copyright

Over the years, we've thought a lot about the legal and technical frameworks for the distribution of culture and heritage on-line. We've helped develop licenses for educational use of museum content within the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO), and supported the use of Creative Commons licenses -- including using them for the Museums and the Web papers published on-line.

But we hadn't looked at our own policies for copyright and permissions for some time – particularly related to the papers we publish for Museums and the Web.

here's the rationale -- and history -- behind my interest in the cc+ framework. something that i think museums should be looking seriously at. it was spurred by an exchange on the MCG list and still bears a bit of that context in its tone.

We're delighted that Michael Geist will be opening Museums and the Web 2008. A leading Canadian Internet theorist and advocate, Michael will challenge our pre-conceptions about how institutions should act in an inter-connected world.

Hands On the Internet

Michael Geist, University of Ottawa, Canada

While many Internet advocates have long supported a hands-off government and policy approach to the Internet, Michael will make the case for a hands-on approach, citing the role that the museum and archival communities should play in contentious issues such as digital copyright, network neutrality, and access to public domain works.

Sometimes it seem we are fixated on copyright act reform as the only way to achieve broader access to digital culture and are overlooking the attitudinal changes that are taking place within institutions and opening the way to wider access without the need for legislative remedies. Over the past year the Metropolitan Museum of Art quietly made its images available for academic use and was followed last month by the Victoria & Albert Museum. When two major international art museums recognize that they have more to gain by making their collections open to non-commercial publication and broad discussion than they do from licensing rights to non-remunerative uses, it reflects a massive attitudinal change that should be noted, celebrated and copied. Yet in discussions of barriers to access and public policy initiatives these changes have largely gone unnoticed.