Copyright law offers exceptions for archives and museums to reproduce copyrighted works without infringing. This means that archivists can focus on preserving and maintaining valuable materials whose owners might be difficult to track down or who might otherwise demand payment that would make it prohibitive for archives to exist at all.
Lately, I have been working on a couple of projects relating to archival collections of copyrighted work (as it turns out there are a good number of museums and archives in Los Angeles who have to contend with copyright issues) and copyright law for museums. As part of this process, I have spent some time with Section 108 of the Copyright Act. Section 108 provides, in part, “Except as otherwise provided in this title and notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for a library or archives, or any of its employees acting within the scope of their employment, to reproduce no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work”.
Let me break that down a little. This means that under certain conditions, archives or libraries can duplicate copyrighted works without being infringers. There are conditions, though:
- The duplication can’t seek commercial advantage. In other words, you would not be in the clear if the goal was to sell copies of the duplicated work.
- The museum or archive must be public. This means that the exceptions would not apply to personal archives or home museums.
- The duplicated work includes the original copyright notice. Wherever possible, and where the original work includes a copyright notice, the duplicate work should include that notice, too.
This is a super high-level outline of the copyright provisions for archivists and museums, and if you want to know more, a good place to start would be the Section 108 Study Group. They have some helpful materials on how the copyright laws work for museums and archives.
If you need more specific help, it would probably be wise to get in touch with an attorney early on in your project. Things like exceptions to copyright law can be finicky and specific, and failing to follow the statute exactly could lead to more liability than one would hope. That said, none of the above is intended to be legal advice.
However, if you do need more legal advice on how the copyright law applies to archives or museums, you are more than welcome to get in touch.
