CAN MUSEUMS REALLY CLAIM COPYRIGHT TO THE WORKS THEY OWN?
“Should museums be able to use contracts to create a copyright-like control of public images? Maureen Whalen, lawyer for the J. Paul Getty Trust, has suggested that just because a museum has centuries-old paintings in its physical possession that doesn’t give it a right to decide how the images are used. At a symposium on the Bridgeman case last year, Ms. Whalen said she wasn’t about to send out cease-and-desist letters over images of artworks in the public domain.
Copyright law exists for a purpose: to make creativity pay. Making accurate photographic copies of paintings is no doubt valuable and involves painstaking work. But it isn’t—and isn’t meant to be—creative. With all the digital assaults on the old copyright verities, the champions of intellectual property can’t afford to waste their energies trying to monopolize images that already properly belong to us all.”