[2] This practice is traditional (prior to the invention of photography, artists were charged for the right to copy the exhibited works[citation needed]) and at the end of the 20th century typically involved a one-time fee of few hundred US dollars per publication (like printing postcards or manufacturing tee shirts).
Some museums would not issue, for example, permissions to use the images to promote alcohol, their curators might abhor the notion of changing the color of Monet paintings to match the furniture, and do not want Matisse to be displayed to the accompaniment of hip-hop music.
[13] Attempts to claim copyright to copies of two-dimensional works of art in public domain are generally rejected by courts when museums try to assert them[citation needed] (for the US law, cf.
Legal scholars use terms like "copyfraud", "privatization of the public domain", "de facto perpetual monopoly", "copyright overreaching" to characterize the practice.
For example, in Italy, in addition to laws allowing restrictions on taking photographs in the museums, the "Ronchey Law" (1993, subsequently changed by multiple successive acts, the particular provision ending up as articles 106–108 of Italian Code on Cultural Goods and Landscape [it]) explicitly allows the state to charge for the reproduction of cultural goods, even when an underlying work of art is in public domain.