Sharing or ripping off?
June 9th, 2009 by Wendy PollockLast week in Milan, 
at the annual meeting of ecsite, the European Science Centre Network, in a session about art in science centers organized by Claire Pillsbury, an old topic came up: What ethical guidelines should we follow, as a field, in copying others’ work? Remo Besio of Techorama in Switzerland spoke passionately about instances he had observed in recent years of organizations profiting from sale of copies of work that had been developed by other organizations and individuals, without permission or compensation. There was at least one example right there in the exhibit hall.
The original spirit in the science center field was generous. The Exploratorium freely shared plans for their exhibits, for the cost of a Cookbook, and in that way inspired hundreds of others around the world to start their own science centers. The Cheapbook series begun by Paul Orselli and colleagues like Dan Goldwater (who contributed plans for a Harmonic Cantilever) and Steve Pizzey (who contributed Windy City, shown here) continued the tradition of generosity – a tradition with echoes in the contemporary open source movement.
There are very few museums that can afford to secure legal protection for their exhibit designs, or to defend those rights. But it was clear from the discussion in Milan that most people hope that we can embrace ethical guidelines that will help protect the spirit of common purpose and mutual aid that are such an important part of the history and culture of this field.
This topic was discusssed at length some years ago by a group that met at ASTC conferences and summarized their position in what was then the ASTC Newsletter. The guidelines they suggested are still online, here. Are there any updates or suggestions?
June 9th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I suppose that these tough economic times inevitably inspire the indignation of the IP purists in the crowd.
With all due respect, there is not a single organization or individual attached to the museum field who has not “benefited” (read that however you like) from the previous work of others. (My cynical side fears that these IP discussions hinge more on the “property” than the “intellectual” points.)
Leaving that aside, anyone interested in free exhibition design resources and downloads is welcome to visit: http://www.orselli.net/free.html
June 9th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Thank you, Paul, for the added perspective — and for your generous spirit!
June 12th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Don’t get me started. (You have.) This is a huge issue for the field, and it is very complex. As more and more museums consider the fruits of their labor “products” and commodities that must be sold in support of their financial survival (euphemistically called “repurposing” these days), we will be stuck in a market paradigm that, in the real world, is exhibiting some serious weaknesses.
There are other ways to survive, and thrive, and collective sharing is one of them. Without this spirit of sharing and supporting each other, we continuously reinvent the wheel and continually, for the most part, do mediocre work. Don Hughes, VP for Exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in a critique of an exhibition at the AAM annual meeting in Philadelphia, said something that has really stayed with me–I paraphrase it here: When one museum exhibition is poorly produced, all museum exhibitions suffer. It is difficult to benefit from knowledge gained in one museum, when you have to pay them for what they learned in their process.
I am facing that right now in one of my projects. We would happily pay SOMETHING for the plans of an individual exhibit component another museum has created, and we would give them wonderful credit, even in the exhibition itself. But we can’t afford the $50,000 for the plans, and since we would have to purchase the materials and hardware on top of that, we will have to try and design it ourselves. And it will very likely not be as good as theirs.
Are we not all trying, at the most fundamental level, to serve the public good?
June 12th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Is this a pricing issue then? From your account, it sounds as if the marketplace may help modify a price that seems too high.
A further dimension of this complex problem from a story I’ve heard more than once: A museum develops an exhibit and is willing to share the concept and plans. Then another organization begins to produce copies and sell them, giving no credit and no return to the originator – and even using photocopies of plans or photographs taken in the originating museum in its own marketing. That seems completely contrary to the spirit you’re advocating, Kathy — the ideal of a creative commons — even if it means cheaper copies will be available to other users.
So how does everyone get fairly compensated for the real work they do?
September 21st, 2009 at 6:06 pm
In the most general sense, I’ve always been a big believer in tradecraft information sharing and in seeing imitation of one’s work as flattery rather than infringement. I think that museums as public entities are all in the same business — of producing new generations of curious people, not about making money — and as such should see broad dissemination of tradecraft knowledge and techniques as positive and mutually supportive. Free dissemination of information that advances the museum cause overall should be the ethos for all public museum institutions. The devil, however, is in the details.
I’ve been very disturbed by the growing scope of the concept of property rights and how museums are often given no special consideration over businesses, in user fees for images, to take one example. Fair use is a very shaky legal construct since nothing can innoculate an institution from a lawsuit that might be too expensive to fight, whatever the merits may be. We seem to be living increasingly in a property ownership society where every conceivable thing can be called property — or be stolen. These values have been lapping over the walls of the non-profit universe for some time, blurring the boundaries that used to separate museums from mammon.
Imitation tends to happen when the work is very, very good, rarely when it is outstanding. We’ve all seen a lot of inferior knock-offs too, where the copiers clearly didn’t attempt to learn useful lessons from the originators. Some of this imitation, if done right, could be done in the spirit of improvement since sometimes the initial idea has legs but hasn’t really been optimized yet. But mere copying is different, I think, from using someone else’s original work for profit without permission. A big problem today is that so many museums are having to approach their programming as, essentially, a series of business ventures which are supposed to contribute substantial revenue as the more traditional sources dry up. And the alternative to this, trying to live above the pressures of the marketplace, really spells disaster for a lot of institutions. But it’s one thing for a museum to offer an original product for sale, the price of which supports its costs to provide the product, another thing entirely for a museum to steal another’s work lock, stock and barrel, then profit by reselling it. That’s not just unethical, it’s stealing.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Hmmm, I’m wondering if this is a question of timing as well. The 1990’s were brutal as levels of government support diminished and the scramble for other sources of revenue crawled out of the mess. I wonder further if things are settling down now some 15 years later. The emergence of “sales” departments in those science centres/museums that design and develop their own work really ratcheted up the energy on this and raised a strange level of competition between each of us. I’m seeing some relaxing as the bad copies of others’ works has shown that it is typically better to spend the extra money for exhibits from the originator. My case study was the Rocket Chair from Ontario. Quotes to other organizations were turned down as too expensive. Copies emerged, and I’ve experienced two of them. Either the sound levels were atrocious or the devices needed a staff/volunteer presence to work – neither of these an issue with the original exhibit in Toronto.
We’ve all learned to look for value, had to squeeze our funds to the best possible use. As with the open-source changes in our society, I would love to hope that more open-source (and associted acknowledgement of that source) exhibit development would raise the levels of excellence for all of us. As for the ethics of stealing; stealing is stealing, but where is the boundary between that and learning?
February 9th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Well, to restate, I think we might be able to define stealing as a knock-off that is substantially a direct one-for-one copy (which is to say not distinguished in superficial ways relating to, say, graphics or color schemes), which doesn’t offer anything new or improved over the original and which is sold for a profit without the permission of the originator.
February 23rd, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Coming from the sales perspective, I honestly think there is room for sales and collaboration – or even trade.
I think part of what I have observed, is the spirit of our “sport” – which is the intellectual challenge and rush exhibit designers, developers and “tinkerers” get from reverse engineering something that was designed brilliantly, but maybe not available for sale. In that instance, the exhibit and/or experience is created for the benefit and education of the general public: score 1 for encouraging the love of science…
However, CDM has experienced copy-cats both mildly and aggressively , from suppliers of “generic” pinscreen components that were of poor quality and subsequently went out of business (causing huge problems for the poor museums that went for quantity vs quality), as well as with individuals contacting our manufacturers and suppliers virtually bribing them to create a copy or custom mold of our product for them.
So… where does that leave us? Perhaps realizing that institutions such as the Exploratorium or Children’s Discovery Museum are not in the wrong, or doing anything detrimental to our industry by selling IP is a start. Recognizing that in some cases when IP is not available for sale, reverse engineering is a compliment to a designer and at the very heart of discovery and exploration, is a second. And, perhaps thinking about how small our industry is and how with all of this new technology and social networking it has become even smaller, those who seek to make a profit from outright stealing won’t be able to for very long…
I’m also a huge supporter of collaboration and “trade.” Unless you’re in the exact same metro area, a museum in California should benefit from a brilliant exhibit that is a hit in Wyoming, and not shy away from it simply because we all want so desperately to be original.
I think the Exploratorium’s Cookbook is a great idea. I also have a tremendous amount of respect for what Paul O. does.
What I see is an opportunity to make more ideas – IP – readily available to those who need it. But I would say to those who would be enraged at the cost of IP: What would it cost your team to create that idea from scratch. IP includes R & D which can take weeks or months in some cases. Everyone starts small, and that should be OK. That is why there are exhibit plans that fit everyone’s budget.