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Against the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) Christine Sundt What strikes me is that as historians, we are interested in what's old sometimes more so than in what's new. As such, old, forgotten art images are vital to the study and discourse of art & architectural history. I think the commercial aspects are good to mention, but we've got to argue about the purpose and use of these images. A new image of St-Sernin in Toulouse, for example, leaves out the vital pre-restoration information that is documented from the 1840s onward (several restorations are known and change the character of the building!). In producing a moneymaking book, a publisher, like Taschen, seeks new, glitzy images to entice the buyer, not the tired old images that only an historian would prefer to use and see. So too with painting. These early images are significant in showing pre-restoration states of the art and as such are often more important in scholarship. Because these images have little commercial value, they languish with their rights attached so long as they are protected under copyright. We have little hope of getting clearance because we can't find out the rightful owner and publishers are reluctant to accept images for which rights are not cleared. The sooner we can free up these images to use vigorously in publications, the more we will see images in art journals where there are now blank spaces on a page or where any reference to the image is omitted entirely.
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