2009/9/28 <wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk>uk>: That sets it out as a goal, not a demand. But getting back to the case in question - we're talking about the sort of museum that's actually a government sub-department. Thus, public domain images that the taxpayer has *already paid for*. I see nothing whatsoever unreasonable about the idea of asking-to-demanding those. They're owned by the public, not by the museum bureaucrats. - d.

Hoi, The question is if they get it. As it is published for the first time they could claim copyright. Thanks, GerardM 2009/9/28 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro(a)gmail.com>

But they have not changed the license to the pictures. What they have only done is changed the rights to part of the documentation: the basic info needed to say what it is is CC-BY-SA, which is very good, the long explanation and provenance information is NC, which is acceptable. I fail to see how this is more valuable than the images themselves. As the free part is only factual information, anyone could use it to write an equivalent description. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt(a)gmail.com> wrote:

-----Original Message----- From: wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Sent: Tue, Sep 29, 2009 5:31 pm Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc... David Gerard wrote: "There is no need to negociate anything. There is no need to change a single word from the current French copyright law. Simply have the French government's cultural institutions (museums, archives) recognize that they have been wrong until now" just doesn't read like a goal, its a demand. <<Whilst those digitalizations they may be owned by the French public, they certainly aren't owned by the German public, British, Italian, Spanish, or American public either.>> "The public" doesn't have national boundaries. "The public" means all of the public, here there and elsewhere. W.J.

-----Original Message----- From: wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Sent: Wed, Sep 30, 2009 2:58 pm Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc... wjhonson(a)aol.com wrote: the Frenc... You are confused. Lets parse the quote shall we? "Thus, public domain images that the taxpayer has *already paid for*." would be the digitization of the images that the French taxpayers have paid for. The following sentence: "They're owned by the public, not by the museum bureaucrats." refers to the digitizations that the public (the French taxpayers) have paid for. It can't possibly refer to the images themselves because in most cases those images were either given to the Nation by their owners in lieu if taxes, confiscated, or stolen during periods of war and colonialism. As such we aren't taking about "'The public' means all of the public, here there and elsewhere." but a specific set of national taxpayers.>> ------------------ Okay let's parse the meaning. Once an image has "been paid for" and is "in the public domain", that means that anyone, in this country, the next, or on Venus can use the image. Whether or not the person who said "paid for by the taxpayers" was being specific to a certain country or using a loose phrase, isn't really relevant. The image is in the public domain. That's the point. Public means all public, not limited to the whims of what the boundary of a certain country might be today.

-----Original Message----- From: wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List &lt;foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Sent: Wed, Sep 30, 2009 4:17 pm Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the Frenc... wjhonson(a)aol.com wrote: certain Suppose someone goes into the Louvre not with a camera but with a laser scanner. they digitize the entire statue, convert the point cloud into surfaces, and then from the surfaces into CNC program files. Finally they slap a block of marble on a milling machine and mill out an exact copy of the original. Whilst they don't get to obtain any copyright on the copy YOU don't get to claim that the CNC files are yours of right. Same with the digitization of a painting.>> -------------------- Are you believing that I'm stating there is a right to claim anything? Because if you are, I never did. I stated quite the opposite. Once something is in the "public domain" in any country, then you can use it. That is what I stated, and nothing more. Turning a 3-d statue into a series of computer data files is quite a different animal from turning a 2-d painting into a exactly reproduced photograph. A photographic copy, adhering to the original painting, does not enjoy a new copyright. A photograph of a painting which is in the public domain does not enjoy any new rights. Once that photograph is posted online, anyone can make a copy of it and do whatever they want with it. To prevent that, all you have to do, is take a photograph of the Mona Lisa and include your girlfriend standing next to it. That would make it unique and not merely an exact copy of the painting. I have never stated that you have a "right to demand" the photograph. I've only stated, that the photographer does not have a right to order you to cease. Quite a different animal.

I think everyone is probably a bit tired of this topic so this will be my last response. You keep positing that someone is espousing that the museums have to actively participate in providing copies of something to someone.? Has somebody claimed that?? If they did, it wasn't me.? I have never claimed, and wouldn't claim, under any sort of copyright issue, that the holder of anything is required to do anything at all.? Or has any obligation, legal or moral to do anything.? The "doing" on their part is an active participation and I've never claimed that the museum has to be active in any regard in this issue. What I have claimed is that the purported claimant, cannot stop a seizure.? If I take, without permission, without asking, without requiring anything from you.? Just take, you cannot claim that I've in violation of some perceived copyright.? That is quite different from stating that they must provide the material to anyone, or are required to, or should feel required to. W.J.

wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk wrote: Not to all encodings, only to non-creative encodings.

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 6:14 AM, Nikola Smolenski &lt;smolensk(a)eunet.rs&gt; wrote: refers to *physical property*. Given that we in Wikimedia-land only deal with digital copies we are very adept with copyright (and copyright edge-cases). But since we do not own any physical objects and therefore have no "stuff" we do not have any experience in managing access-rights. This is almost the reverse (to a certain extent) of museums which have for generations had to deal with "access issues" (like whether you can enter the museum at a certain time and how much entrance fee to charge and whether you can touch the objects) but have only recently started to deal with issues of digital copyright - people with their own cameras in the museum and people copying images off their website. Yes, if you have PD material then that is free to be re-used, but equally, no one can force you to give it to them to use. A museum can give you their PD scan but they are not obliged to and they can charge you lots of money if they wish. If you had scans of old family photographs on your computer, the fact that the scans are PD does not mean that you have to give anyone copies of those photos. But if you publish those photographs then they are fair game. There's also another layer - contract. If I pay a museum for a high-resolution copy of their image of an object (whether PD or not) I will be asked to sign a license indicating the form, duration and purpose of my usage and stipulating that I am only allowed to use the image for that purpose. This is a private contract and it effectively creates copyright-like restrictions on PD works. [This was raised in the GLAM-WIKI recommendations<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendations…AM>: "Remove "clickwrap" and contracts which place copyright-like restrictions on public domain content."]. It is my understanding that if you break this contract and do something you weren't supposed to do with the work then you can be sued - not for breach of copyright but for breach of *contract*. This won't bring the control of the work but has effectively the same costly consequence for you. Of course, it doesn't cover third-parties such as visitors to a website. So, if I license the image for my site and then someone else comes along and copies it to Wikimedia Commons this is perfectly legal because I didn't break the contract (assuming I licensed the work to be put on my website without technical protection measures). If you want to read a fantastic discussion of the reasons (some) museums give for their "no photgraphy" policy - and why that should change - then read this blog post by Nina Simon: http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/08/museum-photo-policies-should-be-as-op… -Liam [[witty lama]]

I should have said it in my previous message : the first and foremost priority for France, is that Government-owned museums allow visitors who paid their entrance ticket to carry a camera and take pictures of paintings and sculptures when the painters and sculptors died more than 70 years ago. In 2005, the Government-owned Guimet museum in Paris, which is famous for its Chinese and Japanese art collections, asked for 50€ for each non-commercial-purpose photographic shot and 5000€ for a commercial-purpose shot (1). Telling the Museum administrators that we want to use their pictures taken by their photographers is not the best message. The best message is : allow every camera carrying citizen to take his own pictures. If they want to contribute to Wikipedia with photographs taken by their photographers, it is OK but it is not a priority. (1) http://web.archive.org/web/20050305062057/www.museeguimet.fr/homes/home_id2… 2009/9/28, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 4:55 PM, Teofilo &lt;teofilowiki(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I partly agree, but keep in mind that the reason why some museum do not let visitors take photos is not necessarily copyright. For example, flashes can damage paintings, and I wouldn't like to visit a crowded museum slaloming between hundreds of photographers with tripods trying to take a picture of every single work of art present. Interesting. However, I'm not sure whether it refers to a (semi)professional shot which may require using tripods, maybe closing the room for some time to allow taking pictures and maybe use the museum as the stage for something else, or this is what they charge a visitor which wants to take a photo of his son next to a Japanese dragon. Anyway, it is interesting to see that art editors are considered as non-profit. What we want to say is that they or their photographers do not have the right to claim copyright on the photos, and that they have to rethink this business model. Of course it is a "wrong" message from their point of view, and of course they have every right not to publish the high-resolution image their photographer took (in the old days you could read it as they don't have to let you access the negative), but if they choose to publish them they cannot stop people making their own copies and using them for whatever reason. (I'm assuming PD-art applies to France, otherwise it's only a matter of good will) Cruccone

Teofilo wrote: I was in the Loire-et-Cher region a couple of weeks back and photography was allowed in nearly all the locations we visited. In the places which did have signs up saying "No photography" no one was taking any notice at all, not even the staff. In addition I had the Mairies open up the churches to record medieval frescoes, monuments, baptismal fonts, stained glass, paintings, stone carvings, etc. No problem at all. Most of them seemed genuinely pleased that someone was taking an interest. In a couple of places, as I was finishing a local dignitary would turn up to point out something I might have missed.