Liam Wyatt wrote:
So, I ask that when we copy images from
galleries/museums/libraries, or even when we take photos of the
originals ourselves, we include the comprehensive attribution
I agree that this is a good idea, but for another reason: We're
trying to provide free *knowledge* and this includes knowing who
the artist was, even if copyright law doesn't require attribution.
Whether such attribution is legally required or not, is a test of
whether your country's legislation follows the Anglo-American
"copyright" doctrine or the continental European "authors rights"
doctrine. The difference is the so-called "moral right", that
grants the author a right (of little commercial value, but
supposedly of moral importance) to be attributed and respected,
even after the copyright expires. But for us, our mission to
provide good knowledge should cover more ground than any such
legal requirement.
I have another example. The article about Swedish 18th century
arch bishop Haquin Spegel contains a portrait, stored at Wikimedia
Commons. There, the description says "author: user:Narym", which
is highly misleading. Narym was the user who uploaded this image
to the Swedish Wikipedia in September 2004, and when all images
were moved over to Wikimedia Commons in July 2006, the name in the
version history (uploader) was used to fill in the author field of
the Information template. The CommonsHelper bot (written by Magnus
Manske, operated by user:Nicke L) added that the image was
"originally" from the Swedish Wikipedia, which is also incorrect.
So, what is the crime here? What's bad? It's bad that we, as a
free knowledge project, don't provide more knowledge about the
real artist or background of the image. Even though Swedish law
(to which both Narym and Nicke L are subjects) requires
attribution, this is a very weak requirement and we're not facing
any legal threats.
The illustration in question (File:Haquin Spegel.jpg) is a woodcut
published in a magazine in 1873. Woodcuts are always based on
paintings, but I have no information about which painting was used
here. The woodcut is signed Evald Hansen, and I just wrote an
article about this Danish-Swedish xylographer. The entire
magazine is in the public domain, and several complete years have
been scanned. Many of the illustrations have been uploaded and
Commons even has a template:PD-SFJ for images from this magazine.
Next thing, I will improve the image description and link it to
the xylographer. But this is because I want to improve the free
knowledge about the artist. I'm not pushed by legal requirements.
In fact, the Australian National Gallery and similar institutions
are more helped by Wikipedia's free knowledge about artists than
hurt by our occasional failure to properly provide attribution.
--
Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -
http://aronsson.se