Ownership of the Past?
I think the chapter, “Owning the Past” in Digital History was extremely confusing. This fault lies not with the authors, but with the laws themselves. I found the section about images most relevant to me, since I am very interested in visual culture and its use in history. In my research of Chinatown, I have had a very difficult time in finding images of the neighborhood in DC prior to 1930. One of the best images that I have found was in a book that did not cite the image, which leaves me with an ethical dilemma. Can I use a copy of the image and cite the use of it in the book I found, since I cannot find the original? According to Rosenzweig and Cohen, the answer is no, because you need access to the original. This is very frustrating to me, because I would love to use it (if I ever decided to try to publish). As great as copyrights are, I can see how it would become difficult to deal with the shades of gray in the copyright laws.
Fair use is also a difficult concept for me. I read the guidelines for fair use, but it still is not very clear to me. For instance, I have had the idea that everyone has to cite EVERYTHING drilled into my head, and apparently you do not have to (at least, Stephen Ambrose did not have to) under fair use? Can someone clarify this for me, or should I wait for class? Does our everyday writing as historians fall under fair use when we quote other historians and cite them? And finally, am I the only one getting hung up on all of this? I think it is probably good that I did not decide to go into law…
I liked the idea in Digital History of making your own version of what you want to use. Their example was if you want to use a recording of a traditional song that is copyrighted, you could just make your own recording to avoid it. This is what I do as often as possible with images. Why ask someone for permission to use an image of something when you can make it yourself? I have found, though, that most people are very nice about giving permission to use images (at least when you are asking on behalf of the Smithsonian NMAH). I had to ask several companies if I could use their images for an activity cart script that I worked on in my internship, and everyone was more than happy to give permission to use images from their sites, and some even offered to send me higher-quality images free. I could not imagine paying some of the prices that people charge for permission to use copies. I guess one of the nice things about being in academia or historical institutions in general is that people seem to be more willing to give permission to us.
March 28th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Ah Stephen Ambrose bashing…the situation with his books is something I believe academics will have to deal with for a long time (academics and public historians)..
Its an interesting dilemma especially if we are doing visual/material culture studies that are dependant on images…how to deal with images that are critical to discussion and understanding but at the same time are orphan works that may lay outside the public domain…