Re: Rights to reproduce museum-owned material

Though individuals and companies in positions similar to ours (and I will include most museums holding pre-1918 works under this heading) invariably overstate the nature and extent of the rights they hold in and to their physical materials, anyone possessing "clean title" (i.e., legitimate chain of ownership) to similar or identical materials may duplicate, sell, distribute,
"license", etc. these materials.

The only exception, which we attempt to leverage by controlling the dissemination of our images with care, is when a contract expressly governs the use of our images. For instance, anyone acquiring footage from us agrees to use it only in the production for which footage is requested. All master-quality materials must be returned after the production is completed.

The situation is more ambiguous in cases where public domain material is distributed to the public in "value-added" form. For instance, we publish (with Voyager Presss) several videodiscs containing film clips from our collection. We have tried to collect for unauthorized usage of clips from the discs but have had little luck, even though our competitors have actually sold footage to their own customers off our discs. Since the only appropriation that occurred in this case was contiguous segments of PD films and none of our own edits, which could possibly constitute protectable authorship, were taken, we had little legal ground to recover damages.

In any case, my considered opinion is that museums are simply controlling access by means of rules, regulations and equipment restrictions. These controls are bound to become stricter as more museums delegate "licensing" activities to representatives such as Microsoft/Continuum.

Rick Prelinger
Prelinger Archives, New York
footage[_at_]well.sf.ca.us Received on Wed Jan 26 1994 - 01:41:40 GMT