Hello.

I want to add high quality images of art work to my website from the
old masters.  It is a business website and I would be using the images
for commercial purposes.  I need to have EVERY picture of art possible
from the likes of Michaelangelo, Monet, and dozens more artists.  The
website www.bestpriceart.com has exactly what I want, though I don't
know the legal implications of using their pictures of famous
paintings on my business website.  If I asked I bet they'd say I
couldn't use them.

Thanks.
Daniel

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 29 Jul 2004 07:06 PDT

Dancalio --

Many masterpieces were licensed as part of one of the business coups
of the 1990s.  One privately-owned firm contracted with major art
galleries for the digital rights -- and licenses them.

We can tell you that fascinating story and provide contact information
if that's adequate to answer your question.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Have you reviewed the collections at the National Gallery?
http://www.nga.gov/collection/collect.htm#painting

Thanks for the tip, but I don't think that's what I'm really looking
for omnivorous.

To ipfan...Wow!  What an excellent site.  I could hardly have imagined
a better website to answer this question.  The only thing that could
make it better is a wider selection.  It appears that website has only
the paintings that are actually in the National Gallery of Arts. 
There's a great selection for some artists but for others, like
Michelangelo, there's only 4 total. I have taken this idea and checked
out the websites of other great museums.  The louvre site has a
collection online that seems at least as big as that at the nga.

Ipfan.  Thank you so much.  My search is not complete, but I have
found resources greater than I had really expected from the getgo. 
I've only started this search recently so I'm sure there's more I'll
uncover.  Any more tips would be appreciated.  Should I close this
question now?  I'm not sure how much more others could add.  I guess I
consider this question closed unless someone can come up with a better
resource than the combined online archives of the various great
museums in the world.

Dancalio --

Be careful here.  For example, this is the National Gallery's copyright notice:
"The contents of this site, including all images and text, are for
personal, educational, non-commercial use only. The contents of this
site may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the
National Gallery of Art."
http://www.nga.gov/copyright/copy.htm

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

I wonder how to harmonize the notice at
http://www.nga.gov/copyright/copy.htm with 17 U.S.C. Section 105,
which provides: "[c]opyright protection under this title is not
available for any work of the United States Government."  See
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=17&sec=105

In note that the notice at http://www.nga.gov/copyright/copy.htm does
~not~ claim copyright ownership--it simply attempts to contractually
limit use of the content--sort of like a browseware license.  Thus,
the relevant inquiry is whether the nga.gov site is a work of the
federal government, and if it is, I would assert that it is difficult
for the NG to claim copyright in the site content. Say for example a
federal government employee took a photo of a public domain painting
by Boticelli and posted it on a web site maintained by the federal
government.  I think the feds would have a hard time arguing that they
own a copyright to the photo, based on Section 105 . . .

This is not a forum for formal legal advice, but if one concludes that
the nga.gov site is a work of the federal government, one wonders how
they could assert a copyright claim as to the contents . . .