ARTCAMPUS: An experiment to teach art history in the 21st century or the bonds of IPR

Since the WCT (World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty) has been adopted in Geneva on December 20, 1996, the EC and meanwhile a lot of countries have ratified this treaty.But what does this mean for our work ? It seems that the new Copyright Treaty give us more limitations and boundaries than possibilites to use digitized informations. There is a certain ignorance or blindness of the scientists and curators using images in their daily work. Against common opinion, the use of any kind of images for teachings and for research is not free. At the moment, the project ARTCAMPUS (www.artcampus.ch) of the Institute of Art History at the University of Berne is one of just a handful online courses, which are legal in the sense of the new Copyright Treaty. What has happened with the Memorandum of Understanding, the great idea of Multi-Media Access to Europe's Cultural Heritage ? Where are the scientists fighting for their rights and where are the politicians ? In the Goettinger Declaration about Copyright for Education and Science of 5. July 2004 (www.urheberrechtsbuendnis.de) more than 260 scientific organisations and institutions and 3.500 Germanspeaking scientists have undersigned that the approach to informations worldwide for the use in education and research has to be guaranteed for anybody at any time.