An entertaining discussion - let's see if I understand the essence of
the thread...
Facts:
High resolution photos (of the Dead Sea Scrolls) were recently released
under an Israeli copyright.
(Obviously this does not constitute copyright of the scrolls themselves.)
A great deal of technical and creative effort went into the preparation
and conservation of the scrolls before photography began.
Scholarship - the interpretation of the relationship of fragments to the
entire document
The photographers made many technical and creative decisions before
obtaining the final images that were released.
Differences of opinion:
What exactly has been protected under copyright?
Pro: the added value - preservation, conservation, scholarship,
enhancement, etc.
Con: nothing
Unanswered questions:
What rights restrictions were placed on the copyright? Was it "all
rights reserved", attribution only, etc?
Why was the decision made to release the work under copyright rather
than a Creative Commons license?
Is this an adequate summation?
On 9/29/2011 6:11 AM, foundation-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
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On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 5:58 AM, Nikola Smolenski<smolensk(a)eunet.rs> wrote:
> On 29/09/11 04:12, Anthony wrote:
> >> You need to reread what I said. ?I was not making a pro-copyright
argument.
>
> You need to rewrite what you wrote so that it reflects what you meant.
> You were making a pro-copyright argument.
Let me be clear, then. I have no
position on the copyrightability of
this image, neither in the US nor elsewhere, neither on whether or not
this image is copyrighted, nor on whether or not it should be
copyrightable.
I also don't see why copyrightability matters. Surely even if the
images are copyrighted they can be used by WMF under the doctrine of
fair use. And even if they are not copyrighted, it's not clear to me
how the underlying images can even be obtained without committing a
felony of exceeding authorized access to a computer.