogether -- one that > should be written by someone who does their legal research a lot better. > > While I sympathize with the fair use spirit of the article, one has to get > one's facts right in order to make a decent argument for ...anything. > > I'm off to London for a museums copyright conference at the National Gallery: > Connecting Culture and Commerce: Getting the Right Balance > http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/mcg2007/index.htm, organized by Simon Tanner and > Naomi Korn and sponsored by the Museums Copyright Group. I hope to meet MCN > IP colleages there -- yes? -- and I promise to report back to the MCN > constituency. > > Amalyah Keshet > Head of Image Resources & Copyright Management > The Israel Museum, Jerusalem akeshet at imj.org.il > Chair, MCN IP SIG www.mcn.edu > Blog www.musematic.net > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Richard Urban" <rjurban at uiuc.edu> > To: "Museum Computer Network Listserv" <mcn-l at mcn.edu> > Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 2:58 AM > Subject: [MCN-L] IP SIG: LACMA's Magritte exhibit: This is not fair use > >
