Displaying pictures

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>1. If rights for display and/or reproduction are not
normally granted when a painting is donated, commissioned or
sold to an institution b should the institution even have the
leeway to mount it in a physical public place to begin with?
Is it the more-expansive public display on the Internet that
places such display in questionb-and/or perhaps the
additional need to reproduce the work in order to make such
an electronic display? All of which would require, Ibd
assume, a still more solid bfair useb defense if one can be
argued.

JE:  Rights for display and posting/serving on the Internet are two
different things.  The former does not involve making copies, the latter
cannot be accomplished without multiple acts of reproduction.  Presenting
something on the Internet is not a "more-expansive [sic] public display" but
publishing.  Not necessarily good publishing, mind you, or effective
publishing, but publishing nonetheless.  The copyright laws may be
wrongheaded, immoral, out of date, or opposed to the interests of civic
culture, but they are still on the books.  There is a limit on the
plasticity of the "fair use" doctrine.

Joe Esposito