The Smithsonian Institution, the publicly funded entity that manages some of America's largest archives and most venerable museums, has entered into a semi-exclusive agreement with Showtime for documentaries that rely on their material. Under the arrangement, Showtime will have a "right of first refusal" for works that use Smithsonian resources, including public domain material and expert interviews. Only "films that [make] incidental use of a single interview with a staff member or a few minutes of pictures of elements of the Smithsonian collections would be allowed."

In other words, new work that's crafted out of the Smithsonian's tax-funded archives, interviews with experts at its 19 museums, or access to its 142 million items would have to go through Showtime before release. You want to make a documentary and distribute it under a Creative Commons license? Not if Showtime wants to run it in primetime. This is unconscionable on its own, but what if the WIPO Broadcasting Treaty becomes law in the US? Showtime gets 50 years of copyright protection for the public domain material in each documentary.

The Smithsonian was created by an act of Congress "for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men." This isn't the way to do it, and they should be ashamed.

Note: I wrote this post while on a business trip in Barcelona. If you're interested in how Showtime feels about the free flow of information, you might like to know what happens when I try to visit their website: