[NHCOLL-L:879] Re: Ownership, specimens, and copyright?

[Doug Yanega]

Lynn wrote:

>This would be very much like the US National Park Service demanding
>intellectual ownership of every painting and photograph taken of Old
>Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park on the basis that Old
>Faithful is the property of the US Government. This would certainly be
>unenforceable in US or international law.

I understand the point here, though I'm not sure this is a truly accurate
analogy, since Parks are (unless I'm mistaken) technically land held in
trust for the public. If someone took a photograph of a tree in your back
yard and sold it, however, you COULD demand a share of the money - and win.
There are plenty of legal precedents for this, but all of them hinge upon
the *commercial value* of the thing. That's the key, really.
The ostensible reason for the "museum retains all rights to images" policy
is exactly this: to prevent people from taking photos of the museum's
holdings and then selling those photos without paying royalties. The way
the rule is written would appear to impede taxonomic research, but I'm
quite sure that is not the intent, nor would the policy be likely to be
enforced in such a way. Sure, if you went to a museum to take photos for
your upcoming CD-ROM "Insect Types of the World" which you planned to sell
at $1,000 per copy, I can imagine a LOT of museums would take offense at
that, and understandably so! But any museum who refuses to allow someone to
take such photos for use in a monographic revision (which generates no
profits to the author) without paying for the images *would* be impeding
science.
Let's hope it never does come to that.

Peace,


Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
           http://entmuseum9.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82