- Sep 2018
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certificates.creativecommons.org certificates.creativecommons.org
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To add to "More scholarship about CC licenses" and to support unit 4.1: Bishop, Carrie. “Creative Commons and Open Access Initiatives: How to Stay Sane and Influence People.” Art Libraries Journal 40.4 (2015): 8–12. Web.
Bishop presents a cheerful exploration of the Tate’s mammoth enterprise to digitize and release into the public Web 52,000 works of art, many of which are still under copyright. Commonly, galleries and museums would like to broaden exposure to the artwork in their collections, but when artists or their descendants are still actively monitoring use and income, there can be a barrier between connecting the public with the art work and the needs of the artistic community. Bishop describes the Tate’s desire to license the newly digitized images under a Creative Commons license to provide clear guidelines to the public, but at the same time to respond to the fears, hopes, and wishes of their artists. The Tate decided that it could best realize its goal to "democratize access" and to connect the public with British artists through applying the CC-BY-NC-ND license—both making the images available and quelling the concerns of the artists or their estate managing family members. The article provides an interesting perspective to the discussion of “open culture” or “free culture.” Some of this freedom may come about in incremental doses. The CC license might make it possible to allow an artist to connect their work with a larger public, at the same time that it makes them confident that their work won’t be misused or appropriated in an undesired manner. Aart museums seem to have a difficult relationship with open access and Creative Commons licensing. The Getty, for instance, has a fairly complicated statement of terms that make murky all that CC transparency, so there is viewing the material and then there is repurposing the material. The result is that a slow, measured pace, while nurturing the artist along, may be the way to ultimately make CC and Open Access a norm rather than an exception.
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