Anna,

Copyright belongs to the creator, not the person who owns the physical reel of film. Whoever shot the film created it. So, unless all rights were legally transferred to your museum in a contract you do not  own the copyright. If you own a sculpture by Calder doesn't mean you own the copyright to it. Depending on the date of when the footage was shot, it may be under public domain. Usually you can assume anything created before 1923 is now under public domain. For more info you should read the US copyright office faq.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Senior Conservator & Museum Consultant
Los Angeles CA. USA
Www.cityofangelsconservation.weebly.com





Sent from my NEC TERRAIN™, a 4G LTE smartphone from AT&T

Anna Rosenbluth <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>My museum has been digitzing some 16mm film we have in the collection,  and we are interested in posting the footage online so members of the community can enjoy the old footage and possibly help us identify some of the people featured.  My concern is that, due to city restrictions,  we can only post video to our website using youtube and I am unsure what that means for managing copyright.  If the footage is online,  especially on YouTube, then it would be easy to steal for alternative uses. 
>Is there any advice/opinions on posting videos to YouTube or online in general?
>
>Thanks!
>
>-Anna
>Museum collections specialist
>Campbell Historical Museum and Ainsley House
>[log in to unmask]
>
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