Geni is right; professional photographers who own an uncontroversial
copyright over an image are completely within their rights to relicense and
upload a low resolution version. That's what the Bundesarchiv did with
100,000 images last December.
It doesn't really facilitate those negotiations, either with photographers
or with cooperative institutions, to sidestep discussion about the
cooperative alternatives and refocus on one legal threat. This is our
opportunity to build upon Noam's article and create new synergistic
relationships; let's make the most of it.
-Durova
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote:
On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 5:06 PM,
geni<geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
2009/7/20 Carcharoth
<carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>om>:
It would be interesting to compare why
low-resolution is considered OK
here, to support and encourage the revenue stream of a professional
photographer, but not in the case of the National Portrait Gallery
(where the underlying works are public domain), and the revenue stream
is (in theory) supporting the digitisation costs.
Because the photographers copyright claim is legit. Under US law the
National Portrait Gallery's isn't.
Not copyright. Revenue stream.
Freedom. Not beer money.
Something being in the public domain doesn't mean you can't make money
out of it. The question is whether you are restricting access by
others to the originals. If the NPG gave people the option of either:
a) Buying our high-resolution images to fund our digitisation program
and our general cultural mission (because the government says we have
to generate some of our own funding).
Or:
b) Allowing access for professional scanners and photographers to
obtain scans to release under a free license.
What would the response be?
This strikes at the heart of why some people do react as if people are
stealing something from the NPG. In effect the NPG are restricting
access (and in a sense 'stealing' the public domain), and in another
sense, people are 'stealing' by piggybacking on the efforts of the NPG
who digitised the images. Ethics, here, not copyright.
The NPG almost certainly wouldn't agree to (b), but if they did, what
would the case be then? "Oh, we can't afford to pay for people to come
and scan the pictures, so we will just use the ones you've produced
instead." Or would Commons and the WMF organise a parallel scanning
effort that would duplicate what had already been done? Seems a waste
of time and resources, doesn't it? But when someone says "there is a
photograph here of something on public display, can we use it?", and
the answer is "no, the photograph is copyrighted, go and take your own
photograph", we see the same duplication of effort and resources.
Carcharoth
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