--- On Fri, 8/22/08, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
From: teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Bridgeman v. Corel worldwide for Wikimedia Commons - yes or no? To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Friday, August 22, 2008, 4:48 AM I just photographed individual plants, so layout does not come into question.
There was no sign with a copyright claim or remark about photographs at the entrance - in fact it was hard to find an entrance at all. The only sign we found was a wooden sign "botanical garden" - that direction.
In hindsight, there may have been a text or direction on the walls of the refugio (mountain hut), some 100 meters away, but we were glad to have located the botanical garden at all, and didnt think of it.
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Nikola Smolenski smolensk@eunet.yu wrote:
Cary Bass wrote:
teun spaans wrote:
While on holiday in Italy i took some pix of
plants in a botanical
garden.
There was no admittance fee, it was publicly
accessible.
Can i upload the pix of the plants I took
there, or does the owner of
the
botanical garden has some form of ownership?
This is not to say that the botanical garden
doesn't claim restriction
on the use of images taken within its walls (in
my experience,
non-commercial clauses are the norm). In fact,
such restrictions are
quite commonplace for botanical gardens,
zoological parks, and many
other facilities. This should not be mistaken
for a claim of copyright;
and at most they might do is deny you access to
their property in the
future.
Actually, I think that a botanical garden could claim
copyright on plant
layout or somesuch. I'm not aware that this has
ever happened, however,
and of course panorama freedom would apply. Also not a
problem when
photographing individual plants, unless they are
[[living sculpture]]s.
Concerns about restrictions placed on images by way of admittance, although a real issue, is not a copyright issue. These are instead a contract issue and while this is binding on the photographer, is does not apply to the image like copyright does. For example a photographer pays to atttend a museum exhibit and the ticket states attendees may use images only for non-comercial purposes. That photagrapher could be sued for a breach of contract if they sold an image they took at the exhibit. But if they upload an image to Commons. They have not used the image commercially (they provided it free of charge to a non-profit) and have not violated the contract. Everyone else in the world that did not purchase a ticket to this exhibit is not bound by any contract and may do whatever is allowed by the copyright.
Birgitte SB
Some discussion on this topic at: http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/05/anti-piracy-scam-canada-insulted-ag...