[Empeg-forsale] Re: For Sale: 96GB Empeg Mark2 Smoke Lens w/ Tuner Mod

[Douglas Burnside]

No matter how good photography gets, I would never walk into a museum (or poster store for that matter) and start taking pictures of someone else’s creation without paying for it,

Y'know, that raises an interesting point.  

Would it be ethical or legal for me to visit a museum and photograph a one-of-a-kind picture (like "Mona Lisa") with the intent of making an 8x10 or maybe a 16x20 print from it and hanging it up in my bedroom?  Obviously I cannot purchase the original even if I wanted to and had the means to do so.  And just as obviously my reproduction of it is only somewhat like the original -- a different size, printed on photo paper and not oil-on-canvas, the character of the reproduction is quite different from the original, but nonetheless similar enough to be enjoyaable.

When you consider that there are probably literally thousands (if not millions) of different reproductions of that painting already floating around, what are the ethics of my taking my own photograph of the original?

tanstaafl.