mike,
the problem with your experimental design is that
all "museum images" are not created equal. a
small number of iconic objects have a value that
derives from the recognition factor (and since
people ask for what they know, these are the
works that are often re-published and
re-reproduced.) but it's a very small number.
when we did studies of the content of
introductory art texts, in the context of AMICO,
we found a surprisingly small art history
'cannon'; the same works in most of the text
books. others are entirely fungible, and one can
substitute for another of the same class.
museum images [and that's a misnomer, because
there is a huge variation between a reproduction
of an antony gormley, the landing at dieppe, a
vacuum tube, and a pot shard] have very different
values in different contexts. and museums have
different goals in reaching different audiences.
which is why the V&A, and The Metropolitan Museum
of Art have developed specific licenses and fee
structures for educational use.
i think the framework provided by CC-plus
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCPlus would give
the sector a chance to balance often conflicting
mandates. With a bit of co-ordination, we could
find some common terms that could extend the cc
licenses in ways that many museums felt
comfortable with, and satisfy the requirement not
to give away the farm.
/jt
At 5:30 PM +0100 4/17/08, electronic museum 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. [Š]
>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. [Š]
>So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editionsŠ 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]
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>>
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>
>
>
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