Rights and Reproductions

Policies in the Open Access AgePresented by Lily Cristina Troia,

MLS ‘16

Sarony, photographs, and originality

“We entertain no doubt that the constitution is broad enough to cover an act authorizing copyright of photographs, so far as they are representatives of original intellectual conceptions of the author.”

-- Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. V. Sarony (111 U.S. 53), 1884

All images public domain via Wikimedia

Copyright: US versus UK

Originality Standard

• Creative spark• Development of

creations• Creation for public good• More stringent

requirements, but deeper protections

• Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.

Skill and labor standard

• Sweat of the brow• Effort of creation• Protection of the

creator• More inclusive pool of

rights-holders, but less protective

• Sui generis database protection

Gift Shop Economics

And then there was Bridgeman

Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

• United States District Court of the Southern District of New York from 1999.

• Plaintiff image licensor Bridgeman Art Library sued Corel Corp., a Canadian publishing company, for producing and selling CD-ROM sets containing digital transparencies of public domain images held and licensed by Bridgeman.

• Court ruled that reproductions of works of art that lie in the public domain, despite requiring talent and effort to create, are not themselves sufficiently original to merit copyright protection.

Originality: authored works vs. slavish copies

Three determining criteria:

1. originality of rendition or production of the physical image (choice of lighting, exposure, filters, developing techniques);

2. originality of timing (choice of moment); and,

3. originality of composition (choice of staging, subject and arrangement of scene)

Pay no attention to the dog behind the curtain…

Open Access—Mission and vision

“We have lost almost all control, and this has been vital to our success.” – William Noel, former curator of manuscripts, Walters Art Museum

• A desire to enrich scholarship and encourage inquiry

• Promotion of materials and collections • Combat pervasive availability of low-quality images• Heighten public understanding and appreciation of

cultural heritage• Prevent discriminatory valuation of use

Examining two local archivesMassachusetts Historical

Society• Current policies do not claim

copyright, but do license the use of their digital reproductions.

• Economic realities of a small, independent institution.

• Fees range from $25-450/image, varying for non-profit vs. commercial, print-run, format/use.

• Revenues steadily decreasing each year, estimated to break even when balanced against staffing costs.

• Goal of lower expenses and minimizing barriers to purchase.

• Eventual elimination of licensing possible.

• Desire to make use less restrictive to scholars and researchers.

• Do not exert control over use of image, but desire attribution.

Schlesinger Library

• Fees revenue had topped at $2000 per year, seen as waste of staff time.

• Adding public domain images to Flickr Commons.

• Internal push by rights and reproductions department to eliminate licensing fees.

• Fee system was too arbitrary, subjective, not akin to vision for access and use.

• Copyright questions and confusion were overwhelming.

• Lots of orphan works, which publishers are often loathe to use.

• Control over use and manipulation not their domain, do desire attribution.

• Business of licensing felt incongruent to library mission.

ReferencesAllan, R. J. (2007). After Bridgeman: Copyright, Museums, and Public Domain Works of Art. University Of Pennsylvania Law Review, 155961. Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, (1886 September 9), as revised at Paris on July 24, 1971 and amended in 1979, S. Treaty Doc. No. 99-27 (1986). Bielstein, S. (2006). Permissions, A Survival Guide, Blunt Talk About Art as Intellectual Property. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999). Bridgeman Images Terms and Conditions. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/about-bridgeman/terms-and-conditions/ Browar, L., Henderson, C., & North, M. (2002). Licensing the Use of Special Collections Materials. RBM: A Journal Of Rare Books, Manuscripts, & Cultural Heritage, 3(2), 124-144. Brown, M. and Crews, K. (2010 January 20). Control of Museum Art Images: The Reach and Limits of Copyright and Licensing. Paper prepared for the Annual Congress of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property, Vilnius, Lithuania. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1542070 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1542070 Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. V. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884). Cameron, C. T. (2006). In defiance of Bridgeman: Claiming copyright in photographic reproductions of public domain works. Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal, 15, 31.

ReferencesCarmichael, T. (2006). Museums and intellectual property in the multimedia age. ICOM News, 3-4. Retrieved November 29, 2014, from International Council of Museums website: http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/ICOM_News/2006-2/ENG/p3_2006-2.pdf Copyright Act, Washington D.C., 4 Stat. 436 (1831). Copyright Law of the United States of America. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://copyright.gov/title17/92appk.html Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U. S. 340 (1991). Hall, N. (2009). Art museum images in scholarly publishing. In doi:15a4307e-f316-4330-a68a-

d3d7438440d9@1.4 Hamma, K. (2005, November). Public Domain Art in an Age of Easier Mechanical Reproducibility. D-Lib Magazine, 11(11), doi:1082-9873 Interlego A.G. v. Tyco Industries Inc. (1989 AC 217). Kelley, K. (2011). The Complications of Bridgeman and Copyright (Mis)use. Art Documentation: Bulletin Of The Art Libraries Society Of North America, 30(2), 38-42. Kelly, K. (2013, April 25). Images of Works of Art in Museum Collections: The Experience of Open Access (Study of 11 Museums). Retrieved from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation website: http://msc.mellon.org/research-reports/Open%20Access%20Report%2004%2025%2013-Final.pdf/view

 

ReferencesLibrary of Congress, Copyright Office. (1973). Copyright enactments laws passed in the united states since 1783 relating to copyright (Bulletin No.3 ). Retrieved on November 28, 2014, from Library of Congress website: http://copyright.gov/history/Copyright_Enactments_1783-1973.pdf

Locke v. Warner Bros., Inc. 57 Cal.App.4th 354, 66 Cal.Rptr.2d 921 (Ct. App. 1997). Maher, W. (2012). Copyright issues for US archivists. Art Libraries Journal, 37(2), 20-24.  Maron, N. (2011). V&A Images: Scaling Back to Refocus on Revenue. Retrieved from http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/portfolio-items/2011-update-v-a-images/ Museum of Fine Arts - Mission Statement. (n.d.). Retrieved November 27, 2014, from Museum of Fine Arts Boston website: http://www.mfa.org/about/mission-statement Museum of Fine Arts - Terms and Conditions. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://www.mfa.org/collections/mfa-images/terms-and-conditions Museums Copyright Group - Copyright in Photographs of Works of Art. (n.d.). Retrieved December 2, 2014, from http://museumscopyright.org.uk/resources/articles/bridgeman/ Petri, G. (2014). The public domain vs. the museum: The limits of copyright and reproductions of two-dimensional works of art. Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, 12(1), 8. Retrieved

November 26, 2014, from http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1021217

Rosati, E. (2014, July). Mobile Collections project: Exploitation of cultural content and licensing models [report]. Retrieved November 20, 2014, from Digital Humanities Network website:

http://www.digitalhumanities.cam.ac.uk/mobilecollection 

ReferencesStarr, B. (2012, September 12). Must You Pay to Use Photos of Public Domain Artworks? No, Says a Legal Expert. Retrieved November 29, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bernard-starr/museum-paintings-copyright_b_1867076.html

Tanner, S. (2004, August). Reproduction charging models & rights policy for digital images in American art museums [King's College London. King's Digital Consultancy Services Research Report]. Retrieved November 22, 2014, from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation website: http://msc.mellon.org/research- reports/Reproduction%20charging%20models%20and%20rights%20policy.pdf/view Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975).  Tuchman, M. (2001). Inauthentic works of art: why Bridgeman may ultimately be irrelevant to art museums. The Columbia - VLA Journal Of Law & The Arts, 24 (3). Tushnet, R. (2008, April 30). Bridgeman v. Corel, 9 years on. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://tushnet.blogspot.com/2008/04/bridgeman-v-corel-9-years-on.html U.S. Const., art. I, § 8, cl. 8. Wagner, G. (2008, June). Who Owns this Image? Art, Access and the Public Domain after Bridgeman v. Corel [Report of the General Counsel]. Retrieved November 18, 2014, from ARTstor website: http://www.artstor.org/news/n-pdf/who-owns-image.pdf Wojcik, M. C. (2008). The antithesis of originality: Bridgeman, image licensors, and the public domain. Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal (COMM-ENT), (2).