I’m all about free access, and I really don’t care too much about copyright laws. Some people are big on that stuff, but I’m not. Unfortunately ignorance can bite you in the ass.

If we make it freely available – it will be shared on other sites, social media, etc…. thus what is the point of the members only section if it will get shared anyway.

Second – we really don’t hold the rights to anything in our collection. I have no accession records that state we own the rights to anything when it was donated. Many of our items the rights are still owned by the railroad or the builder, or the original photographer.

Illinois Central HS is currently fighting issues regarding misuse of digitized files, and are limiting access.

MOT is currently unable to digitize and make available ACF drawings since technically the image still is owned by ACF, even though the drawings were donated years ago…. This relates to County lawers saying they can’t do it, not ACF.

There are currently legal issues regarding “The Image” of artifacts in museum collections. I understand there is an issue going on between NS and VMT over “The Image” of 611 and 1218 and MOT is now involved with the image of 2156. That relates to its use on t shirts, prints, posters, etc….

Many museum websites have online databases that are view only, you can look, zoom in, etc, but you can’t print or download from them. I think that is what we need.

Barriger just dumped all its photos online for free, and Nick thinks it has been a good thing – BUT they legally hold the rights to those photos and can do that if they want to. We don’t really hold the rights to anything in our collection.

I guess Vince’s advise was to just put “All Rights Reserved” on everything. The question is is do we go with that advise, or do we do more research.