At 05:05 PM 12/6/96 EST, David Haberstich <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I am certainly an advocate of photographers' rights, but frankly some
>of them take the copyright issue to unreasonable extremes. A museum has
>every right to be in full control of images of its objects and an
>outside photographer, quite frankly, has no business owning rights for
>work commissioned by the museum.

Readers of the above should be aware that museums do not always own the
rights to objects they possess.  Artists retain these rights for the
duration of copyright and may or may not transfer them to the museum that
owns their work.  They may transfer these rights exclusively or
non-exclusively, among many other options.

In addition, there is respected opinion that maintains that museums may not
even own the image rights to those objects in their collections that have
matured into the "public domain."  While some argue that the rights to
museum photographs of public domain objects are (initially) the property of
the museum and not themselves in the public domain, eventually such
photographs will be.

The rights museums do have are those associated by the singularity and
exclusivity of their objects.  They may restrict access to objects and
thereby control photography of them by unauthorized individuals; they may
license their own high-quality photographs to publishers and restrict the
publisher's rights to re-use the images.  In short many museums will find
themselves (if not now then soon) in competitive conflict with the public
domain.  Their advantage is locked in their ability to provide the highest
quality, the most authoritative, and the most accessible images available.
Even so, there will no doubt be a strong market for those images available
for anyone to take and use freely.

I refer readers interested in these questions to the upcoming issue of
VISUAL RESOURCES which is dedicated to questions of copyright in images.
Further information may be had at the following URL:

        http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/vrcfu.htm

Readers of this post may find especially interesting the following two
articles:

Stephen E. Weil: Fair Use/Museum Use: How Close is the Overlap?
Peter Walsh: Art Museums and Copyright: A Hidden Dilemma.

Anyone wishing to receive further information about this publication may
write to me and request to be placed on the announcement distribution list.




================================================
Robert A. Baron
Guest Editor, Visual Resources
(Copyright and Fair Use: The Great Image Debate)
P.O. Box 93, Larchmont, N.Y. 10538
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================================================