On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Frankie Roberto <[log in to unmask]
> wrote:

>
> I don't know how closely other people have been following this story, but I
> thought I'd share a few links that may be of interest:
>
>
There was also a fairly lively discussion of image size on the MCN listserve
last May:
http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/2009-May/date.html

Some interest tidbits include this from David Penney at the Detroit
Institute of the Arts:

"As policy, and we have been following this discussion with interest, weare
transitioning to some version of almost free-circulation of images
in the public domain, while still committed to protecting artists'
rights, informed by the notion that the "rights and reproductions"
business model conflicts with more expansive program initiatives
involving on-line access and social media. At our scale, which is big
for museums, the business of making revenue from images does not work
very well."

This from Matt Morgan, General Manager at the Website at the Metropolitain
Museum of Art in NYC:

"We (the museum community) have hardly ever (never?) seen a significant,
commercial, inappropriate, reuse of museum object images. It just isn't
done--there is no business model in stealing images. Getting images of
more than 1000px (from Flickr, for example) of our objects is a trivial
matter, so it cannot be that increasing image sizes on our own websites
will make this problem materialize."

And this from Ken Hamma, who until last year was Executive Director for
Digital Policy at the J. Paul Getty Trust:

"For these [public domain] works, the assertion of copyright in visual
surrogates and metadata is not a legal decision (so don't start with
lawyers) but a business decision that has on more than one occasion been
described purely as an effort to maintain monopoly control.  Is it possible
to square this with public charities managing public domain collections?"

And perhaps best of all, this insight from Nik Honeysett, Head of
Administration for the J. Paul Getty Museum:

"This reminds me of a classic example in the music industry in the early
90's. Blue Note Record's legal team came across a 12" single called "The
Band Played the Boogie" featuring an illegal sampling of Grant Green's
"Sookie Sookie", enjoying a huge underground following. Rather than
pursue a suit, Blue Note hired the group and gave them access to their
full back catalogue. The resulting release was Blue Note's first
platinum-selling album (Us3 - Hand on the Torch).

So, put your images out there, wait for someone to figure out how to
make money from them, then hire them."

--
Jeff Doyle
www.openmusem.org

****************************************************************
For mcg information visit the mcg website at
http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
To manage your subscription to this email list visit
http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email.shtml
****************************************************************