Re: Original art work & its public display by owner on a web

[Michael Burke <mburke@xxxxxxx>]

This has been a very interesting and enlightening discussion, especially
for one, such as myself, naive enough to think that ownership of a
painting would convey the right to public display of the work.  Let me
offer another option to further complicate the issue.

Suppose the library points a web cam at the publicly displayed painting
in question, and simply posts the URL for the web cam on the website?
Is this a reproduction?  (It is not "fixed" on any physical medium.)  Is
it a distortion or mutilation?  (Regardless of the web cam resolution,
the image seen by a viewer may be dependent on factors beyond the
control of the people at the origination site.)

I've recently seen some nice panoramic camera sites,
(http://www.panoramas.dk/ is a good place to start) and it seems to me
that the virtual museum/library/gallery tour has an interesting, if not
yet well articulated, future.  Granted that current panoramic museums
and
art galleries tend to be 'fixed' on a digital medium, the emergence of
web cams with end user remote control features suggests that this may
not always be the case.

--Michael

--
Michael A. Burke, Ph.D.
Technologies Integration Specialist
Innovative Technology Center
Office of Information Technology
The University of Tennessee
mburke@xxxxxxx
http://itc.utk.edu/~burke
865-974-8893 *voice
865-974-8655 *fax
For more information, visit http://itc.utk.edu
or for questions, email itc@xxxxxxx or phone 865-974-9670
"Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it." -- Mark
Twain

digital-copyright-digest-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:38:40 -0500
> To: digital-copyright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> From: clarkjc@xxxxxxx
> Cc: clarkjc@xxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: Original art work & its public display by owner on a web
>   site
> Message-Id: <45bbdc48.1441aecb.84de400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> But a couple questions (expressed at length):

>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.
>
>2.      Title 17, section 106A
>(http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/106A.html) details
>rights for visual authors related to attribution and
>integrity. These are a separate domain of rights under 106,
>and are non-transferable in themselves (no matter who ends up
>owning copyright to a work as well as a copy/original of the
>workbs embodiment). OK.  This seems to me the only area of
>American intellectual property law that explicitly
>acknowledges an inherent moral dimension in creation that
>derives from a way of thinking about the subject thatbs more
>common in Europe.
>I had overlooked/forgotten about this vital subsection
>earlier. But it leads me to wonder now: 106A *should* make a
>without-permission, fair use defense even more difficult to
>manage, shouldnbt it?  No matter what 106 rights were
>transferred along with the purchase. The posting of low-
>resolution images of the purchased artwork on an educational
>web site might squeak by with a fair use justification, were
>repro and display rights not transferred. But... doing so in
>either case (rights or no rights transferred and just a FU
>defense) might also have to overcome the objection that such
>images are a bdistortionb of the original work under 106A(a)
>(2) & (3)(A), if the artist were inclined to pursue it. At
>least, as I read and think about the subsection.
>Any further thoughts?
>Jeff