Naomi Korn is a copyright consultant
YES: It is a smart move for the Victoria and Albert Museum to make its images available for academic use. By doing this, museums invest in their long-term financial stability, acknowledge the role and value of their collections and intellectual property, as well as reaffirming a relationship with academics that has been wavering for some time.
Staff in museums can spend considerable amounts of time and resources providing images for academic use. This is not good business. To achieve optimum profits from their picture library sales, museums need to divert their core resources away from the limited financial return from academic use of their images into negotiating the best possible deals for commercial use of their assets.
Also, museums do not carry out rights and reproduction activities purely for profit. They are also driven by the desire to serve public interest and promote their collections.
Surely, providing images free for academic use is the best possible marketing tool. It will entice increased research into their collections, greater commercial interest in their images, but also, fundamentally, excite the public to come and visit the real works.
There is no doubt that museums must generate income. But they can also look to increased profits from spending on catering and in-house products, as well as charged online activities, services and products. Copyright has always been about balances, and to get the right balance museums must play to their strengths and ensure that they understand the true value of their assets and the nature of the market.
Nick Poole is the director of MDA
NO: The decision to make images free for academic use seems to be rooted in a warm and fuzzy vision of museums and higher and further education as sharing lofty ideals of public benefit and social good, far removed from commerce.
The reality is very different. The modern university is a multimillion pound business, a significant part of which depends on the management and use of intellectual property. Most of our existing licensing arrangements with the higher education sector bandy terms such as 'educational', 'academic' and 'non-commercial' without ever satisfactorily defining them.
This latest development would in some cases enable academic publishers to generate profit using images that have been digitised with funds from the public purse. Can this really be classed as 'non-commercial' or even fair? Worse, this development runs the risk of penalising museums.
Museums have to negotiate carefully-constructed licences with organisations such as the Design and Artists Copyright Society for the intellectual property in their collections that exist to protect the interests of rightsholders. If museums were to extend free access to this material for academic use, they would have to pay higher fees to these societies.
As a public service, museums are likely to face increasing constraints on their core budgets. There is a balance to be struck between being entrepreneurial and delivering our core services free to the people that need them. To find the balance, we need people who understand licensing and how to cut a deal. Giving the stuff away will undermine their position.
YES: It is a smart move for the Victoria and Albert Museum to make its images available for academic use. By doing this, museums invest in their long-term financial stability, acknowledge the role and value of their collections and intellectual property, as well as reaffirming a relationship with academics that has been wavering for some time.
Staff in museums can spend considerable amounts of time and resources providing images for academic use. This is not good business. To achieve optimum profits from their picture library sales, museums need to divert their core resources away from the limited financial return from academic use of their images into negotiating the best possible deals for commercial use of their assets.
Also, museums do not carry out rights and reproduction activities purely for profit. They are also driven by the desire to serve public interest and promote their collections.
Surely, providing images free for academic use is the best possible marketing tool. It will entice increased research into their collections, greater commercial interest in their images, but also, fundamentally, excite the public to come and visit the real works.
There is no doubt that museums must generate income. But they can also look to increased profits from spending on catering and in-house products, as well as charged online activities, services and products. Copyright has always been about balances, and to get the right balance museums must play to their strengths and ensure that they understand the true value of their assets and the nature of the market.
Nick Poole is the director of MDA
NO: The decision to make images free for academic use seems to be rooted in a warm and fuzzy vision of museums and higher and further education as sharing lofty ideals of public benefit and social good, far removed from commerce.
The reality is very different. The modern university is a multimillion pound business, a significant part of which depends on the management and use of intellectual property. Most of our existing licensing arrangements with the higher education sector bandy terms such as 'educational', 'academic' and 'non-commercial' without ever satisfactorily defining them.
This latest development would in some cases enable academic publishers to generate profit using images that have been digitised with funds from the public purse. Can this really be classed as 'non-commercial' or even fair? Worse, this development runs the risk of penalising museums.
Museums have to negotiate carefully-constructed licences with organisations such as the Design and Artists Copyright Society for the intellectual property in their collections that exist to protect the interests of rightsholders. If museums were to extend free access to this material for academic use, they would have to pay higher fees to these societies.
As a public service, museums are likely to face increasing constraints on their core budgets. There is a balance to be struck between being entrepreneurial and delivering our core services free to the people that need them. To find the balance, we need people who understand licensing and how to cut a deal. Giving the stuff away will undermine their position.
