Bruce Lehman — the Clinton Administration’s IP czar and a debate no-show (he’s scheduled and not shown at at least two debates that I know of — one with Jamie Boyle, and one with me) — has been doing more good in the world. As reported in Technology Review and commented upon at TeleRead, when a Cairo consortium called WIPO to ask for advice about images of Egyptian artifacts that they wanted to place on the web, Lehman’s new international organization sent a lawyer to Cairo to advise them against spreading such knowledge freely. Better to copyright and control access to such knowledge. The images, he is reported to have said, “should be licensed.”
We’d suggest a Creative Commons license, or at least some way to keep Mr. Lehman at home.
The CCL is perfect for this situation, maybe a require attribution clause form. I just find it scary that knowledge is being locked up in smaller and smaller boxes, hemmed in with legal language and bounty hunter attorneys armed with Cease and Desist letters.
While I certainly believe that those photos need some form of legal protection, if only the protect someone else from claiming them, the museum should ask what their goal in providing these images are and act accordingly. If it is something like “providing for the legacy of humanity” or “education and preservation” then certainly there is no harm in releasing the photos under CCL. However, if they have other goals, then maybe they should reconsider the museum business.