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If you own the copyright rights for a photograph or document, you may do with it what you like. Eric, in the introductory scenario, is in no conflict with copyright law when he posts pictures he has taken, or interviews he has conducted. Likewise, the photographs of the USS San Saba appear to be snapshots taken by the servicemen, or their families on shore. If a library or museum wishes to create a website showing their collections, they must first determine what they own the copyright to. An established archive usually requests a transfer of copyright when they receive or purchase an item (Minow 2002a). However, historical collections in libraries of all sizes may be made up of items that nobody knows where they came from.
If a published item is from 1922 or before, then it is public domain. (U.S. Copyright Office 1992) Unpublished items, such as letters or manuscripts, if created before 1978, are protected under a different part of the law. If the unpublished item does not have a known author or is a “work made for hire,” then its copyright period is 120 years from the date of creation (For the year 2012, that means 1892 or before). If the author is known, then the copyright extends to 70 years after their death. For a person who wishes to get permission to use such an item, they need to find out when the author died, and the name(s) of the authors heirs, and then seek permission from them. Doing this type of a search is difficult but not impossible; see the essay “Permissions, Good Faith Efforts, and Disclaimers” chapter by Mary Minow for many useful resources. (Minow 2002b)
If you have a photo or a text or recorded conversation or other resource that you would like to put online, check the ownership, and get permissions if needed.
If a museum employee takes a photograph of something, then they have made a copy of it. If the museum puts it on the Internet, then they have distributed it. Both activities are exclusive rights of the copyright holder. (U.S. Copyright Office 1992) However, before declaring the museum “guilty of infringement,” consider the whole situation. Is the object in the photograph original enough to qualify for copyright protection? Everyday objects such as tools, blankets, furniture, and so forth do not. Next, does the museum own the copyright, or partial copyright, in the artwork? Often when items are acquired by a museum or archive, a transfer of copyright takes place as well. The museum may hold complete copyright. If not, it may still hold the right to take photographs for museum publicity, or for research purposes, and so forth. (Minow 2002a)
In December of 2004, Google announced the largest, most comprehensive scanning of books yet attempted. Google had made exclusive partnerships with five libraries (Stanford, University of Michigan, New York Public, Harvard, and Oxford) to scan all the books held in those libraries, regardless of their copyright status. Scanning was underway before the project was made public. Google created a separate search function, “Google Print,” that searched only the scanned book content. If a book was from 1923 or before, it would be shown in full, and users could download or print out the entire book. Books published after 1922 are considered to be “in copyright.” The searcher who finds one of these books will see snippets of text around the words they searched, along with its bibliographic information and links to online bookstores and nearby libraries. (Google 2010)
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