It's a shame that copyright works in such a way that it allows all these old and historic pictures to be sequestered away from the public long after all the original creators are gone.
I get it; I'd like to see some of those old photos too. But I didn't spend a lifetime collecting and collating them. So I guess I'll have to settle for what I can pay for now.
Many people, myself included, don't believe that copyright should last nearly as long as it does today.
Now, not that this has much to do with the physical collection, of course; physical property is different. But if you can obtain a copy of one of these photos, in my opinion at this point you should be able to do what you want with it.
>When Gates moved the collection into the mine, he simultaneously erected a digital paywall, thereby securing the collection across both physical and digital space.
This instance is more an argument in favor of long copyrights than against them, because without copyright, there would have been no bertmann archive to begin with, and without the long copyright, it wouldn't have been preserved and digitized. (See the sorry state of early Hollywood film archives).
That said, I absolutely agree that our current copyright regime is horribly excessive, both in duration and in the hugely abused anti-circumvention provisions.
The physical images are "sequestered", and access to and control of physical items is governed by traditional property rights.