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Creative Commons and Open Access initiatives: how to stay sane and influence people

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Carrie Bishop
Carrie Bishop*
Affiliation:
Legal Department, Tate, 20 John Islip Street, London SW1P 4RG, United Kingdom. [email protected]
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Abstract

Broadening access to the wealth of material held within the archives of galleries and museums has been a long-term goal for many arts institutions, with large-scale digitization projects gathering pace. Concerns regarding copyright, however, have often been cited1 as a barrier to sharing and reuse, and a point of confl ict between user and creator communities. Tate is currently embarked upon the digitization and public release of 52,000 items within its archives including, where possible, releasing material under a Creative Commons licence. What makes the project's scope unique is that the vast majority of the material is still within copyright, providing valuable insights into how the law, Creative Commons and differing community agendas can interact productively to secure public access whilst still respecting rights holders. The article seeks to demonstrate that, for all the importance of legal considerations, relationship management is key not only to best practice but to securing the goals of Open Access.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 40 , Issue 4: The role of the art librarian in the Open Access movement: Special Issue , 2015 , pp. 8 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2015

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References

1.Hirtle, PeterLearning to live with risk Arts Libraries Journal (2012) 37(2), 5Google Scholar
2.Christine Sundt referred to the ‘subtle censorship’ copyright can exert either through assertion of rights or risk aversion Christine L Sundt Crisis’ – Revelations, Reactions and Reinventions Visual Resources 27 (4) (Dec 2011), 280.Google Scholar
3.The private study exception under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 obviously cannot be applied.Google Scholar
4.Tate Archives and Access Project is a multifaceted undertaking involving building programmes to provide new archive spaces, a far-reaching Learning programme with longterm partnerships with community groups, and other arts institutions, the establishment of volunteer programmes for archival work at the conservation and visitor experience level and a whole scale re-development of Tate's website to integrate archive work with our main collections, alongside the digitisation of 52,000 pieces with the archive collection and making those available not only online via Tate's site, but where possible, to release the material under Creative Commons. For more information please visit www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/transformingtate- britiain-archives-and-access. The project has kindly benefi tted from support from the Heritage Lottery Fund.Google Scholar
5.Of the collections dealt with so far, over 1000 rights holders have been identifi ed, with approx. 44,000 items requiring clearance.Google Scholar
6.A Creative Commons non-commercial, noderivatives, attribution licence.Google Scholar
7.Casey, John ‘Creative Commons Licences: Are they right for you?’ Arts Libraries Journal 37(2), 34. See also the V&A/JISC case study V&A Images: Scaling Back to Refocus on Revenue Study Update 2011; 3 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/contentalliance/vaimages.pdf Accessed: 10 October 2014Google Scholar
8.It is important to bear in mind that galleries, museums, libraries and archives often don't hold copyright in the work in their collections; a reminder that simply because a work is owned by someone, copyright does not necessarily reside with them.Google Scholar
9.Galleries, libraries, archives and museumsGoogle Scholar
10.A simple measure which Tate has adopted to reassure rights holders’ concerns about unauthorised commercial use is actually not legal at all, but technical. For the project, work is only being released as jpegs, with a maximum resolution of 1536px on the longest length. This resolution satisfi es educational needs but equally deters on quality grounds, commercial appropriation.Google Scholar
11.At Tate, not only do we speak with all rights holders when we can, we created short, nonjargonistic information packs which detailed the projects goals, what Creative Commons was, the type of CC licence we had chosen and why and information and pictorial references to the image sizes we were using. We sent this out with every request. This allowed rights holders, who often had never even heard of Creative Commons, to review the information at their convenience and ask any questions in reference to that information.Google Scholar
12.An example where Creative Commons can help institutions work together is, for example, if the archives of an artist are split across different organisations. By granting a CC licence, archives can work collectively to help share information – maximimising the benefits of any expenditure.Google Scholar
13.Honestly, is a student in Columbia who wants to use an image for their coursework and share it online really going to contact Tate for permission and how would we know if they used it since we can't track every usage and fi re off cease and desist letters?Google Scholar
14.Free culture licences are those licences which permit commercial and derivative use of works eg CCO, CC-BY and CC-BY-SA. Wikimedia, for example, require derivative and commercial use to be allowed.Google Scholar
15.The time limit, whilst in theory equitable, has the potential to place an huge administrative burden on institutions where many orphan works exist and where, for example, experience tells us that the creators of the works will never be found.Google Scholar
16.Hirtle, Peter ‘Learning to live with risk’ Arts Libraries Journal (2012) 37(2), 6Google Scholar
17.The EU Orphan Works Directive, for example, requires research to be conducted in the state of fi rst publication. Art 3(3) Orphan Works Directive 2012/28/EUGoogle Scholar
18.For non-UK readers, the 2039 rule states that unpublished literary work remains in copyright until 2039, irrespective of whether the normal duration of copyright, 70 years post mortem, has passed. Remains in copyright until the end of 2039.Google Scholar
19.There's much to be said for using your common sense here even if a work is not dated – look at the style of clothing or style of art. If it is an engraving of a women in a corset and a Victorian hair style that has been cut out from a magazine, odds on, it's Victorian.Google Scholar
20.Pro Sieben Media v Carlton Television [1999] 1 WLR 605. The Court of Appeal held that criticism or review as a concept was not limited to the work being copied, but could also cover the social or moral implications of the work and ideas found within it.Google Scholar