Against the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)

Kathy Cohen
on the use of
Public Domain Text and Graphic Images
in Art History teaching and research
4/1/02

We of the California State University System have been building an archive of digital images for academic use that includes all forms of the arts (see http://worldart.sjsu.edu  and http://cielo.calstate.edu). We are relying primarily on images that are taken by faculty members and on those that are in the public domain. There are several types of images that we take primarily from books in the public domain because we are often unable to photograph them in the original. Because of their fragile nature, prints and drawings are not exposed very often by the institutions that house them, and older published works often contain good reproductions of these materials, which are often in black and white. Slide vendors tend to have many more images of paintings and sculptures than they do of prints and drawings, and thus the 20 year extension of copyright puts many of these important materials that have great research and teaching value beyond our reach.

A second difficulty comes with architectural diagrams including plans and elevations. While we can photograph or purchase images of the buildings themselves, the important teaching that must be done through diagrams is not generally available for purchase. However, many older books contain excellent architectural diagrams and we have been photographing and digitizing them as the books enter the public domain. Needless to say, are efforts to provide these important teaching materials have been hampered by the 20 year extension of copyright.

Kathy Cohen
California State University, San Jose
cohen@email.sjsu.edu

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