The issue is becoming complicated by business like google and microsoft that are buying the rights to so much information and planning to digitalize it all for rent by users. Some efforts should be made to stop a few profit-minded companies, who answer to no-one, from controlling the bulk of world heritage, images, information. The booming age of digital reproduction may kill off individual creativity and open access to information. WC
--- On Thu, 3/5/09, Michael Brady <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Michael Brady <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: High end amusement park > To: [email protected] > Date: Thursday, March 5, 2009, 11:25 AM > On Mar 2, 2009, at 10:31 AM, William Conger wrote: > > > Miller has a point with repect to his view that images > of artworks held by public collections should be available > free (I'd accept minimal cost). Museums do charge hefty > fees for reproduction rights. Authors who are writing > scholarly books -- with guaranteed low sales -- often need > to come up with the funds to provide illustrations, usually > of works held in public museums when their publishers refuse > to take on those production costs. > > > > However, I realize that some cavaets need to be > addressed. How and under what circumstances should free > images be provided? It's one thing for a scholar to have > free images to study, or even to reproduce with all proper > attributions, etc., but another to have someone > 'manipulate' the image for whatever reason, > including any commercial reason. Images that have entered > the public domain by whatever path, are frequently morphed > into commercial uses far from any art references. And of > course there's always the problem of faking works to > sell as the real thing. > > > Should the British Museum put a photograph of every broken > bit of the Elgin Marbles on the Web? How many views of each? > What about pottery sherds from the Kerameikos? every > fragment of a cuneiform tablet? Should the government of the > Netherlands post a photograph of every work of art it > subsidized (and took possession of)? > > Preparing them in a large database, then constructing a > database-driven web site, and having both the storage > capacity to hold all of them and the computer capacity to > handle the requests and manage the traffic, takes a lot of > work and money, and time. > > Should every item be openly on line? Or should the bits of > broken stone, rubble from excavations, etc. be available > only to members of the public on a separate site, perhaps > subscription- or fee-based? > > And this doesn't even get into the business of color > fidelity in the digital images. > > And how to protect images? Whew, there's a thorny > problem. To begin with, should all the images be > copy-prohibited (you can view them online, but you can't > download them)? Or just some of them? How can you protect > images, when ultimately, if the image cannot be downloaded, > the user can still make a screen snap of it and acquire it > that way. > > I think the museums are already doing a pretty yeomanly > job. I'm sure you're as familiar as I am with the > degree of interest a major university takes in getting as > much information as possible on line, from all kinds of > papers and documentation of every possible thing to pictures > of various museum collections. But frankly, it will take a > good long while to get all the images up there. A journey of > 1,000 miles begins with one step, as we all know, but you > haven't gotten to the end when you're at step 12,649 > (you've got, like, 993 miles left and your feet are > already getting sore). > > It'll take a while for any museum to get all of it (or > as much as is reasonably practical) on line. > > I find it very unthinking when someone (not you, btw) > asserts that it'll be a really good thing if a lot of > work got done, like putting the pictures on the web, and > *that someone else should do it, if they only weren't > so, well, venal*! > > > > > > | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | > Michael Brady > [email protected]
