Cross posting from the UK list, as I know there are many Commoners interested in "sweat of the brow" type claims by national collections in the UK, even if not resident in the UK.

Some may wish to join in on the Twitter discussion :-) https://twitter.com/Faewik/status/927492123288592384

Fae ----

Volunteers interested in GLAM may be interested to read the letter to The Times today from an extensive list of highly respected academics and museum directors, lobbying against arbitrary image fees charged by UK national museums and their doubtful claims of copyright.[1][2]

Quote: "Fees are also charged despite the fact that the artworks in question are not only publicly owned, but out of copyright (that is, made by artists who died more than 70 years ago). Museums claim they create a new copyright when making a faithful reproduction of a 2D artwork by photography or scanning, but it is doubtful that the law supports this. Museums' rules for using images are confusing and inconsistent, and do not raise meaningful funds once costs are taken into account."

Copyfraud used by GLAMs has been discussed within the Wikimedia community many times in many forums. This letter may be a useful model for the UK chapter to follow and to have a stronger public position on. The potential of GLAM projects using WMF funding may take the requirement correctly to license public domain images as public domain, as an ethical precursor for any GLAM partnership to be proposed.

Links: 1. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/Museum_fees Letter text and summary article for research purposes 2. http://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/4810_Museum_image_fees__a_call_to_arm... Bendor Grosvenor's article "Museum image fees - a call to arms" 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud Definition of copyfraud

Thanks, Fae