Digital Reuse and Online Availability of Visual Artworks

We study how copyright impacts the distribution and reuse of images in the visual arts sector, exploiting the discontinuity at the 1926 US public domain cutoff together with cross-country variation between US and European museums. We find that public domain status raises artist-level image availability on Useum, a major image aggregator, by approximately 19 percent relative to comparable copyrighted artworks. Onward reuse of Useum images across the web is substantial - an artwork image appears on 76 additional web pages on average - and is higher for public domain artworks, though estimates are statistically significant only in some specifications. Moreover, digital surrogates of public domain artworks provided by museums are of higher average image quality (resolution) than surrogates of comparable copyrighted works. Industry norms appear to help museums interpret fair use rules and encourage them to make low-resolution surrogates of copyrighted artworks available, limiting their exposure to clearance costs and litigation risk.