On 9 November 2012 08:30, Daniel Mietchen daniel.mietchen@googlemail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I am in discussion with a UK museum over the release of an image from their digital collection under more liberal terms than CC BY NC. It is of a portrait made around 1915, of someone who died before 1930. I don't know who the painter was, nor whether or when they died. I don't know who made the photo or whether the portrait is actually in the museum (I suppose it is).
Is the above information sufficient to determine the copyright status of the digital copy?
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/pdfs/copyrightflowchart.pdf is worth saving for future use :-)
As Fae says, you'll really need to determine if the painter is actually anonymous or just not known to them - it might be worth checking the ODNB/Grove etc, which often list known paintings of people, or consulting biographies to see if they have a reproduction with a name attached.
If you can identify the painter, it's life + 70, which means anyone who died in 1941 or earlier (in two months, 1942 or earlier).
If you can't, and it's "properly anonymous", it's a mess. It then comes down to whether the painting was "published" - has it ever been reproduced in print? If so, copyright expires 70 years later - so if it was published by the 1930s, you're safe. If it wasn't published but has been exhibited ("made available to the public"), copyright remains until the end of 2039, or 70 years after first exhibition if that's longer. If it's never been made available to the public - which is likely if they have a photo - then copyright remains until the end of 2039.
The 2039 provision is quite horrendous, and entirely counterintuitive - in theory, it can assign copyright to medieval works, despite the fact that the owner of such continuing copyright is entirely untraceable.