Re: R.M.S. Titanic

On Tue, 24 Mar 1998, James Rogers <jetan[_at_]ionet.net> wrote:
>
> On 3/23/98, Vance R. Koven <vrkoven[_at_]world.std.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/20/98, James Rogers <jetan[_at_]ionet.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > They appear to be marketing a wide variety of stuff through the
> > > website, including the ships's blueprints and lumps of coal (which
> > > I suppose is different from "plundering"). On a related note, I am
> > > curious as to how the U.S. Court established jurisdiction over this
> > > British wreckage (any admiralty lawyers on board?).
> >
> > On a further related note, I am curious how the US court felt it had
> > the right to prohibit anyone from photographing anything.
>
> Yes, this was my original question, which seemed more or less
> appropriate for cni-copyright...

Wait a sec. Have we seen any court saying such a thing? The only thing I've seen is RMS Titanic's statement that that's what the court said. (From <http://www.titanic-online.com/description/>: "RMS Titanic, Inc. was granted salvor-in-possession rights to the wreck of the Titanic by a United States Federal Court order in 1994, reconfirmed again in 1996. The court award includes the exclusive rights to own objects recovered from the Titanic wreck site and the exclusive rights to photograph Titanic.") Has anyone found this case? I'd really be interested in reading it now.

I suspect that the case is not so much with regard to an intellectual property right as it is to physical access; i.e., RMST's "exclusive right to photograph Titanic" may be akin to a museum's exclusive right to photograph its holdings.

> Outside of a couple of tax thingies, I know absolutely nothing about the
> law governing salvage of wrecks but my gut reaction is that this Court
> may have known even less.

Salvage is, I think, a rather routine matter of maritime law. I would expect the court to understand it. The Titanic is just a higher-profile case, that's all.

As long as I'm on a non-copyright roll, I'm pleased to note that Senator Leahy, who introduced the amendment referred to in my signature that led to the designating Lake Champlain as one of the Great Lakes, has backpedalled from this legislation. This is, no doubt, a result of a massive grass-roots campaign resulting from outraged north coast residents who have read my .signature and scurried off to the library to read the legislation cited therin. Yesterday, Senator Leahy introduced Amendment 2098 to S. 1768 (a more-or-less unrelated piece of legislation entitled "1998 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Recovery From Natural Disasters, and for Overseas Peacekeeping Efforts"). The amendment would delete the designation of Lake Champlain as a Great Lake, and would instead simply make it eligible for grants for research into its water resources "to the extent that such resources have hydrological, biological, physical, or geological characteristics and problems similar or related to those of the Great Lakes").

A great day for the great lakes region. Right up there with Monday's decision by the NFL to approve a new expansion team for Cleveland.

Terry "514 days and counting" Carroll

--
Terry Carroll       |  "I know the Great Lakes.  I've traveled the 
Santa Clara, CA     |  Great Lakes.  And Lake Champlain is not one of
carroll[_at_]tjc.com     |  the Great Lakes." - U.S. Senator John Glenn reacts
Modell delendus est |  to 33 U.S.C. 1122 as amended by Pub.L. 105-160