Collaboration among museums is a growing trend, made attractive by the enormous costs of training, acquiring technology, and marketing computerized museum products and exhibits. The uncertain legalities of these proposals and contractual arrangements has sometimes caused museums to fear they are being taken advantage of and led, in some cases, to delays in order to avoid major blunders. As reported in the May 1994 issue of CD-ROM World, representatives from museums charged that U.S. firms were trying to pillage their collections. The new world of digital reproduction of the arts raises a crucial rights issues, including basic questions about the copyright scheme of entitlement as developed over the past several hundred years. It is not too early to try to establish some standards of content ownership, artist's rights, and access to a museum's electronic arts materials.
Rights issues tend to be the starting point in any electronic media proposal.
Historically, the law has always lagged behind technological developments. It is likely to take more experience and time before adequate legislation can be formulated. Until then, stakeholders in computerized media and art must rely on new contract provisions, payment schemes, technological safeguards, and accounting procedures to accomplish what existing law, by itself, cannot. To Promote the Progress of Science and Useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. This language indicates that copyright does not last forever - in time, a work passes into the public domain.