It is too bad that this dialogue has led to John C. throwing up his hands in dismay and removing his website, saying that we have taken all the fun out of it. As a historian and museum curator, I know how hard it can be to follow these rules, but the final product is well worth the effort.
Many people are truly in the dark about the use of images of objects owned by others. They deserve our patience and guidance. Copyright issues are just one piece of the situation. Sometimes the owner of an object may be a "private collector" or institution that would rather not publicize his/her/its ownership for privacy or security reasons, although they may be willing to have the image published. (This came up for discussion by the NASS board when it created the sundial register on its website. It was decided that one could not post the location or image of a privately held sundial--particularly an antique garden instrument--without the owner's permission.) Other times, the owners just want to make sure the use is appropriate, and not, say, commercial or perverse.
John P's thoughtful message shows another area of confusion: At 01:49 AM 11/2/2006, John Pickard wrote:
If you want a nightmare of copyright and IP on images and other material, try some of the public libraries who have copies of old photos. I have seen the identical photo taken in 1910 in five different libraries, and each library is claiming copyright in the photo. What a load of bull! They may own the physical print, but they sure don't own the copyright!
Historical materials may be protected by the estate of the original creator, but more often they are under the jurisdiction of the present institutional owner. This is true even in the cases where multiples were produced or printed, as in say early books, prints, maps, photos, and illustrations. In such situations, the text or graphic is not copyrighted if it exceeds a certain age, but the image of a particular object embodying that text or illustration is copyright protected by the owner of the book, map, photo, etc. So, I can publish the words of a Shakespeare sonnet that I copied from a 17th century volume, assuming that the very same words and orthography appear in other extant copies of the volume. But I cannot reproduce an image of the page without the permission of the library or person that owns the particular volume that I consulted. That page is one of a kind, with its blemishes, annotations, and provenance.
Happy research and dialling! Sara Sara Schechner, Ph.D. David P. Wheatland Curator Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments Department of the History of Science Harvard University, Science Center 251c Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617-496-9542 Fax: 617-496-5932 --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
