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13 Rev. Econ. Rsch. on Copyright Issues 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/rvwoecrh13 and id is 1 raw text is: Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2016, vol. 13(1), pp. 1-28 MUSEUMS, PROPERTY RIGHTS, AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF WORKS OF ART. WHY REPRODUCTION THROUGH PHOTOGRAPH SHOULD BE FREE ALAIN MARCIANO AND NATHALIE MOUREAU ABSTRACT. The law concerning the reproduction of works of art is unambiguous: the owner of the physical item does not own the right to copy and reproduce it. The copyright or right to reproduce a work of art either belongs to the artist and his/her heirs, or to everybody when the work is in the public domain. However, a large number of museums use their property rights to assume a copyright, i.e. a right to reproduce works of art. These illegal practices are the result of choosing a business model based on the desire to cross-subsidise the upstream market of the services provided to the public with the benefits obtained by monopolising the downstream market of the copies or reproductions of works of art. The objective of this paper is to show that this is not efficient. We argue that this strategy conflicts with the mission upheld by museums and prevents certain externalities from circulating in the society. 1. INTRODUCTION In this article, we discuss the practices or behaviors adopted by Museums in relation to the reproduction of their artworks and collections, including pieces in the public domain and that should be free to copy, photograph and reproduce. Understanding what museums should be doing about this issue needs to begin by looking at the laws about reproduction and copying. From this perspective, despite the differences from one country to another, the law is generally unambiguous: the physical artwork must be distinguished from the image of this artwork, which means that owning the artwork does not imply owning the reproduction of the image of the artwork. Or, in other words, the owner of a work of art - the physical item - does not have the same rights as the owner of any kind of Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the 17th International Conference on Cultural Economics (Kyoto, 21-24 June 2012), the 26th Consecutive Law and Economics Workshop (Erfurt, 27-28 March 2013), a seminar on Property and Commons: The new issues of shared access and innovation (Paris, 25-26 April 2013). We thank all the participants for their remarks and comments. Special thanks for their help to B6rengere Gleize, Richard Watt and 2 anonymous referees. Alain Marciano acknowledges the support of the University of Montpellier (research grant soutien A la recherche 2016). Nathalie Moureau acknowledges the support of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (research grant PROPICE).. I

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