[Sca-cooks] The Cooks Source Editor Speaks at last

[Sam Wallace]

 > The finer points of copyright law? How do you become a publication's 
art director or editor without learning the basics?   I could understand 
the problem if this was her first venture into publishing, but according 
to the  article, she has worked for "decades" for at least three other 
publications.

I worked for an art school at one point as one of the IT staff (later 
the sole IT person). They have a museum arts program. Much of the work 
held by the museum is that of students, but a substantial amount is from 
donations, some anonymous some well known and documented. The museum 
director wanted to get the entire collection digitized and most of it 
online. He had no understanding of copyright law whatsoever. His 
assumption was that if it was in the collection and belonged to the 
museum, he could do anything they wanted with it or its likeness. We had 
to have a three hour meeting with him just to get across the basics of 
why he could not do what he wanted. He was in charge of teaching others 
and did so on a daily basis. Situations of this nature are inexcusable 
but more common than I would care to contemplate.

Guillaume