Digital Museums Project

The Digital Museums Project is dedicated to the examination of legal and policy issues relating to the digitized activity of museums.  The members of this project will produce a whitepaper analyzing the current digitized cultural property models under different systems of law.  The research will mainly cover the intellectual property issues raised by digitizing museum collections.  Team members also intend to consider attitudes towards distribution and reproduction of content, public access rights, artist rights, digital rights management schemes, business & technology models, licensing models and digital cultural heritage.  Special attention will be given to the effect these issues have on developing countries.  This analysis will focus on shaping the legal rights and duties that accompany the current digitized cultural property models and the team will propose alternatives to these models, if necessary.  The primary component of the research will be satisfied through networking with members of the art and law community.  Supporting research will be completed through examination of legal doctrine. 

Materials posted on the Digital Museums Project site include resources and a draft questionnaire.  The resources page contains a list of people involved with the project and the interviews conducted.  The questionnaire is in draft form and will serve as a working model for potential interviews.  Updates will be made to the pages as the project develops.

Contact:

Vanessa Hickey, infolaw@nyls.edu

Resources

The resources page lists the people involved with the Digital Museums Project and provides information about the interviews conducted by the team members. 

People

Beth Noveck, Director of the Institute for Information Law and Policy and Professor at New York Law School

Guy Pessach, Professor at the Hebrew University, Israel

Reiner Leist, Professor at Hunter College, New York

Herbert Burkert, Professor at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland

Justin Lubatkin, 3L, New York Law School

Vanessa Hickey, 3L, New York Law School

Doug Bussone, 3L, New York Law School

Debi Twardowski, 2L, New York Law School

Interviews Conducted

This area will include information about interviews conducted by the team.

Questionnaire

This is a draft questionnaire and will serve as a basis for conducting interviews of people in the art and law community.  Modifications may be made according to changing circumstances or as team members deem appropriate. 

1)     What are the attitudes toward cultural heritage?  Have they changed since the emergence of new media and digitization?

-          Digital Cultural Heritage

o        Attitude toward cultural heritage & its preservation

o        What is cultural heritage as applied to a new work?

§         How important is this question?

o        Peer-produced/Collaborative artwork

§         Peer produced art & cultural heritage?

2)     What are your current plans regarding digitization?  What are you trying to achieve through these plans?

o        Preservation

o        Access

o        Commercialization

-          Aspirations?

-          Goals?  What are they trying to achieve?

-          Impact on type of work collected?

o       E.g. – work that is ephemeral

3)     How does digitization impact your curatorial policy?

o        Digital Artwork

o        Commissioning of work

o        On-line curating and copyright concerns

-          Organization of collections

o        Physical order

o       D-I-Y Curating

4)       What business and technology models have you implemented regarding digitization?

o        Moral rights – Do they play a role in selecting tech/business models?

§         Minimum standards?

5)     Did you consider the balance between Digital Rights Management and access before implementing these models?

-          DRM vs. Access

o       Can work be copied, modified, etc.?

6)     What role does the integrity of the work (or moral rights) play in these business and technology models?

o        How important is controlling reproduction, distribution, derivative works, display, performance, etc.?

7)     What licensing model is in effect?

o        What are the models they’ve considered?

o        What are they doing?

o        Timing of web display vis-à-vis IRL

o        Display – what is shown and when?

o        Challenges

§         Priced out of market?

§         Pressures to license?

8)     How does a museum negotiate to license a work for digital use?  When the artist is difficult/impossible to identify? When the artist is not living?

o        Balance between commercialization and free public access

o        How artist agreements are individually negotiated

o        Permissions from artists

§         How do you identify artist/copyright holder?

§         How do you get permissions?

·         From living vs. dead artists

·         Donors

§         What do artists have a right to refuse?

·         How work is displayed

o        Compilation rights for different types of art

9)      Is it a problem when two or more museums both display the same artwork on their websites? 

-          Traveling Exhibits – Collective compilations

o        How does collaboration work?

o        E.g. – Jewish Museum & Holocaust Museum show same exhibit

o        E.g. – Met shows exhibit from many collections

o        Sample agreement - re: online

10)  What is the basic structure of the museum hierarchy?  Specifically, who makes decisions surrounding the digitization of works?

o        Decision hierarchy – who decides?

§         Internal policymaking

§         How?

11)  Some artwork originates from countries other than the country of display etc.  What determines which country’s law applies?

-          International Standards

o        What is regarded as relevant Law?

§         US or Europe?

o        How do global museums address this?

o        What about developing museums?

12)   What is your IP/copyright policy?  Specifically, how aggressively do you pursue permission from copyright holders?  Do you believe that developing countries are hindered by the expense and vigor required by this process?

o        How aggressively do you copyright network?

o        General attitude?

o        Licensing/Permissions work?

o        Sample Docs

13)   What involvement does the state/other public body have in museums?

-          Liability

-          Involvement of state or other public body?

o        State funding?

§         NEA?

§         Funding of digital work by state authority?

o        How is the public interest represented?

Other questions that may arise:

-          Allocating display of interactive, multi-domain space

o        Work

o        Scale

o        Color palettes

o        Technical

o        Resolution

o        What work is displayed?

-          Virtual worlds

-          New ideas – Artist sidewalks

o        New artists – artist chat

-          Brokering works?

-          Auctioning works?

Sample Documents:

o        New copyright license between museum and copyright holder

o        Moral rights

o        Web Service Agreement

o        Terms of Use for these websites

o        License/Terms of Use for digital art services

o        Bequest terms relating to digital display

o        Creative Commons license for art

§         Other new visual licensing schemes