authors to attach an author rights addendum to any copyright forms they sign.[1] These addenda explicitly state that the author’s institution can post the article online. When all is said and done, unless the journal issue or publisher website prohibits posting your faculty’s articles, go ahead and do so. If the publisher objects they will just ask you to remove it.
Question: We posted a professor’s article online, and now we are getting requests for permission to reprint it. Can we give permission?
Answer: Probably not. Recall that copyright privileges are like a bundle of sticks. Having one stick doesn’t mean you have the others. You can have permission to post a work online, but not be able to grant further permissions to others. Check your documentation to see if the copyright owner authorized you to sub-license or give further permissions. If he didn’t, then the best you can do is refer the requestor to the copyright owner. If you posted a work on the basis of fair use, then you can’t give permission, either. The requestor will have to get permission from the copyright owner or decide to use fair use based on the facts of their situation. Your work is done; it’s in her hands now.
Question: We want to include some images of art we found on a museum’s Web site for an exhibit on artists from our region. Do we need permission, even if we aren’t putting the exhibit online? What if we just want to promote the exhibit online using thumbnail images?
Answer: The first question is whether the artwork is still protected by copyright. If copyright has expired, then exact reproductions also have no copyright protection.[2] If the images have some creative elements or the artwork is still copyrighted, then you will need permission unless your use falls under the fair use doctrine. Many museums require you to sign a license agreement to get permission. Read the agreement carefully; it may limit further uses, even those that would be fair use.[3]
- ↑ An example is at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.shtml.
- ↑ See Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F.Supp.2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), which is discussed in Chapter One.
- ↑ See Kenneth D. Crews & Melissa A. Brown, Control of Museum Art Images: The Reach and Limits of Copyright and Licensing, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1542070.
