A few quick distinctions to make.
There are at least 3 types of images museums have:
1) scans of artworks/photographs, where the original's copyright has
expired (ie is Public Domain)
2) images where the museum owns the copyright (either through taking
the photo, or through assignment of all rights)
3) images, or scans of images, where a third-party
(artist/photographer) owns the copyright.
(there's also the grey area of 'no known copyright restrictions', but
lets ignore that for now.
There are also a few different freedoms that a museum can grant:
1) freedom to view online, on our websites, plus by extension to
download for personal use.
2) freedom to republish or redistribute (eg put on your blog/website,
or print in a book).
3) freedom to make derivative works (to parody, to draw moustaches, or
to make photoshop 2 images together)
4) freedom to make money from doing 2) or 3).
From my perspective (and of Michael Gueist's), you should certainly be
able to have all 4 freedoms with public domain works (type 1). In
fact, it's impossible not to, other than by misleading people or by
making the images physically inaccessible. These are the kinds of
images that Flickr Commons is all about.
With type 2 works, where we own the copyright, there's no legal
obligation to grant any of the freedoms, but there's a moral argument
that we should be, for the public good, and also a possible
practical/business one - granting the freedoms may generate more
interest, and revenue (in print sales, exhibition tickets, etc) down
the line.
For type 3 works, things are a little more complicated, but we can
still try and make the case to the rights holders that they'd benefit
from making their works freer, in at least some of the above ways.
Cheers,
Frankie
(a slightly younger hippy and open source geek)
On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 5:30 PM, electronic museum
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> All
>
> I think this is a really interesting thread.
>
> Understanding what value can be had from exposure is obviously key. There's
> lots of evidence out there that getting more eyeballs to your
> stuff (and accepting that some "stealing" will take place) is a much better
> business model than hiding your assets away and people simply not getting to
> it at all.
>
> The evidence often clusters around PDFs downloads: see
> http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/ where
> Paulo Coelho, author of "The Alchemist" says this:
>
> "In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from
> zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. […]
> I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of
> reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. […]
> So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a
> site called The Pirate Coelho."
>
> With the demise of music DRM apparently on the horizon, it's a hot topic
> with the major music labels, too. Ian Rogers from Yahoo! wrote a fantastic
> post with slides entitled "Losers wish for scarcity. Winners leverage
> scale". I've written about this on my blog:
> http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2008/01/14/scarcity-vs-scale/ ...
>
> What would be fantastic (if unlikely) would be if a museum or gallery agreed
> to take part in a quantitative study: take one selection of images and hide
> them away behind watermarking, DRM and thumbnails; take another and make
> these widely and hugely available via Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, blogging,
> etc. Offer both sets for purchase in hi-res, then sit back and measure over
> a period of time. Common sense says that people will steal all the small
> ones and not bother buying: increasing bodies of evidence show the opposite
> is actually true.
>
> I'd personally argue that once stuff is on the web, it's being "stolen"
> anyway, so we can fight this or go with it and do what we can to encourage
> sales off the back of the "scale". But I don't run a picture library so I'm
> more than ready to put my neck on the line
>
> So. Any museums going to step up to the "make it free" challenge? :-)
>
> ta
>
> Mike
>
> ________________________________________________
>
> electronic museum
>
> ..thoughts on museums, the social web, innovation
>
> w: http://www.electronicmuseum.org.uk
> f: http://electronicmuseum.wordpress.com/feed
> e: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Ridge, Mia <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Frankie Roberto wrote:
> >
> > > At the conference there did seem to be a vague consensus that we
> > > should be moving towards giving access to these images (the public
> > > domain ones at the very least) away though - especially with the
> > > general buzz around Flickr Commons.
> > >
> > > Does anyone have any thoughts about this? And what are the
> > > barriers we need to overcome?
> >
> > I think we gain more than we lose when we provide access to our images,
> > but then I'm an old hippie and open source geek.
> >
> > I think we need to show that it's going to benefit our audiences and our
> > institutions; and particularly that it's not going to lose money for our
> > institutions.
> >
> > I'd love to see the figures for total expenditure on commercial image
> > licensing and print services versus total income - do these services
> > currently make a profit, and would that profit be enhanced by increased
> > exposure and 'discoverability' or would that profit be dented if people
> > no longer feel the need to pay for images? Do our museums even know if
> > their image services are truly profitable, and if so does anyone want to
> > volunteer their data?
> >
> > Someone's just started a discussion on the MCN list (http://www.mcn.edu)
> > with the subject 'Monetizing museum web sites' and that thread might
> > also throw up some useful suggestions.
> >
> > cheers, Mia
> >
> >
> > Mia Ridge
> > Database Developer, Museum Systems Team
> > Museum of London Group
> > 46 Eagle Wharf Road
> > London. N1 7ED
> > Tel: 020 7410 2205 / 020 7814 5723
> > Fax: 020 7600 1058
> > Email: [log in to unmask]
> > www.museumoflondon.org.uk
> > Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while
> > they undergo a major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk to
> > find out more.
> > London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city we
> > see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning
> > Before printing, please think about the environment
> >
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>
>
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>
>
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