On 21 Apr 2008, at 11:47, Naomi Korn wrote:
> Hi Mick
>
> I am afraid that I just don't agree with your points below. Whilst
> *WE* may
> want *OUR* stuff to be used by others freely, the bottom line is
> that often
> we don't just don't own the rights to be able to allow this to happen.
> Indeed, whether we are subject to third party licensing agreements,
> contracts with funding bodies or just opening ourselves up to legal
> uncertainty, ultimately, it boils down to taking proportionate and
> informed
> risks -risks concerning access that we may permit to others stuff.
I have a specific circumstance that I'd like to examine; when we
built the software for www.torbytes.co.uk we included a lot of IPR
status handling code, to ensure that anything that was not clearly
*usable* was not allowed to be published to the web.
Obviously we have this in our current software too but we also have a
collections management software system that allows unlimited images
per object and many of these are digital photographs of physical
objects created by the museum for identification purposes. These
digital assets would be of great interest to a wider audience and so
we're looking at how best to make them available on the web.
Would I be right in assuming that any such images belong to the museum
and they can set whatever licence they want when the thumbnail/
surrogate images are published? My concerns lie, obviously, in the
grey areas: I'm assuming that where the original object is not a
physical 3D object , like a painting, or publication, that the
original copyright licence might apply and hence IPR needs to be
established? How strictly is this adhered to? i.e. where would one
stand with a digital photograph of several paintings hanging on a wall?
What about a scan of an extract from a historical publication?
Which leads me to my big question:
Is there a definitive best practice resource anywhere on-line for
"collections on the Web" ?
I find lots of little bits here and there and have my own views
obviously, I was wondering (but been too busy to be really thorough
with my research) if such a thing existed.
FWIW, my contribution to the should we shouldn't we debate (for things
we actually own, of course):
If the industry would only realise that appetites, once whetted, will
only be satiated by the real thing, there'd be a lot more “look at
what we've got thumbnails” being displayed freely and a lot more
live visitors coming to see the real thing.
;o)
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