Digital Dissemination of Cultural Information: Copyright, Publicity, and Licensing Issues in Cyberspace

Abstract

This article addresses copyright, publicity, and licensing issues that must be considered in the dissemination of digital images of art and cultural property collections through the global information infrastructure. The article principally addresses copyright issues through a consideration of the U.S. Copyright Act, but because cultural institutions disseminate their collections worldwide via the Web, it also considers application of the Universal Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, and the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright, Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WIPO), to define the scope of any international copyright protection for cultural institutions exhibiting their collections on the borderless Internet.