Good news. I received an email back from Catherine Draycott who is the Head of Wellcome
Images. She said that they were very much interested in uploading Wellcome's CC-BY
images to the Commons, and suggested we talk on the phone. I was going to suggest that
we:
a) get the project described at [1]
b) coordinate work here on commons-l
c) talk to the GLAMToolset [2] folks who have been working with Europeana and other GLAM
organizations to bulk upload images
d) think about how Wellcome's Wikipedia in Residence [3] could help facilitate the
upload
Does that sound like a reasonable way to proceed? If anyone else would like to be on the
call let me know. If there is a Commons veteran who has experience with bulk uploading and
is willing to work with the Wellcome Trust in a constructive way I’m willing to just tag
along on the call and let them take the reigns as it were.
//Ed
PS. Congratulations on the wedding Liam :-D
[1]
I see this was also announced on the WM-UK blog -
http://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2014/01/wellcome-images-freely-releases-100000…
I've copied in Jonathan who is the WMUK GLAM coordinator in case he's had any
involvement in Wellcome's announcement. Perhaps he can lend insight?
I've worked on quite a few image-release negotiations and it is possible that this
has been done this way through honest mistake, through justifed fears, through meddling of
the legal/marketing departments.... I quite like Andy Mabbett's comment on
Wellcome's blog announcement, sums up the problems (legal and technological) quite
well in my opinion:
"It’s great to have these images available, digitally, but why are you claiming
copyright over, and to be the original source of, artworks and images from books which are
already in the public domain? Why have you added a strapline underneath each image? And
why is the precess of downloading high resolution versions of these public-domain works so
tortuous, with a CAPTCHA, irrelevant terms & condition, and zipped files – why not
make them available directly?" - (comment no.3)
http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2014/01/thousands-of-years-of-visual-cultur…
I also agree with Andy's response here - to chose option 2b - take the images that we
can, label them as PD and *politely* explain (preferably in person) why we do not legally
recognise their CC-BY claim even though we WILL make every effort to attribute properly.
While we're at it, I would point Wellcome to the Europeana PD charter
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/europeana-project/public-domain-charter-en
-Liam
wittylama.com
Peace, love & metadata
On 22 January 2014 09:42, Andy Mabbett <andy(a)pigsonthewing.org.uk> wrote:
On 21 January 2014 16:53, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske(a)googlemail.com> wrote:
So, we have the following options:
1. Ignore them (pity)
Not going to happen; note work-in-progress, and discussion, at:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Batch_uploading/Wellcome_Images_…
2. Upload them as public domain and re-iterate
the National Portrait Gallery
issue, and teach them that these open content wiki people are not to be
trusted
2b politely explain to WT that their licence statement is in error,
and why, and that even if people in the UK abide by it, it is
unenforceable internationally.
3. Label them CC-BY so the Wellcome Trust can get
a mandatory attribution,
which we would do anyway
No, for the reasons stated by Christoph, and in the Commons discussion
cited above. And we would not advise re-users that the attribution is
mandatory.
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
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