Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Since its foundation, the French chapter has attempted to reach out to French cultural institutions, such as museums, and incite them to either put their images under free licenses, either allow photographers that contribute freely licensed pictures to take photographs in good conditions.
At first, to be frank, we got the cold shoulder. At the time, Wikipedia was demonized by the French media, calling it a cesspool of amateurism, plagiarism, a danger to the youth's intellect, and so on. In addition, certain members of the cultural establishment were at the time attacking Google and other big American sites, pushing their own solutions.
Things might be changing though. In 2008, I represented Wikimedia France before a commission tasked with proposing new policies to the Minister of Culture regarding the reuse of public cultural works. The Ministry of Culture is in charge of most national museums and monuments (e.g. the Louvre, the Versailles Castle...) and its agencies have large collections of photographs - but these are copyrighted by the agencies and available under unfree licenses.
Our position was as follows: unfree licenses may in the short term allow cash-strapped government agencies to earn some money from selling photographs to publishers, but in the long run they are counter-productive, because media, publishers and important sites such as Wikipedia, worldwide, prefer free and easy to obtain photographs to photographs that they need to purchase from unfamiliar foreign institutions, and thus French cultural institutions would lose visibility.
We gave the example of aerospace activities on Wikipedia, which are overwhelmingly illustrated by US government pictures, which somehow convey the impression that countries outside the US do nothing in this field. We pointed out that museums such as the Smithsonian Institution were putting up content on FlickR, and that it was inevitable that publishers and other people that want an illustration from an artist would prefer getting one from FlickR rather than ordering one from the French museums. In contrast, if French museums would release pictures under a free license, they would get free publicity - imagine what it would cost them if they wanted to advertise their exhibitions on Wikipedia (if Wikipedia accepted advertisements), whereas they can get publicity for free simply by the attribution of the photographs!
Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and besides, there are tricky issues with so-called "moral rights" that may render certain aspects of free content licenses illegal in France. Also, public institutions are pressured to make some money by themselves.
I had written a memo, which I gave to the commission. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/Wikimedia_France_Monniaux_oeuvres_publique...
This August, I received the report from the commission, with an associated letter from the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, stating that he endorsed the findings in the report. This report advocates many changes that we approve: * stop trying to make insignificant sums of money - instead release as free * cut the red tape - authorizations for reuse of content should be centralized to competent, professional services, rather than be decentralized to many institutions most of whom do not have the technical, legal and financial infrastructure to deal with them * collaborate with free content sites such as Wikipedia - more on this. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture.pdf (scanned version) http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf (OCR version)
The cultural services are reluctant to release pictures under free licenses. When I met them, they expected that it would be possible to "negotiate" with Wikipedia and get an exemption from this requirement. I explained to them that freedom was not negotiable. It was, I think, very surprising to them that Wikipedia, an amateurish organization, would dare say that to the Government!
I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of "negotiation".
In the meantime, the National Library of France (www.bnf.fr) announced it was entering negotiations with Google for digitizing their content. This would announce a sharp change in policies since when Jean-Noël Jeanneney was head of the library - Jeanneney had written a book denouncing Google's hold on the world.
I seized the occasion to make our point of view heard. On Wednesday September 16, I published in op-ed column in the national daily Libération, explaining that our cultural policies on were counterproductive - rather than fight the "American cultural invasion" as their proponents suggest, they actually reinforce this invasion by making French content invisible on the Web - because it is kept proprietary.
*** This is, I think, the first time such ideas were exposed in the mainstream media. ***
Since the report called for renewed contacts between the Ministry and free content sites, I wrote to them thanking the Minister for sending the report and telling them that we are at his disposal for further discussion with his services.
We are trying to keep up the "buzz" on these issues - see the Heritage Day email.
Just to avoid misconceptions:
I do not expect that anything will change soon in the policies of French cultural institutions. It is extremely difficult to change the policies of large, traditional organizations unless there is a strong political will to do so - and I do not think that putting up free content online is a national priority.
My foremost goal is to get the ideas of free content and free access across, to the common public and to the people in charge.
This is not so easy, because there are many misconceptions about what Wikipedia is about. For instance, contrary to what is often implied by the media, Wikipedia is not a free-for-all where anybody can do anything anytime - but many people believe it and thus are horrified by such a pandemonium, and because of this, they simply won't listen to what we say. Simply overcoming such misinformation is already considerable work. It took us years to be considered respectable enough to be heard by officials, and to get a short op-ed printed in the press. This means that in the meantime, myself and others (Florence Devouard, Pierre Beaudouin, and so on) had to go to many meetings, whose outcome many often just have been that people that did not know us would then see that we are not dangerous anarchist teenagers or raving idealists, but sensible, responsible folks.
Yann, thanks for this -- it's useful. Can I ask, have you or David put yourselves forward for the strategy project? I don't know who the best person for it would be, but it looks like the strategy project will have a task force dedicated to exactly this topic (cultural partnerships) and the experiences and views of the French chapter would be valuable there. And regardless of direct participation, we should post this summary as fodder for the task force, on the strategy wiki.
(And when I say "we should," I mean you could, or I will, or maybe Philippe would. If you've got a minute, please feel free :-)
Thanks, Sue
On 22/09/2009, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Since its foundation, the French chapter has attempted to reach out to French cultural institutions, such as museums, and incite them to either put their images under free licenses, either allow photographers that contribute freely licensed pictures to take photographs in good conditions.
At first, to be frank, we got the cold shoulder. At the time, Wikipedia was demonized by the French media, calling it a cesspool of amateurism, plagiarism, a danger to the youth's intellect, and so on. In addition, certain members of the cultural establishment were at the time attacking Google and other big American sites, pushing their own solutions.
Things might be changing though. In 2008, I represented Wikimedia France before a commission tasked with proposing new policies to the Minister of Culture regarding the reuse of public cultural works. The Ministry of Culture is in charge of most national museums and monuments (e.g. the Louvre, the Versailles Castle...) and its agencies have large collections of photographs - but these are copyrighted by the agencies and available under unfree licenses.
Our position was as follows: unfree licenses may in the short term allow cash-strapped government agencies to earn some money from selling photographs to publishers, but in the long run they are counter-productive, because media, publishers and important sites such as Wikipedia, worldwide, prefer free and easy to obtain photographs to photographs that they need to purchase from unfamiliar foreign institutions, and thus French cultural institutions would lose visibility.
We gave the example of aerospace activities on Wikipedia, which are overwhelmingly illustrated by US government pictures, which somehow convey the impression that countries outside the US do nothing in this field. We pointed out that museums such as the Smithsonian Institution were putting up content on FlickR, and that it was inevitable that publishers and other people that want an illustration from an artist would prefer getting one from FlickR rather than ordering one from the French museums. In contrast, if French museums would release pictures under a free license, they would get free publicity - imagine what it would cost them if they wanted to advertise their exhibitions on Wikipedia (if Wikipedia accepted advertisements), whereas they can get publicity for free simply by the attribution of the photographs!
Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and besides, there are tricky issues with so-called "moral rights" that may render certain aspects of free content licenses illegal in France. Also, public institutions are pressured to make some money by themselves.
I had written a memo, which I gave to the commission. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/Wikimedia_France_Monniaux_oeuvres_publique...
This August, I received the report from the commission, with an associated letter from the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, stating that he endorsed the findings in the report. This report advocates many changes that we approve:
- stop trying to make insignificant sums of money - instead release as free
- cut the red tape - authorizations for reuse of content should be
centralized to competent, professional services, rather than be decentralized to many institutions most of whom do not have the technical, legal and financial infrastructure to deal with them
- collaborate with free content sites such as Wikipedia - more on this.
http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture.pdf (scanned version) http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf (OCR version)
The cultural services are reluctant to release pictures under free licenses. When I met them, they expected that it would be possible to "negotiate" with Wikipedia and get an exemption from this requirement. I explained to them that freedom was not negotiable. It was, I think, very surprising to them that Wikipedia, an amateurish organization, would dare say that to the Government!
I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of "negotiation".
In the meantime, the National Library of France (www.bnf.fr) announced it was entering negotiations with Google for digitizing their content. This would announce a sharp change in policies since when Jean-Noël Jeanneney was head of the library - Jeanneney had written a book denouncing Google's hold on the world.
I seized the occasion to make our point of view heard. On Wednesday September 16, I published in op-ed column in the national daily Libération, explaining that our cultural policies on were counterproductive - rather than fight the "American cultural invasion" as their proponents suggest, they actually reinforce this invasion by making French content invisible on the Web - because it is kept proprietary.
*** This is, I think, the first time such ideas were exposed in the mainstream media. ***
Since the report called for renewed contacts between the Ministry and free content sites, I wrote to them thanking the Minister for sending the report and telling them that we are at his disposal for further discussion with his services.
We are trying to keep up the "buzz" on these issues - see the Heritage Day email.
Just to avoid misconceptions:
I do not expect that anything will change soon in the policies of French cultural institutions. It is extremely difficult to change the policies of large, traditional organizations unless there is a strong political will to do so - and I do not think that putting up free content online is a national priority.
My foremost goal is to get the ideas of free content and free access across, to the common public and to the people in charge.
This is not so easy, because there are many misconceptions about what Wikipedia is about. For instance, contrary to what is often implied by the media, Wikipedia is not a free-for-all where anybody can do anything anytime - but many people believe it and thus are horrified by such a pandemonium, and because of this, they simply won't listen to what we say. Simply overcoming such misinformation is already considerable work. It took us years to be considered respectable enough to be heard by officials, and to get a short op-ed printed in the press. This means that in the meantime, myself and others (Florence Devouard, Pierre Beaudouin, and so on) had to go to many meetings, whose outcome many often just have been that people that did not know us would then see that we are not dangerous anarchist teenagers or raving idealists, but sensible, responsible folks.
-- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I have, and it's linked to http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Quality#Content_Partnerships which is the page on content partnerships. :-)
Philippe
On Sep 22, 2009, at 3:06 PM, Sue Gardner wrote:
Yann, thanks for this -- it's useful. Can I ask, have you or David put yourselves forward for the strategy project? I don't know who the best person for it would be, but it looks like the strategy project will have a task force dedicated to exactly this topic (cultural partnerships) and the experiences and views of the French chapter would be valuable there. And regardless of direct participation, we should post this summary as fodder for the task force, on the strategy wiki.
(And when I say "we should," I mean you could, or I will, or maybe Philippe would. If you've got a minute, please feel free :-)
Thanks, Sue
On 22/09/2009, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net wrote:
Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Since its foundation, the French chapter has attempted to reach out to French cultural institutions, such as museums, and incite them to either put their images under free licenses, either allow photographers that contribute freely licensed pictures to take photographs in good conditions.
At first, to be frank, we got the cold shoulder. At the time, Wikipedia was demonized by the French media, calling it a cesspool of amateurism, plagiarism, a danger to the youth's intellect, and so on. In addition, certain members of the cultural establishment were at the time attacking Google and other big American sites, pushing their own solutions.
Things might be changing though. In 2008, I represented Wikimedia France before a commission tasked with proposing new policies to the Minister of Culture regarding the reuse of public cultural works. The Ministry of Culture is in charge of most national museums and monuments (e.g. the Louvre, the Versailles Castle...) and its agencies have large collections of photographs - but these are copyrighted by the agencies and available under unfree licenses.
Our position was as follows: unfree licenses may in the short term allow cash-strapped government agencies to earn some money from selling photographs to publishers, but in the long run they are counter-productive, because media, publishers and important sites such as Wikipedia, worldwide, prefer free and easy to obtain photographs to photographs that they need to purchase from unfamiliar foreign institutions, and thus French cultural institutions would lose visibility.
We gave the example of aerospace activities on Wikipedia, which are overwhelmingly illustrated by US government pictures, which somehow convey the impression that countries outside the US do nothing in this field. We pointed out that museums such as the Smithsonian Institution were putting up content on FlickR, and that it was inevitable that publishers and other people that want an illustration from an artist would prefer getting one from FlickR rather than ordering one from the French museums. In contrast, if French museums would release pictures under a free license, they would get free publicity - imagine what it would cost them if they wanted to advertise their exhibitions on Wikipedia (if Wikipedia accepted advertisements), whereas they can get publicity for free simply by the attribution of the photographs!
Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and besides, there are tricky issues with so-called "moral rights" that may render certain aspects of free content licenses illegal in France. Also, public institutions are pressured to make some money by themselves.
I had written a memo, which I gave to the commission. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/Wikimedia_France_Monniaux_oeuvres_publique...
This August, I received the report from the commission, with an associated letter from the Minister of Culture, Frédéric Mitterrand, stating that he endorsed the findings in the report. This report advocates many changes that we approve:
- stop trying to make insignificant sums of money - instead release
as free
- cut the red tape - authorizations for reuse of content should be
centralized to competent, professional services, rather than be decentralized to many institutions most of whom do not have the technical, legal and financial infrastructure to deal with them
- collaborate with free content sites such as Wikipedia - more on
this. http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture.pdf (scanned version) http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf (OCR version)
The cultural services are reluctant to release pictures under free licenses. When I met them, they expected that it would be possible to "negotiate" with Wikipedia and get an exemption from this requirement. I explained to them that freedom was not negotiable. It was, I think, very surprising to them that Wikipedia, an amateurish organization, would dare say that to the Government!
I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of "negotiation".
In the meantime, the National Library of France (www.bnf.fr) announced it was entering negotiations with Google for digitizing their content. This would announce a sharp change in policies since when Jean-Noël Jeanneney was head of the library - Jeanneney had written a book denouncing Google's hold on the world.
I seized the occasion to make our point of view heard. On Wednesday September 16, I published in op-ed column in the national daily Libération, explaining that our cultural policies on were counterproductive - rather than fight the "American cultural invasion" as their proponents suggest, they actually reinforce this invasion by making French content invisible on the Web - because it is kept proprietary.
*** This is, I think, the first time such ideas were exposed in the mainstream media. ***
Since the report called for renewed contacts between the Ministry and free content sites, I wrote to them thanking the Minister for sending the report and telling them that we are at his disposal for further discussion with his services.
We are trying to keep up the "buzz" on these issues - see the Heritage Day email.
Just to avoid misconceptions:
I do not expect that anything will change soon in the policies of French cultural institutions. It is extremely difficult to change the policies of large, traditional organizations unless there is a strong political will to do so - and I do not think that putting up free content online is a national priority.
My foremost goal is to get the ideas of free content and free access across, to the common public and to the people in charge.
This is not so easy, because there are many misconceptions about what Wikipedia is about. For instance, contrary to what is often implied by the media, Wikipedia is not a free-for-all where anybody can do anything anytime - but many people believe it and thus are horrified by such a pandemonium, and because of this, they simply won't listen to what we say. Simply overcoming such misinformation is already considerable work. It took us years to be considered respectable enough to be heard by officials, and to get a short op-ed printed in the press. This means that in the meantime, myself and others (Florence Devouard, Pierre Beaudouin, and so on) had to go to many meetings, whose outcome many often just have been that people that did not know us would then see that we are not dangerous anarchist teenagers or raving idealists, but sensible, responsible folks.
-- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ foundation-l
-- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation
415 839 6885 office 415 816 9967 cell
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Well done!
That sounds like the most constructive engagement any part of the overall project has had on opening up large swaths of external content, that I can recall.
Congratulations to everyone involved in France.
My reaction to this report is tears, because it is terrible : they use the keyword "public domain" only once, talking about a set of 4500 American Library of Congress pictures on Flickr (1), only to contradict it a few lines below when they talk about "rights holder" for the works by Ingres (2), a painter who died more than 70 years ago. French GLAM administrators live in old castles like the Louvre which were built during the Monarchy, before 1789, and they have kept the mentality of that era. Their idea of government is to increase the King's properties and benefits. Despite their claim to the contrary, they ignore the interest of the public.
See also page 19 (3) the connection they make between "libre de droits" (a very polysemic wording which can mean anything from public domain, to royalty free, or even free licenced) and "non commerciale" (and they say they have a lawyer among their editorial team!). Not even once do they hint that commercial use is allowed when a work is in the Public Domain.
(1) recommandation n°1 page 17 (pdf OCR version page 12) (2) recommandation n°2 page 18 (pdf OCR version page 13) (that part is translated into English in the message forwarded by Kat Walsh 2009-09-22) (3) recommandation n°3 page 19 (pdf OCR version page 14)
pdf OCR version: http://david.monniaux.free.fr/pdf/rapport_culture_ocr.pdf
2009/9/22, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com:
Well done!
That sounds like the most constructive engagement any part of the overall project has had on opening up large swaths of external content, that I can recall.
Congratulations to everyone involved in France.
David Monniaux said : "release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary."
I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full resolution pictures of Public Domain works. Because this is what the French copyright law is saying. 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, by adding copyright notices on Public Domain works (in France: non-poshumous works whose authors have been dead for more than 70 years).
If someone has another opportunity to write an article in Libération or elsewhere, please denounce the copyright notices added by the Musée d'Orsay on a picture like the photograph of Louis Blanc by photographer Etienne Carjat who died in 1906 (1).
Please denounce the copyright notice added by Musée Carnavalet on a bidimensional work like the Declaration of Human Rights by Le Barbier (who died in 1826) (2). And don't tell me that a school teacher can use this work at school with a 400x400 px size, like what is available to them through the new agreement signed between the French ministry of Education and authors' representative bodies (3). A teacher needs to show his pupils every details on the picture.
Negociating small size pictures could be only a lower level priority concerning truely copyrighted works when the artists are still alive and need money to buy their bread.
(1) ©photo musée d'Orsay / rmn on http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/index-of-works/notice.html?no_cache...
(2) © musée Carnavalet, © direction des musées de France, 2008 Droits photo © musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet on http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIE...
(3) http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid48874/menj0900756x.html
2009/9/22, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net:
Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
[...]
I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of "negotiation".
2009/9/25 Teofilo teofilowiki@gmail.com:
I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full resolution pictures of Public Domain works. Because this is what the French copyright law is saying. 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, by adding copyright notices on Public Domain works (in France: non-poshumous works whose authors have been dead for more than 70 years).
[...]
Negociating small size pictures could be only a lower level priority concerning truely copyrighted works when the artists are still alive and need money to buy their bread.
Oh yeah, we need people to push in all directions at once at all strengths at once.
- d.
I think our prioritory focus should the Public Domain, not least because the new (undisclosed yet) "digital clause" to be used on French governement GLAM websites will be experimentally tested on the website of the Claude Monet exhibition at Grand Palais in Paris from October 2010 to January 2011. Claude Monet is a painter whose works are in the Public Domain because he died more than 70 years ago.
References:
French : http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2009/09/10/les-dix-travaux-de-marin-ka...
English : http://artforum.com/news/mode=international&week=200938
2009/9/25, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
Oh yeah, we need people to push in all directions at once at all strengths at once.
Hoi, The world is not so simple. When we accept material from a GLAM in a low resolution, we should be happy with what we get. When a GLAM considers this an acceptance that this material is copyrightable they are wrong. When we accept material we get it with annotations, we get it with all the aspects that make this material worthwhile.
Our Commons material is useless if it was not for our categories, the annotations of the material that we store. This is in my opinion the most important part of the picture because this is what gives our material relevance and makes it possible to find it. This is at the same time the biggest problem of Commons. You can only find things when you know your English. Thanks, GerardM
2009/9/25 Teofilo teofilowiki@gmail.com
David Monniaux said : "release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary."
I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full resolution pictures of Public Domain works. Because this is what the French copyright law is saying. 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, by adding copyright notices on Public Domain works (in France: non-poshumous works whose authors have been dead for more than 70 years).
If someone has another opportunity to write an article in Libération or elsewhere, please denounce the copyright notices added by the Musée d'Orsay on a picture like the photograph of Louis Blanc by photographer Etienne Carjat who died in 1906 (1).
Please denounce the copyright notice added by Musée Carnavalet on a bidimensional work like the Declaration of Human Rights by Le Barbier (who died in 1826) (2). And don't tell me that a school teacher can use this work at school with a 400x400 px size, like what is available to them through the new agreement signed between the French ministry of Education and authors' representative bodies (3). A teacher needs to show his pupils every details on the picture.
Negociating small size pictures could be only a lower level priority concerning truely copyrighted works when the artists are still alive and need money to buy their bread.
(1) ©photo musée d'Orsay / rmn on
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/index-of-works/notice.html?no_cache...
(2) © musée Carnavalet, © direction des musées de France, 2008 Droits photo © musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet on
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIE...
(3) http://www.education.gouv.fr/cid48874/menj0900756x.html
2009/9/22, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net:
Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org
[...]
I proposed a way out: release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary. The suggestion has been retained by the commission - even though they still seem to toy with this idea of "negotiation".
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Hello GerardM,
I follow you on the multilingual issue. Some of the manyfold copyright symbols I quoted in my previous message might apply to the annotating text, and let alive creative text writers have the possibility to sell their text for money. But that should not allow them to add a copyright symbol on a photograph taken before 1906 by somebody else.
The topic raised in this discussion is not every GLAM. It is those GLAM paid with the taxpayer's money which are part of the government administration. I think the government should respect scrupulously what the lawmaker is saying in the copyright law concerning Public Domain. The Wikimedia Foundation and Chapters should not provide help to civil servants wanting to have more than what the lawmaker allows them to have. If the French Chapter capitulates in front of the civil servant lobby, then the French Chapter loses any kind of representativity of the public's interest. Ultimately, the French Chapter would lose the public's confidence.
2009/9/25, Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Hoi, The world is not so simple. When we accept material from a GLAM in a low resolution, we should be happy with what we get. When a GLAM considers this an acceptance that this material is copyrightable they are wrong. When we accept material we get it with annotations, we get it with all the aspects that make this material worthwhile.
Our Commons material is useless if it was not for our categories, the annotations of the material that we store. This is in my opinion the most important part of the picture because this is what gives our material relevance and makes it possible to find it. This is at the same time the biggest problem of Commons. You can only find things when you know your English. Thanks, GerardM
Teofilo wrote:
David Monniaux said : "release lower resolution pictures under free license, keep high resolution pictures (those suitable for art books, posters and so on) proprietary."
I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full resolution pictures of Public Domain works. Because this is what the French copyright law is saying. 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, by adding copyright notices on Public Domain works (in France: non-poshumous works whose authors have been dead for more than 70 years).
Well you're probably not going to like this but I cannot understand the mentality that thinks that just because an image is in the Public Domain they have a right to demand someone's digital representation of that image. Its absolutely crazy and I await the demand for the divvying up of William Blake's copper plates, C19 lithographic plates, and Daguerreotypes.
David Monniaux said: "only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer;"
No, it is the opposite. The new French Intellectual Property Code says that the civil servant author remains the copyright owner of his work whenever the work is used outside government purposes. See articles L111-1 and L131-3-1 of the Code. So for the Wikimedia projects' purposes, the copyright holder is the civil servant himself or herself, not the government.
Only in rare cases when the purposes of the Wikimedia projects and the purposes of the French government overlap, could the government be considered as being the copyright holder.
L111-1: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do?idSectionTA=LEGISCTA000006161633... L131-3-1: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT00000606...
2009/9/22, Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net:
Hello, I think this is worth a larger audience. Yann
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Commons-l] a heads-up on Wikimedia France's adventures with the French cultural authorities Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:51:12 +0200 From: David Monniaux <David . Monniaux @ free . fr> To: commons-l@lists.wikimedia.org [...] Note that it is not out of ill will that museums and other institutions refuse to release pictures under a free license. There are some legal difficulties involved - sometimes they do not own the rights to the pictures (only in 2006 it was established for sure that rights to works done by civil servants as part of their duties belonged to their employer; also, they sometimes employ private photographers), and
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