Intellectual Property and the Arts
This section provides links to CAA’s activities on intellectual-property matters as well as to useful websites and resources of other organizations.
CAA’s members are both copyright owners and users of copyrighted material. Artists and authors create new works, and many also quote from or repurpose material created by others. CAA encourages all members to become familiar with intellectual-property law as it affects you.
- What Is Copyright?
- Registering Your Copyrights
- Copyright and Plagiarism
- Creative Commons: A Licensing Alternative to Copyright
- Artists and Copyright
- Artists and Moral Rights
- The Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA)
- Appropriation
Clearing Permission for Images
- Images and the Public Domain
- CAA Statement on Image Rights, Costs, and Publishing
- Studies of Image Rights and Reproductions Fees and Restrictions
- Image Rights Clearance Agencies
- Art Image Banks
- Copyright Clearance: A Publisher’s Perspective
Guidelines for Correct Captioning of Images
- What Is Fair Use? How Does It Work?
- Best Practices in the Assertion of Fair Use
- Will Fair Use Survive?
- What Are Orphan Works?
- Orphan Works: Myths and Facts
Publishing Unprovenanced Objects
Publishing for Tenure in the Arts
- Digital Images: Access, Rights, and Distribution
- Digital Images and the Slide Library
Section 108: Exceptions to Copyright Law for Libraries, Archives, and Museums
Copyright Basics
US Copyright Office Basics offers definitions and explanations of the law, as well as other useful information
University of Texas Copyright Crash Course
US Copyright Office: How to register copyright of a work of visual art
US Copyright Office: Pages on how to register copyright of a text
Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use: One of the best websites for information on copyright
Association of Research Libraries: Good resource for information on copyright in the academic environment
Know Your Copy Rights: Using Copyrighted Works in Academic Settings: Useful to librarians
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse
Indiana University Student Guidelines on Plagiarism: A website on plagiarism
Creative Commons: A licensing alternative to copyright
When Does a Copyright Expire?
Simplified Chart: US Copyright Term
Detailed Chart: US and International Copyright Term
Artists’ Copyrights
Appropriation, from the March 2005 CAA News
Artists and Copyright, from the March 2004 CAA News
Artists and Moral Rights (VARA), from the May 2004 CAA News
Clearing Permissions for Images
Images and the Public Domain, from the September 2003 CAA News
Clearing Permissions for Photos of Copyrighted Artworks, from the November 2003 CAA News
“Copyright Clearance: A Publisher's Perspective” by Susan Bielstein, from the September 2005 CAA News
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Study: Museum Image Rights Charges
American Association of Museums Report on Image Rights and Reproductions
Responses to Copyright, Access, and Cost Challenges, the report “Art History and its Publications in the Electronic Age” (2006) by Hilary Ballon and Mariët Westermann
CAA Statement on Image Rights, Costs, and Publishing
Image Fees, from the January 2005 CAA News
Image Rights Clearance Agencies in the US
Artists Rights Society (ARS)
536 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-420-9160
Fax: 212-420-9286
Visual Artists and Galleries Association (VAGA)
350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2820
New York, NY 10118-2820
Image Rights Clearance Agencies outside the US
International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC)
International Council of Authors of Graphic, Plastic, and Photographic Arts (CIAGP)
VG-Bildkunst, Germany
Websterstrasse 61
53113 Bonn Germany
Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), UK
33 Great Sutton Street
London EC1V 0DX UK
Image Banks
Art Resource
536 Broadway, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-505-8700
Fax: 2121-505-2053
ARTstor Images for Academic Publishing
ARTstor acts as a distributor of free reproduction-quality scans on behalf of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. High-resolution digital scans are available for download through ARTstor’s Images for Academic Publishing website; users must accept the museum’s licensing terms (by means of an online “click-through” license agreement).
National Gallery Images
The National Gallery in London offers free digital images of its entire collection for the authors of academic books and journals.
Images are available at A4 and A5 at 300 dpi/ppi. The picture files themselves are derived from fully color-calibrated digital-image files created by the National Gallery. The color is therefore consistent across all images in the collection, meaning image users are able to make informed comparisons about color, tone, and brightness, and be assured of consistent color reproduction through to print.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Since early 2007, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has ended charging reproduction fees for its images used in scholarly publications. Publishers will be able to download images from the museum’s collection of more than 25,000 works directly from its website.
The museum keeps a broad definition of “scholarly.” The images will be available to students and teachers, as well as to publishers, for use in their research and coursework. The museum will continue to charge commercial publications, but their termination of fees for reproduction may encourage other institutions to follow suit.
Guidelines for Correct Captioning of Images
CAA recommends that all publishers and authors adopt a policy of clear, accurate, and complete captioning of images, whether in print or as image metadata online, and whether the information will appear with the image or in a picture list in a photograph-rights page. See CAA Caption Protocols for models.
Fair Use
Fair use is a doctrine in US copyright law, which also exists, in a more restricted sense, in UK copyright law, as “fair dealing.” For further information on what fair use is (and is not) and how to assess whether to assert fair use rather than obtaining permission for use from a copyright holder, see the Stanford Fair Use Overview.CAA is currently preparing a formal Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use to guide our members—both copyright owners and users of copyrighted material—in making responsible, effective use of the fair-use doctrine in the fields of visual-art practice and scholarship.
Will Fair Use Survive? In 2005 CAA worked with the Free Expression Policy Project of the Brennan Center for Justice of New York University on a survey of visual artists, authors, gallerists, and other stakeholders in the visual arts to assess the effectiveness of fair-use assertions in our community.
Orphan Works
Orphan works are works (images, photos, letters, books, works of art, and so on) that are still formally protected by copyright, but where a potential user—scholar, teacher, artist, publisher, or other person or institution—is unable to clear rights. A work may be “orphaned” when: (a) there is no copyright information associated with the work; (b) the information is inadequate or inaccurate; or (c) attempts to contact possible rights holders have proved futile (no one at last known address, publisher out of business, no responses to letters, etc.). For CAA members, the problems posed by orphan works can be considerable. The Copyright Office has suggested that there is some value in being able to use these works, even if rights cannot be cleared. For more information on what CAA is doing, see our Orphan Works page.
Publishing Unprovenanced Objects
CAA Statement on the Importance of Documenting the Historical Context of Objects and Sites
Publishing for Tenure in the Arts
Publishing Requirements for Tenure and Promotion in Art History
Digital Rights
“Digital Images: Access, Rights, and Distribution” by Helen Ronan, CAA News, September 2004, page 11. This special issue on digital images contains much additional useful information.
Digital Images and the Slide Library, from the January 2004 CAA News
Work for Hire
Work for Hire, from the May 2005 CAA News
Section 108
Report on proposed exeptions to US copyright law for libraries, archives, and museums.
