Patrick Durusau wrote: > > Diane, > > I appreciate your thoughtful reply on the issue of scholarly quality > reproductions. It raises several issues that I did not address and points out > some ambiguity in my original post. > > On the issue of "obviously no commercial value" I must plead ambiguity in my > posting. What I intended was to say that the items in question would primarily > be of research interest to scholars and would not be reproduced by themselves > as a commercial product. Images of the tablets themselves lack the commercial > potential of Danielle Steele novels for example.
No, but the images can be used in a commercial product, such as "The History of Writing", "Life in Ancient Egypt" or some such entity. > Certainly images could be used in a way that "yields some money for some > entity > other than the museum or collection repository" but is the economic harm from > that severe enough to deny scholars easy access to such materials? Here I have another question, what's "easy access"? Some institutions, I know, are very restrictive. Mine isn't. If we own an object, and a professor/scholar wants to make a photograph for use in the classroom, we allow it, and do not charge (we will charge if we have to hire the photographer, which is the case with most of our requests). If we don't own the object, we'll check the deposit form for restrictions. If there aren't any, we allow it. *If there are restrictions, we must refuse*. If the item has a copyright issue from the artist, we must refuse, although sometimes we are licensed to make and sell copies of certain items. Economic harm is in the eye of the beholder. If the income stream from licensing and sales pays for a part time assistant, and the income stream dries up because the images that used to be sold are now available on the internet and elsewhere, that part time assistant now doesn't have a job. That person would find the economic harm very severe indeed. re: copyright > The cases I had in mind were ones where the maker of the photographs or > digital > images were willing to make the materials available but for restrictions > imposed by the holders. You raise an important point but I think most scholars > would prefer to accomodate their colleagues rather than claim copyright on an > image (assuming the source is properly attributed). (Note the last statement > is > personal opinion and there may be scholars who would claim copyright on > images, > with or without attribution in future use.) There are; I've met them. They are very nice people, not evil, not selfish. But they hold they have rights to income from a photograph, just as the author of a book or article has rights. And they're right, IMHO. Julie Beamer Database Manager and Web Administrator Virginia Historical Society (804) 342-9646 email: jbea...@vahistorical.org web: www.vahistorical.org
