On 7/31/98, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> On 98-07-31, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> writes:
> >
> > It would be, but probably isn't. Setting aside the merits of the
> > suit (Raphael long ago fell into the public domain)
>
> It doesn't work this way. Museums have a right to control
> activiities on their premises.
Yes, but how is that relevant to the question that was posed? Once the image is off the premises, there is very little that the museum can do to control third party usage of the public domain elements in the image.
> The situation is similar to that of translations of literary works.
> Plato is in the public domain. Last year's English translation of
> <The Republic> isn't. If I decide to do my own translation, I have
> to deal with the institution that owns the physical copy of the
> manuscript. There may be fees involved, and I can't assume they'll
> allow just anyone to touch it or have photocopies. I suppose the
> Dead Sea scrolls are in the public domain. That doesn't mean I can
> have unrestricted access, and I can't have access at all unless the
> owner or holder allows it.
To take your example of the scrolls, there are enough images of the scrolls and fragments floating around for someone to do their own translation without access to the originals -- which in fact has happened, making the posessors of the originals extremely unhappy, but too bad. As with any control of IP based on exclusion, competitors will find ways to reverse engineer the product if the price is right.
Along the same lines, I exchanged some correspondence a while back with one of the principals in the project at Brigham Young University to put images of the scrolls out on CD ROM. They wanted to know how they could protect their interest in the collection of images. One of the problems that I tried (probably unsucessfully) to get across to them was that once the images are out there, they're out there, and the public domain elements are fair game for whoever wants to extract them. Someone in that situation can try to block access with a UCC2b-type adhesion contract, but so far that only seems to work if the case gets before Frank Easterbrook.
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