Dear Colleagues,

This is a follow up / summary report of the discussion on artcom, which
my posting at this list on August 4th instigated.

Your responses have confirmed my observations. Artcom copies copyrighted

information and images off of museum websites and posts it at
http://www.artcom.com/ without giving credit to the respective
insitution or providing a link to their website. Then Mr Perez follows
up with an e-mail to as many staff members of the institution as he can
asking for corrections; one of them is bound to reply with an update,
and in this way, "sanctions" the initially illegal posting at artcom.
Since Mr Perez can not possibly keep up on the developments at the 1600
museums nationwide he claims to represent at his site, a lot of the
information posted is outdated. In many instances, even the names of
institutions are incorrect.

Mr Perez creates revenue through this enterprise by posting
advertisements on his site and selling a CD Rom of "his" information on
museums.

If you want to join me in investigating what our options are in
protecting our copyright, please forward this info to
colleagues in the field and help me create a powerful interest-group
representing our museum community. Mr Perez seems to think he can ignore

the voices of single individuals from single institutions; I doubt that
he can ignore us if we coordinate our efforts.

Please stay in touch, or if you are new to this issue, get in touch! You

will receive an automatically generated "out of office" reply when
responding to my uclink e-mail. I am checking my e-mail, however, and I
will
follow up on this issue from "out of the office."

Cordially,

Guenter Waibel
Digital Access Specialist / UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film
Archive [log in to unmask]
Webmaster / Oakland Museum of California [log in to unmask]

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