On 4/11/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
According to a number of librarians I've spoken with, a number of US Museums and libraries would differ with you on that. They believe that if they own the original work, unless they license copies, all images of that work belong to them. They could very well be wrong, but that's what they think, and would probably eventually be willing to test in court. For a lot of items they'll severely restrict access, just so that this sort of thing won't happen, and if the precedent is upheld, this is likely only to get worse. It's unclear to me whether we should use this case as a precedent, although it's clear that both Wikipedia and the Commons does. </armchair lawyering> Makemi
Well of course they would differ on that. They see revenue going out the window as they tried in vain to claim active authorship rights on something that was made two hundred years ago. The only claims I have seen against the reasoning in Bridgeman and Feist are along the lines of "but we'd like the money" and "it takes effort/resources to make this product." Those are realistic economic considerations for a business but it is a sort of argumentation which should have nothing to do with copyright law -- it is the sort of argumentation which leads you down the horrible legislative paths like the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act ("We'd like it extended because it's worth money, so fuck the principles"). Fortunately librarians and archivists are not as potent a constituency as the music industry, or else Congress would probably get involved. I have very little tolerance for archivists who think that ownership is the same thing as authorship, and do not care that copyrights are supposed to be LIMITED monopolies on culture.
The long-term effects of Bridgeman v. Corel -- which I don't think anybody is predicting a swift overturning of -- are worth contemplating but are really beyond our personal control. Whether it will result in restriction of access (for the purpose of preserving IP without resorting to IP law) is a possibility, but just one of many. There are other ways to make revenue besides trying to misuse copyright law, thank goodness.
Since Bridgeman v. Corel currently IS the law (whether the archivists like it or not) and has BEEN the law for the past six years, I think we shouldn't be too worried about using it. In any event, if something horrible happened which changed the legal situation we can always go back over the images tagged as such and delete them.
FF