The Right to Click

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Right to Click
I think that the managers of museums and libraries need to rethink who owns the cultutal artifacts in their possession. These items - the images they record having long since passed into the public domain - belong to the people. They belong to all of us, collectively. Which means there is something very wrong in their attempts to make the use of those artifacts impossible - in this case, by banning copying. Other museums ban photography (like the museum in Taiwan, that wouldn't allow me to photograph 6,000 year old artifacts - I really really think the expiry date has passed, and I doubt that the creators will be motivated into creating any new 6,000 year old artifacts). More...