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" <rjur...@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 > > LACMA's Magritte exhibit: This is not fair use > http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/21/lacmas_magritte_exhi.html > > Anyone from LACMA have a comment? > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l >
