On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote: If the photographer is known, it's 'taken before 1 Jan 1955'. If the photographer is not known or they are anonymous or pseudonymous, it's 'taken or published before 1 Jan 1955'.

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Durova <nadezhda.durova(a)gmail.com> wrote: Right, this is the issue I raised at the start. The library "requires" permission - but on what basis? If the image is public domain, and someone else copies it and republishes it - where do they stand? If it's not copyright infringement, what is it? Contract violation? On the basis that you used the website and agreed to the library's terms and conditions, and have now violated them? Although I suspect what's also happening is the image that we see there is low quality, and you'd need permission to get a higher quality, printable version. And they'd never give permission to cc-sa it. Steve

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: This is absolutely standard, at least in Australia. For example, see the permission statement here <http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3696029>(National Library of Australia) and here <http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemLarge.aspx?itemID=6984>(State Library of New South Wales). They both state words to the effect of "you may use this for yourself but you must ask permission for anything else. This is a standard statement placed on every single record item in the collection of institutions because, more often than not, they have made a risk-assessment that they do not want to advise people about the copyright status of an item in case someone complains/sues. So, they will only give copyright advice in private and on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, because there is no metadata field about copyright status, this "you must ask us permission" statement appears next to every single item in the catalogues. This issue is raised in GLAM-WIKI recommendations "Law section - to GLAM - number 2: "Pro-actively publish the copyright status of specific content in the online collection rather than blanket access statements for the whole collection. Give guidelines for users to make their own copyright assessment" and number 4: "Remove the policy that requires users to ask permission for use of public domain content." http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendations Precisely. The approach is taken directly from the institution's policies about making copies and access with regards to the physical object and applied online. That is, there is an assumption when you go to a museum or library that you must abide by the rules of the organisation - the conditions of entry (e.g. no flash photography). So, these conditions of entry now become the "terms of use" online... They assume that by accessing their website then you are under an implied contractual agreement. It's rarely the case that the museum/library owns the copyright to the objects in their collection therefore it is not up to them to chose Creative-Commons - they don't have the right. But, what happens instead is that if you purchase a high resolution of something in their collection they will give it to you only if you sign a contract detailing the ways you are allowed to use the item. This contract is legal (perhaps immoral, but legal) and is a way of creating copyright-like restrictions where otherwise they would have expired. (however this contract is not binding on third parties who come across the re-publication). This issue is raised in GLAM-WIKI recommendations "Law section - to GLAM - number 8: "Remove "clickwrap" and contracts which place copyright-like restrictions on public domain content." -Liam [[witty lama]] wittylama.com/blog

Copyright doesn't work like that. An image is not copyrighted by itself, a "work" is, and most people would not consider an image that is simply resized to be an entirely different work to the original. Therefore, licensing a resized version differently to a higher quality original (or whatever) is simply not possible Also: "The requirement for permission to publish is based on ownership, not Does ownership actually allow you to supersede copyright like this? Surely not. - Chris

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If the image is PD, you can take a copy and do whatever you want with it. They can see that as a breach of their conditions for you using their page, and can try to block you from doing it again (IP filtering, password protection, whatnot). Legally, there's nothing they can do (IANAL). Cheers Magnus

Actually the Bundesarchiv did something along those lines with 100,000 images last December. They owned unambiguous copyright over the collection so they relicensed medium resolution versions under CC-by-sa and uploaded those to Commons while they retained full copyright over the high resolution versions. Of course Germany isn't Australia, and WMF servers are in the States, and the readers of this list are scattered across a variety of countries. It bears repeating that cultural institutions have been asserting a variety of innovative claims in order to assert proprietary control over media in their collections. One runs into these kinds of obstacles all the time when working with historic media. The claims range across copyright and contract law, often entering untested areas. There are basically four ways of responding: 1. Ignore the claims and use the material. Probably nothing bad will happen to you although you might win the 'lottery' and end up in the same legal position as Derrick Coetzee. Do you want to risk that hassle? 2. Jump through the institution's hoops. You may have qualms about acting in ways that validate an assertion of rights that you basically disagree with, but if the requirement isn't very onerous it's one clear way of avoiding problems later on. In the particular instance of this library, part of the 'permission' requirement amounts to an offer to have the staff research copyright status. If it would take about the same effort to do that research yourself then it might be worthwhile. 3. Back away sheepishly. Not very satisfying, but safe. 4. Persuade the staff to change policy. This is the approach I've been working on, one institution at a time. A group of volunteers have been pooling information and resources toward that end. We've had some successes and are gaining momentum. For more information see the open letter I coauthored for Signpost in July. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-07-13/Open_l… And one of our subsequent successes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-08-10/Tropen… If this sounds intriguing, write to me off list. Especially if you happen to live near Montreal, Canada or Santa Barbara, California. ;) -Durova On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 2:42 AM, Carcharoth &lt;carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: -- http://durova.blogspot.com/

Most of these institutions have a mission to inform the public. Openness helps fulfill that mission. In the Bundesarchiv's case, donation of 100,000 images significantly increased their sales of images. That may seem counterintuitive but if an organization is smart about it everyone benefits. We're working to build synergies. Various kinds of synergies can develop. That's one of them. -Durova On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- http://durova.blogspot.com/