Archives: Copyright Complications

Copyright is this week’s issue. Dharma Akmon’s “Only With Your Permission” wrangles with the practical challenges for archives trying to get permission from copyright owners to use their stuff, primarily for digitization. Akmon defends her study because of its financial benefit. Since archives projects are often dependent on grants, knowing just how much time and money it takes to get permission to digitize material is essential to the process. 

I also looked over Cornell’s handy chart of copyright terms and was reminded of the copyright extension legislation debates that were in the news a few years ago (and will undoubtedly be back in the future). Most of the debated revolved around whether corporations like Disney should be allowed to lobby congress ensuring that their early material will not become public domain. While sources like The Washington Post lament the creative loss of not having Mickey Mouse in the public domain, other sources like Animation Anomaly are clearer about the distinction between copyrights and trademarks.

One aspect of copyright terms is that they typically point to the time of creation and the death of the author as being the most important factors in determining expiration. For most materials in archives this seems reasonable. I would argue that the copyright extensions Disney (to be fair, other too) lobbied for are a result of the way that the production of creative, cultural materials changed during the twentieth century. The way that film studios and comic publishers create characters and actively build upon them, franchise them, and profit from them, is something that copyright law has difficulty accounting for.

Historical pondering aside, this case displays how archives that collect material from living institutions face a host of challenges. How to make the material they collect accessible to the public if opposed by the creators is another challenge. In combination with the cost of it all, and opposed to the part of me that is all about access, I can sympathize with archives deciding against projects that require obtaining permissions.

Reading

Dharma Akmon,"Only with Your Permission: How Rights Holders Respond (or Don't Respond) to Requests to Display Archival Materials Online." Archival Science 10 (2010): 45-64.