Steve is correct. That is what the court decided, but just to caution you, this was only in a district court in Southern New York and has not been tested in any other state and certainly does not apply in other countries. And to further qualify the case, it was not about educational use but rather Corel downloaded photographs off of our website and used them in a commercial software product and did not get permission or pay us for the use of photos that belonged to museums that we represent.
Here at Bridgeman we firmly believe that if a museum or photographer spends hundreds or thousands of dollars on photographing any subject in proper lighting, subsequently cataloging and then paying for archival storage of those photographs, that the rights to the photograph should belong to the person who photographed it. If the artist of the piece in the photo has been dead for more than 70 years then additional artist’s copyright clearance is not required, but any commercial reproduction of the photograph should be cleared with the owner of the photograph whether it is two or three dimensional. It is simply good practice and respects the rights of the photographer. The Google Project is amazing and was done with the full consent of the participating museums thus there was no infringement at all in this case. To get an idea of the amount of work involved in photographing an artpiece, just view the google video of their behind the scenes work! http://www.googleartproject.com/c/faq
Respectfully,
Wendy Zieger
Wendy Zieger
Picture Researcher, Rights Executive and
Bridgeman Education Specialist
Bridgeman Art Library
65 E. 93rd Street
New York, NY 10128
Direct: 616-464-1098
T: 212.828.1238
F: 212.828.1255
From: ARLIS/NA List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steven Tatum
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2011 8:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARLIS-L] Google art project
Hi,
I am not sure how one replies on the ARLIS and keeps the reply on list. I already sent a reply to Donna that I intended for the list. The long and the short of it is that no one owns the copyright to photos of Starry Night or any other two-dimensional art work in the public domain.
For two-dimensional artworks, this issue was settled in the U.S. in Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp.
There has to be an original component to a work for copyright to apply. The court determined that there was no original content whatsoever in a photograph that reproduces two-dimensional artwork. Therefore the photograph is not covered by copyright. If the work is in the public domain, the photograph is in the public domain. The decision was based on American and British law. Although the principle has not been tested in court outside the United States, there seems a good chance that British and Canadian courts would reach the same conclusion at American courts.
Photographs of three-dimensional works are different. The photographer can be credited with the angle of view, the perspective, the lighting, the framing, the background, and so on. The minimum requirements for originality in a photograph of three-dimensional works have not been tested, but most photographs of three-dimensional situations are probably covered. (Thanks to Dwayne Buttler of Louisville for that advice.)
For sculptures:
Showing an image live from the internet by means of a projector does not seem substantially different than viewing an image live on a monitor, so one would not be violating a museum's intent by displaying an image in a classroom. Why would museums make the images public if they didn't want them to serve an educational (and promotional) purpose? This paragraph is my own logic.
Best,
Steve Tatum
Visual Resources Curator
Virginia Tech
On Feb 3, 2011, at 11:30 AM, Bill Cole wrote:
I wonder if this copyright protection would hold up in court.
I mean, the MoMA owns Van Gogh's "The Starry Night". But owning an artwork
doesn't confer ownership of copyright. Does the MoMA have the right to
assume that ANY photograph of The Starry Night is the property of the MoMA,
and that such photographs are protected by copyright? The forthcoming
(March) issue of Print Quarterly (the leading scholarly journal of prints)
will have an essay on this subject by Anthony Griffiths.
Best
Bill Cole
On 2/3/11 4:53 PM, "Donna Bowman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Isn't there a problem, though, with the fact that the images are
copyright protected by the museums who uploaded them?