In today's global economy, knowledge capital, as opposed to physical capital, is central. The rights of content providers need to be considered with and interests of content users. Higher education institutions in the UK have signed up to the DACS (Design and Artists Copyright Society) Agreement. By this agreement the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) are permitted to include all artistic works in its licences and for DACS to receive a share of that revenue. In Ireland, the agreement between the Irish Copyright Licensing Agency (ICLA) and the Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation (IVRO) appears to be a similar arrangement.
Nowadays museums and other cultural institutions are increasingly making their collections available online. Broadly speaking, galleries and museums in the United States will only allow users to browse their online collections. The downloading of images is only permitted for personal use. Hyerlinks gallery sites and their image collections can be legally served online. In some cases, sites request that the hyerlink can only legally operate if it opens in a separate window of the browser. Broadly speaking, in the UK and Europe it is the responsibility of the individual or institution to obtain permission from copyright holders or their agents before a reproduction of works or any other content is made, or this will constitute an infringement of copyright. In Europe, the principal copyright collecting societies are: ADAGP for France, BILDKUNST for Germany, VEGAP for Spain and ARS for the United States.
Wikicommons on Wikipedia is a repository of free content images, sound and other multimedia files. Many of the art images on Wikipedia are in the public domain in the United States under the terms of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) 1998, but this may not be the case in other countries. So, the copyright status of images needs to be checked on an individual bases.
