>
> Hi Sarena
>
> I'd be very wary of signing away all rights 'in perpetuity'. My
> concern, speaking from experience, is that you have no way of
> knowing how popular or commercially orientated your images might
> become in the next year, next decade or even beyond that!

Added to which, it can be hard to control the copyright use of something
that has had it's copyright expired (now public domain).

I license my own work on a regular basis and spend a lot of time with
copyright/usage/licensing. I also work in the archives world dealing with
photograph usage. I'd say the following.

First, as the owner (or at least controller) of the usage of these items
it's you that sets what the usage is - both it's scope and it's cost - not
the other way around.

Secondly, I'm presuming you have a basic standard usage agreement? XYZ use
for ABC period of time or uses for $$$? Bear in mind that in the commercial
realm the more usage the bigger the bucks - that is one time print use in a
magazine or report is say $120.00. Use for "all media, worldwide in
perpetuity...." is $5,000.00 per item (purely hypothetical figures, but you
get my drift). The difficulty with institutions is they are often bound by
"not for profit" regulations, or political decisions that usage fees are
merely for cost recovery of administration etc. But what is happening here
is what's called a "rights grab" i.e. trying to get something of value for
little or nothing.... In many cases it is worth setting two completely
separate usage policies - one for non-commercial use (researchers,
educational, families etc) and one for commercial use.

My feeling would be - to stick to a variation of your basic agreement (even
if the usage fees are low) and say - this is how we license - first usage
for xyz period or whatever. If you need more later, come back to us. But
again, the problem with this is, if the works are Public Domain, you can't
enforce that under Copyright Law, only under contract law, if they ignore
it. And if your usage agreement is written in Copyright terms, it may be
useless as a contract... which brings me to:

Thirdly - in anything like this you really need to consult an Intellectual
Property lawyer - i.e. one who understand copyright and these kinds of
agreement. In the first instance, get them to help you set up clear usage
agreements and a coherent policy. But also, in the case of something
potentially major like this, you really need them involved in the process.

Copyright and usage is a complicated area of law - all the advice you get
from me or anyone else on this list may be fine, but it can also be
completely off target depending on your circumstances.

tim

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