Re: Archive/Oral History question

Laura:

As you have indicated, there are a lot of legal issues here. You don't know whether the archive simply received the materials, or employed someone to create them. Some of these materials will be compilations and some of them will probably be joint works, under a copyright authorship and ownership analysis. Also, as you indicate, there may be persons who are alive who might have publicity/privacy rights in some of the materials, and that's a state law issue involving the laws of the particular state or states where those people reside or where the interviews were made. The family probably owns the literary property of the deceased state politician. Once again, lots of analysis, due to the variety of different types of works: some materials will be written by him/her and will be subject to life+70 copyright, some materials will be speeches which may have been 'fixed' in recordings by another party. Photographs will be owned by the photographer unless the rights have been assigned. These issues would need to be handled on an item-by-item basis.

As you indicate from your list of issues, the fact that the subject is a state politician helps under a fair use and 'right of privacy' analysis, for some materials, because a politician is a public figure and there are significant fair use reasons to allow access to their works. (IIRC, there is a case which states that this fair use factor is diminished after office for the more minor political roles, so that may factor in.)   The fact that access is being restricted by the archive, to materials which you have an alternate means of access to (if I'm reading correctly), probably does not mean anything from a copyright standpoint, unless the archive also owns copyrights or holds exclusive rights from the copyright owners.

You would need a copyright attorney, and a significant budget for legal clearance, to get through all of these issues.

Laura Young Bost wrote:
> A not so hypothetical question: A publisher wants to publish a book
> about a deceased state politican. There exists an archive with oral
> history interviews and stories about this person. The interviews and
> stories were collected by staff of the archive. The interviewees (mainly
> other state politicians) were sent copies of the interviews.
>
> Author A did research in the archive when it was first opened--made
> copies, notes, all of the things one does when researching. Author A now
> has a manuscript about this person that includes quotoes and stories
> from the archive.
>
> A family member of the person has now closed/denied access to the
> archive for a period of time (several years)--the archive facility has
> complied with this and is no longer granting access to the material in
> the oral history archive for this person.
>
> We do not know the legal status or standing between the family member
> and the archive, but I'm not sure how much that matters since we are not
> in a position to question the decision to close it.
>
> The question is, can we publish this manuscript that contains material
> from the archive?
>
> We can contact some of the interviewees (some have died) and get their
> permission to include material from the interviews. We are assuming they
> didn't sign away their rights in the interview when they made the
> interview, but we will check on that.
>
> I've tried to look at this as a copyright question, as a joint
> authorship thing, as fair use, and a couple of other things.
>
> Any opinions would be most appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Laura
>
> --
> Laura Young Bost, Rights Manager
> University of Texas Press
> P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
> tel:512/232-7625; fax:512/232-7178
> email: laura[_at_]utpress.ppb.utexas.edu
> Please visit our NEW website at http://www.utexaspress.com
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