Anthony White, one of our CIs from Melbourne University, just emailed me this link on the possibilities of collaborative interdisciplinary work in art research and digital humanities. This article doesn’t discuss issues of copyright, but it certainly makes clear how the mess of image copyright in digital age (and the risk adverse positions that many institutions need to adopt) presents challenges to art and design research, particularly to projects with a free and open source ethos such as DAAO. We have find that most copyright holders once contacted, are happy to share, but the resources required  for clearing copyright are  onerous.

But attitudes are changing. The introduction of thumbnail images into daao as reference tools to source images was a huge milestone for DAAO and augurs well for future collaborations around image based research.

http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/art-history-failing-internet/