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Dear List I am with CARCC, CARFAC's copyright collective, and I am the one who suggested Kim write to the list. As Kim says, the present CARFAC fee schedule, that CARCC uses daily for its members' copyright licensing, and which is used as a reference by many out there in the arts community, doesn't adequately deal with web-based art. The problem here is not the sale of the work, nor the exhibition of the work, it is archiving. The pricing of works for sale is not CARCC's concern. We understand an exhibition of web-based works to be an exhibition like any other, and as such exhibition fees should be negotiated with the artists involved. Archiving is another matter. Yes, archiving is a service to the artist. It also benefits the institution that archives, and it is an educational service and a source of pleasure/interest etc. for the using public. It is these last that define the archive as copyrightable, something for which fees should be paid to the artist. The arrangement between the artist and the institution doing the archiving is one of a. permission to store and maintain the work; b. permission to provide public access to the work without the framework of an exhibition (that is, no interpretation, no advertising, no invitation to activity concerning the work, no publication, etc); c. the setting of conditions concerning what access is available to the user. For still images, CARCC asks the user (ie the person responsible for the website) to inform the public that the work is copyrighted, to provide only low-resolution images and so on - piracy protections). For an archived web-based work similar conditions might apply. d. setting limits on the duration of the licence. At CARCC we do not like endless licensing, but we know that it is desirable in some situations. I think that a proper fee structure can be developed. Recently someone suggested a model akin to that of the 'amateur porn pricing scheme' that Saul Albert mentioned. It really isn't a bad idea for an archive to base fees on the number of hits a piece receives. If the archive is to last for an indefinite period of time, it is impossible to say now what the presence of a piece might be worth. The number of hits is measureable, at least. The nature of an archive is to hold a large number of works - it would be impossible for projects like Kim's to pay fees at the level of exhibitions, and not very fair to the artists to base a fee on those we use for still images. Our fees for video on the web are quite outdated and out of range for archiving projects - they are priced by the second. And, as Johannes Goebels said, duration is not applicable to much of net art. Thank you all for your most interesting comments - I will put them into the mix as we continue to look at the problem. Janice Seline Director Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective Inc. www.carcc.ca ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca