> There is one other problem with Helix, which should be a known problem for some
> time, which is its statement:
>
> Copyright in the images and textual information resides with the
> suppliers.
>
>
> Er, well, that may not be quite true. The copyright in the images, if by this
> is meant in the original photographs, resides in the 'author' of those
> photographs and unless that copyright has been explicitly transferred to the
> 'supplier' to Helix, then the supplier does not technically own the copyright
> -- well not in my understanding of the Copyright Act (which could be completely
> wrong).
Sorry to take so long to respond to this, but apparently this
situation is in process of changing. I append a short article from
Museogramme, July/Aug 99 (the newsletter of the Canadian Museums
Assn):
Bridgeman vs. Corel
The museum world was stunned over the implications of a recent US
court case involving The Bridgeman Art Library of England and
Canada's Corel Corp., wherein it was ruled that photographic
reproductions of artworks cannot be copyrighted. The English
company, which maintains a library of transparent colour
reproductions of works owned by museums around the world, claimed
that digital reproduction of paintings included in the "Masters
CD-ROM" produced by Corel Corp. must have been copied from its
transparencies - constituting a copyright infringement. On the issue
of copyrightability, the court ruled that only original works of art
can be copyrighted, and that "the originality requirement is not met
where the work in question 'is wholly copied from an existing work,
without any significant addition, alteration, transformation, or
combination with other material'." Thus, the Bridgeman
transparencies - "substantially exact reproductions of public domain
works, albeit in a different medium" - were not considered original
works of art, and the claims were dismissed. It is expected that
this decision will be appealed.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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