Hi Geni,
Thanks for your feedback on copyright. Rather than my personal failure or mistake, I find the argument that either simple or faithful restoration work on an ancient artefact will mean it creates new copyright for the museum unlikely, based on the absence of any evidence I have seen on many Commons deletion requests that a similar case has ever gone to court, whether in England, Wales or elsewhere. In fact I do not recall any museum in the UK ever claiming copyright in this way on a restored physical ancient artefact. The two artefacts are ancient artefacts, not recent models or excessively creatively restored, as far as I could tell by looking closely at them. The massive hole in the jug, which you can see very obviously in photo I took, is a bit of a giveaway that restoration has not been excessive. If you have any alternative evidence, it would be great to share it.
If you take this further, it would be best to open up community discussion on Commons. It would help if you could can pin down the relevant parts of the copyright act, or even better provide some documented cases, rather than making hypothecated assertions. The best place to do that is in the deletion requests on the two photographs that were opened yesterday. The links are: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:British_Mu... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:British_Mu...
As for the British Museum reference numbers, this was not an oversight on my part. No references were quoted anywhere in the exhibition, nor the exhibition guide, nor did a detailed search on the British Museum database provide any more information about these two artefacts. I have no idea why. I do have photographs of the descriptive information panels against the artefacts, but as these may be copyrighted they are not suitable for Commons. If anyone wants those photographs to help research the artefacts further, I would be happy to email them.
Thanks, Fae
On 29 July 2017 at 02:12, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 28 July 2017 at 21:36, Fæ faewik@gmail.com wrote:
Nobody believes that claiming copyright on 2,000 year old works
And this is where your failure to understand English and Welsh law and the history of artifact handling become a problem.
Your mistake is in assuming the only work here is from the 2000 year old sculptor and bronze worker. This is of course not the case. The reality is both items will have been subject to a certain degree of cleaning and "restoration" (you don't give British museum catalogue numbers so I can't look up exactly what). This is pretty common for any ah "headline" item that didn't go straight from the dig to a museum. Victorian collectors wanted complete statues for their collection and even today things can get a lot of work done to them (the Crosby Garrett Helmet for example).
The Roman statue presumably entered the UK pre-1972 (if it didn't we have bigger concerns than copyright) which means there is a good chance it is from the imaginative restoration era. Has the restorer been dead for 70 years? I don't know and I don't think you do.
The jug won't have come out of the ground looking like that. Has enough work been done to qualify for copyright or is it old enough for life+70 to have expired? I don't know. Do you?
-- geni
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