Vint ... you don't get it: IT'S ALL DETAILS! Why do you think lawyers get involved in this crap? (And no, Gracie, I am, most emphatically NOT a lawyer ... I just play guitar, remember?).

If the photo came out of a book, the publisher is the copyright holder for the photo ...and chances are VERY high that they themselves only were "licensed" to use it for that and that alone. Are you applying Spanish law or US law? What is the jurisdiction? YOu can't just pick and choose when it comes to that ... well, you can, but it will catch up with you. By the way, publishers can't just take a photo that they have used once before and simply "re-use" for a later edition of the book, so the photo in question would be contemporary with the textbook, so now the question becomes WHAT BOOK WAS USED and when was it published?

Taking a digital copy of that photo and using it in the manner of this installation is not "fair use" under the most lenient of definitiions (where is the publication of the critical commentary? where is the "school" for its' educational usage?). You're only clouding the issue by bringing in "fair use" ... as for unraveling the ball, you just can't be lazy and take the Wikipedia way out ... andas a matter of fact, the "virtual world" is not so wide-open as you suggest, Vint. Look at case law for digital texts and you will see that the big publishers have been patrolling the use of electronic and digital reproduction of materila for the past 30 years. What we're seeing is the backlash of creators who have been victimized by restrictive agreements and it is bringing things more out in the open.

Sorry if you that seems like a cheap shot, but I have to deal with this in the real world, where Japanese scholars who should know better are coming in to our (US) institution and taking digital photos of artifacts and documents, allegedly strictly "for personal use" and proceeding to use them for their publications and posting them to their websites without attribution. And there's nothing I cna do except have the Director write a very politely-worded but obvious note explaining that they need to at least give credit to the institution they have ripped off ...

Gracie, about the posters: the big musuems get paid big bucks to license the use of the images to poster makers. It is a BIG business for the museums. As for the use of images inteaching art history classes (I'm neck-deep in a project to digitize the entire slide collection of our Art Dept even now, so this is painfully fresh), again ... museums charge big bucks to allow slides to be made of their art works ... they license their use. We cannnot digitize the commercially prepared slides because it would violate both the license and the copyright. Ditto the creation of digital databases/collections of images for teaching. ArtSource is a very pricey product for this reason (licensing of use). If the profs shoot thier own stuff, then no worries (we hold quite a bit of that kind of material)

Being an artist and being creative are fine, but if you care about enjoying the fruits of your creative labors in this lifetime, you need to educate yourself on the rights that you have and how best to protect them and your work. As Anton (Braendle) and I have both repeatedly said, there is too much rank amateurism in SL when it comes to making art. Too many of the self-proclaimed "artists" are not taking the time to understand that there is a lot more to it than what they get away with in SL (One of the reasons that Anton was so vehement about that whole photography "debate" recently).

As for derivative works, ala Rauschenberg, it's controversial at best. Anton did some RL photos of a Serra sculpture. Nothing that could explicitly be identified as Serra's "Vortex", but if you knew the piece, you'd figure it out. To play it safe, he contacted Serra's agents and told them what he did and how he wanted to use the portfolio of work. They gave him Serra's blessings to use the images as he saw fit.

Their reasoning was as follows ... Anton was not claiming that the sculpture was his creation, only that the photographic INTERPRETATION of Serra's sculpture was his. His use of the images would not have a negative impact on the commercial value of either the sculpture or Serra's reputation. Finally, because the sculpture was in a publically-open space (in front of the Modern in Fort Worth, TX) it was, quite literally, in the public domain (it had been commissioned as a public sculpture). So Anton holds the copyright on those photos which are, effectively, derivative works of Serra's Vortex .

The less manipulative forms of derivative art are indeed problematic ... I thinkit's more of a problem if you are being negative in your portrayal of the sourcework as it opens up the possibility that you could be accused of deliberately diminishing your source/artist's financial potential ... and that way law suits lie. Same thing with music: Wierd Al is constantly doing satires ... he always asks first and is rarely denied.