In response to the straw poll, Ken Hamma noted: "Let this stand for the whole (without addressing the subsequent 'we agree' options as it goes to an underlying assumption in this proposal. It is unclear that this is the best model in that it considers separately the licensing to academic institutions, a relatively small part of current licensing."

Ken's observatioon is of course accurate. Indeed it is BECAUSE educational licensing is such a small part of current museum licensing, and because it is so unprofitable (because of the very favorable rates we usually provide) that it is such a good place to begin the consortium. One of the concerns some museums (not all, by any means) have expressed is that a licensing consortium not compete with current licensing which they see as a money maker. Another reason educational licensing is a good place to begin is that educational institutions clearly can't be licensing from thousands of museums, yet they want to have access to a critical mass of the cultural record. A third reason is that educational institutiuons want to allow people to do thing (such as modifying the work) which we wouldn't license others to do usually, but can see reasons to allow under controlled circumstances. If the consortium creates a market for educational licenses, and earns income for its members to capture more content to this library, the individual members will have digital data to license on their own, through other organizations, and perhaps in this consortium with different licenses. David