Re: Digitizing art slides?

On Wed, Apr 21, 1999, Dick Perrin <perrinr[_at_]lib01.ferris.edu> wrote:
>
> We have a faculty member who wants to digitize the art slides that
> he has been showing in his class for several years. After they have
> been digitized, he want to mount the images on his WebCT site for
> his students to access in their studies.
>
> What procedures must he follow to comply with current copyright
> laws. He feels that this is a fair use of course.

If someone other than the professor has an enforceable copyright in either the slides or the artworks depicted in the slides, then digitizing the slides and placing them on the web are two (at least) separate copyright violations. (This can get into the Bridgeman issue that has been discussed at length, if the slides are of pd works.)

Digitizing the slides is the creation of a copy of the slides or the artwork, which would violate any copyright in the slides or the artwork.

Placing the digitized images on a web page is a violation of the display portion of the copyright, in that the website permits the image to be seen simultaneously in more than one place.

Whether the use is fair is debatable. If the web site is available to the world at large, fair use seems hard to justify. Why would copies need to be available to the world in order to assist in the teaching function. It seems that the use goes far beyond what's fair.

If the web site is available only to students in the pertinent classes, then there may be a more valid fair use argument.

Patrick W. Begos
Begos & Horgan, LLP
NY and CT
begos[_at_]ibm.net Received on Thu Apr 22 1999 - 13:36:29 GMT