>> 2000 Town Meetings >> San Francisco The Public Domain: Implied, Inferred and In Fact Wednesday, April 5, 2000 Visual Resources Association Conference San Francisco, CA Meeting Report Speakers' Biographical Sketches Agenda Resource List The Public Domain: Implied, Inferred and In Fact With the expansion of the World Wide Web, there is increasing divergence between the legal construct "public domain" and the public's perception of the informational domain to which it has free access. Adding to the confusion: the court's decision in Bridgeman v. Corel, with its potential to throw all photographs of art objects into the public domain; aggressive efforts from many quarters to claim proprietary rights where none have been recognized before; and ongoing legislative debate. Experts in law and visual resources licensing will speak from a variety of perspectives to the issues surrounding the dissemination of art and the incorporation of previous work into new creations. Local Committee Maryly Snow, Librarian, Architecture Slide Library, University of California, Berkeley Martha Winnacker, Executive Assistant for Planning and Policy, Information Resources and Communications, University of California Agenda Panel 1: Overview of Public Domain Theory and Practice "The Disappearing Public Domain: What Is It, What's Happening to It, and Why Should We Care?" Professor Howard Besser, UCLA School of Education and Information "The Originality Requirement: Preventing the Copy Photography End-Run around the Public Domain" Professor Kathleen Butler, Thomas Cooley School of Law, Lansing Panel 2: Rights Management and the Public Domain "Pragmatic Idealism and Intellectual Property at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco" Dakin Hart, Assistant to the Director, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco "Making the Public Domain Public" Robert Baron, Project Manager, Academic Image Cooperative "As if Public Domain Were Not Enough: The Challenge of Managing and Exploiting a Public Domain Collection" Dave Green, Corbis Legal Department Panel 3: Round table discussion among all panelists Debate and questions from the audience will continue the lively town hall tradition Resource List Articles & Papers Robert A. Baron, "Digital Fever: A Scholar's Copyright Dilemma." Museum Management & Curatorship, 15, 1. 1996 [See pre-publication version of "Digital Fever."] Robert A. Baron, ed. "Copyright and Fair Use: The Great Image Debate." Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation, Vol. XII, nos. 3-4. (1997) Table of Contents/order form; Editor's Introduction, Summary and Analysis Howard Besser, "Recent Changes to Copyright: Attacks Against the Public Interest," November 1999. http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Papers/copyright99.html This is a longer version of an article in Peace Review, March 1999. Kathleen Butler. "Keeping the World Safe from Naked-Chicks-in-Art Refrigerator Magnets: The Plot to Control Art Images in the Public Domain through Copyrights in Photographic and Digital Reproductions." The Hastings Communications and Entertainment law Journal, 21. Fall 1998. Jonathan A. Franklin, "Image Control." Museum News. Sept./Oct. 1993, 37. Jane Lusaka, et. al., "Whose 800 lb. Gorilla is it? Corbis Corporation Pursues Museums." Museum News. May/June 1996, 34. Gregg Oppenheimer, "Originality in Art Reproductions: Variations in Search of a Theme." Copyright Symp, 27 (1982). Diane M. Zorich, "Why the Public Domain Is Not Just a Mickey Mouse Issue." NINCH Copyright Town Meeting on the Public Domain. Chicago Historical Society, January 11, 2000. Cases Alfred Bell & Co. v. Catalda Fine Arts, 191 F.2d 99 (2d Cir. 1951). Alva Studios v. Winninger, 177 F. Supp. 265 (S.D.N.Y. 1959). L. Batlin & Son v. Snyder, 536 F.2d 486 (2d Cir. 1976) Hearn v. Meyer, 664 F. Supp. 832 (S.D.N.Y. 1987) Gracen v. Bradford Exch., 698 F.2d 300 (7th Cir. 1983) The Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 25 F. Supp. 2d 421 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) The Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) Web Resources Howard Besser, Intellectual Property & New Information Technology <http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Copyright/> Note, in particular the Public Domain and Public Space: Resources and Recent Coverage page <http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Copyright/publicdomain.html> The Academic Image Cooperative <http://www.academicimage.org> "This is a non-profit venture with a mission to collect digital images of works of art for eventual distribution for educational use. AIC images will be generally unencumbered by copyright restraints and will have been designated to be used in non-profit educational environments. The AIC has the support of the Digital Library Federation and the College Art Association. See also: DLF announcement; report on AIC's formative meetings; the AIC brochure."