2009/3/30 Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt@gmail.com>:
> Although a "non-free" project might be useful - I have my doubts - the case
> that Gerard is talking about would not be affected by it. It is just the
> standard practice of museums to not want to "stick their neck out" and make
> a legally binding statement that the images are PD. For example, the
> Powerhouse Museum (in Sydney) publishes its "Tyrrell photographic
> collection" on Flickr under the "no known copyright restrictions" license -
> many of these are now copied into Commons. This is in spite of the fact that
> every single one of the images was taken before 1929 which makes them
> definately PD.
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum/sets/72157604376512011/
> It is just the legal department requirement that they not make a
> legally-binding statement. It is sad, but true.
>
> I believe these photos are in the same situation as what Gerard is talking
> about? Is this a reasonable comparison? These Tyrrell collection images
> definitely belong in commons, despite the Museum not making the
> legally-binding PD assurances, and therefore I believe that on this basis
> other museums in similar circumstances should be welcomed with open arms.
From Gerard's initial post I understood that the main museum's problem
is dealing with copyright issues strictly. They don't have resources
for that and, besides that, it is not rationally to deal with
copyright issues strictly in such circumstances.
I understood from Gerard's initial post that the question was not about their lack of resources but their/our legal concerns about copyright. Gerard: can you please confirm this either way?
First, why do they need us or Flickr? One museum in Netherlands should
have enough money to pay for servers: for 1000 EUR per month it is
possible to rent more than enough servers for them and I am sure that
some data center in Amsterdam would rent to them servers under much
better conditions. The reason is simple: they don't know how to do
that without a help from outside.
I do not believe this is a correct understanding. Museums (such as my previous example of the Powerhouse Museum) are not working with Flickr because they don't have the resources to host their own image collection online. They are working with Commons and/or Flickr because the realise that it is in those places where the "audience" can be found. Are you suggesting that the institutions that are involved with "Flickr Commons" (which include the US library of congress) are doing so because they don't have a proper web server of their own?!
http://www.flickr.com/commons?PHPSESSID=ea7b4da468f5935f24b65f41dbfc356f
Now, if they don't know how to solve something like that logistically,
I am sure that they are far away of any useful kind of sorting their
materials. I am almost sure that their categorization of photos
(inside of hard disk folders or, worse, at CDs, DVDs or Blue Rays) is
something like: (1) photographs which we've got from donor X; (2)
photographs from 19th century in good condition; (3) photographs which
had been made by famous photographer Y and his family; (5) other
photographs of buildings; (6) color photographs made before WWII; (7)
photographs of Dutch cities; (8) other photographs in good
condition... (Note that just condition 2 is useful for us.)
In other words, they are not able to do the query like "select id from
photographs where cdate<=1928-12-31". Not to mention other conditions
which may raise number of useful photographs. This means that they
would have a significant logistic problem if they are willing to deal
with Commons.
This assumption is based on (what I believe to be) the false conclusion that the institution is technically incapable and "need our help".
So, we have three options:
* Not to do anything with them directly, but to wait for their
cooperation with Flickr and after that to take those images.
* To find volunteers to cooperate with them.
* To make a generic option for all such cases.
*If* we want to do that, I think that the third options assumes less
amount of wasted efforts than the second option.
Assuming they didn't know how to categorise/catalogue/host their own collection then perhaps this conclusion would be correct. But working on the assumption that they are a perfectly competent institution then there is no reason not to trust their claim that they have made every effort to discover any underlying copyrights.
Gerard - can you please clarify the question: are we talking about an institution that doesn't know how to host the images themself, or are we talking about an institution that would be working with Flickr:Commons if we don't "catch them" first?
-Liam
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