Museum Guys,

While I normally agree with Dave 100%, I think the following statement might need a little more research.

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What museums do control is access to the original photos. It has been a common practice amomg museums to copyright the photos they take of objects, art, photos, etc. that are in the public domain. So, as long as the museum is using their own photos of the historic photos, then they have copyright to the new images but not the old ones.
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I believe that U.S. courts have finally held that 'standard' photographic copies of 2-dimential public domain works cannot be copyrighted by the photographer. An institution (or individual for that matter) that owns a public domain work can, of course, place any restrictions it wants on photo reproductions of that work that it supplies to a client. But if it allows visitors to make photographs in the gallery or puts scans up on the Internet, it cannot dictate how such copies can be used. 

Happy trials, David

David Haynes    [log in to unmask]    San Antonio

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