[SIGCIS-Members] a few comments regarding copyright

[Thomas Haigh]

On a pragmatic level there is another consideration. Due to 1970s copyright
changes and subsequent retroactive extensions those of us working on the
mid-20th century would often like to reproduce images such as
advertisements. Most advertisements were not copyrighted when they first
appeared, but received protection in the 1970s when fundamental changes were
made to the system.

In this case ownership lies with the company that placed the advertisement,
not with the publication where it was placed. In many cases it is impossible
to track down eventual owner of the intellectual property assets of a
long-defunct business. Furthermore it's not uncommon for the current owner
never to have heard of the company in question (a failed company is acquired
by another company, which then fails and is acquired, by a firm that merges,
etc.)

Most publishers will accept evidence of a good faith effort to try to track
down the copyright holder and receive permission to use the image in lieu of
a signed permission form. Some will not, meaning that there is no way to use
the image in question.

The moral: start a long time ahead with the image permissions and find out
in advance what the policy of your publisher is. No company is ever actually
going to sue you for reproducing an image of a 1920s bookkeeping machine or
a 1970s video terminal in a scholarly publication, so what matters is not
the actual law but the opinion of the law held by your publisher's legal
department. (As long as you're not calling them Nazi collaborators, I
suppose, in which case probably best to have all the permissions signed
first).

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of James Sumner
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 3:44 PM
To: members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] a few comments regarding copyright

Thanks for sharing these with the list, Bernard.

It's worth emphasising that the "fair use" concept, as focused on by the 
three sources linked below, is very specific to the United States. 
Britain, Canada and other Commonwealth countries have various different 
sets of provisions known as "fair dealing", which tend to be similar to 
US "fair use" but not as lenient.

Best
James

On 28/02/2011 18:38, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan wrote:
> Hi Members,
>
> This is just a brief followup on my research into images & copyright,
> etc. The short answer is that it's very complicated and hard to find a
> definitive guide. For images it is especially complicated. In general,
> academic publishing seems to have a lot of leeway, but there's more grey
> area than black/white. In the end, my publisher provided the most
> concrete guidance.
>
> However, Ben Peters referred me to the guides produced by the Society
> for Cinema and Media Studies. This has some info:
> www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/docs/
>
<http://www.cmstudies.org/resource/resmgr/docs/>*scms*bestpractices4*fairuse
*inp.pdf
>
> MIT Libraries also had some info:
> In general:
>
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/copyright-information-for
-mit-faculty/
>
> For theses:
>
http://info-libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/copyright-publishing-guid
e-for-students/reuse-of-figures-images-and-other-content-in-theses/
>
> Debbie Douglas of the MIT museum had this especially robust and helpful
> account, which in many ways was more concrete than what I found even on
> the "expert" websites:
>
> There is no single guide because "property rights" are very complicated
> to untangle.
>
> 1. There is the permission of the owner of the physical artifact that
> allows you to examine the "thing", and to make a picture of that "thing."
>
> Imagine you had donated your bicycle to a museum. As the owner of the
> bike, you can control who looks at it, touches it, takes pictures of it.
> BUT you do not own the patents, trademarks, copyrights associated with
> that bike. You could not grant the right to make a copy of the bicycle.
>
> 2. The second permission is from the maker/creator of the "thing." Or
> rather, the owner of the "intellectual" property rights. In this day,
> this can very complicated because sometimes the maker licenses other
> entities to make objects. The best guide to this is the Library of
> Congress' website which explains all things copyright (in the US) and
> the US Patent and Trademark Office which deals with patents and
trademarks.
>
> Hope this helps someone out there.
>
> Best,
> Bernard
>
>
>
> Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
> bernard at u.northwestern.edu <mailto:bernard at u.northwestern.edu>
>
> Graduate Fellow, Mediale Historiographien, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
> Doctoral Candidate, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University
>
>
>
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