The blog still uses a whited out example of an 1854 statue, yet the discussion is supposedly about the sculptor's copyright.
Is the Swedish court trying to imply that artists and their heirs have a near indefinite copyright period for sculpture on display in Sweden? Or is this a modern statue of a chap who died in 1854? The blurb describes the statue as being public domain, so I suspect it is just a misleading picture, it would be better to use a picture with a whited out statue that is still in copyright.
Those journalists and lawyers who support this judgment will try to spin this as being about the rights of living artists. So I'd suggest using the example of the oldest statue you can find in the database that is still in copyright, especially if the initial heirs are also long dead. A sentence in the blog post along the lines of "copyright in Sweden lasts for x years after the artist dies, so some of the artworks that the court is trying to restrict public access to are over y years old".
It might also be worth adding that Wikimedia Commons, wikimedia's main media library operates under US law. Though individuals who add or use material also need to comply with the law where they are.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
The decision specifically and repeatedly states that the commercial aspect is irrelevant, as such a database "typically has a not insignificant commercial value" – whether the images in this particular case are or can be used commercially or not. See paragraphs 21 and 23.
//Johan Jönsson
Note that "not insignificant" = significant. The decision points exactly that the commercial aspect is relevant, and the artists should have participation on it. "The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value"[1], this is what the decision says, at least according to The Guardian. I couldn't understand the original decision, even if i have had access to it. What is found in these paragraphs you've mentioned?
CasteloBranco
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/wikimedias-free-photo-database-...
2016-04-06 18:05 GMT+02:00 Castelo Branco michelcastelobranco@gmail.com:
The decision specifically and repeatedly states that the commercial aspect is irrelevant, as such a database "typically has a not insignificant commercial value" – whether the images in this particular case are or can be used commercially or not. See paragraphs 21 and 23.
//Johan Jönsson
Note that "not insignificant" = significant. The decision points exactly that the commercial aspect is relevant, and the artists should have participation on it. "The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value"[1], this is what the decision says, at least according to The Guardian. I couldn't understand the original decision, even if i have had access to it. What is found in these paragraphs you've mentioned?
In these paragraphs (and I think I meant 20 and 23, though 21 is also relevant – sorry) you find the courts argument that the commercial or lack of commercial aspect is irrelevant and that the scale is what matters. The decision is rather explicit on this point (e.g. "Huruvida förfogandet sker i kommersiellt syfte saknar betydelse"). The quote you refer to is regarding the fact that we're talking about a commercial scale: It's not about the specific ability to reuse content from this database, but the court argues that at a certain size, there's an inherent potential commercial value that the artists are entitled to. This argument is not made in the context of free licenses or others being able to reuse the content, but refers to the scope of offentligkonst.se.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, so there's always a chance I could be mistaken, but I have read both the article you refer to and the decision and while there's nothing wrong with the former, as a newspaper article, it's still a shorter article about ten pages of legal text regarding a fairly intricate piece of copyright law. I would strongly advise against doing legal interpretation without having access to the decision in question, or a good translation thereof, because there are definitely aspects the newspaper article doesn't touch.
//Johan Jönsson --
An English translation of the Swedish court decision is now available on wikimediafoundation.org.[1]
As I understand the judgment, Offentligkonst.se, as a large-scale open database, was found to unduly restrict the authors' opportunities for commercial exploitation of their own works. And indeed, in this context it doesn't matter whether the database itself is run for profit or not.
BUS's Erik Forslund explained[2] for example that municipalities pay BUS a modest fee (again, in the range of a few hundred euros) to show images of outdoor art online. A publicly available, open database removes that market, all the more so if the images are also licensed for unlimited commercial re-use – because commercial re-users are a key group that the artists could otherwise derive income from.
Forslund expressed the hope[2] that BUS might be able to sign contracts with Swedish search engine Hitta, Google and Facebook (as well as Wikimedia). He also explicitly clarified that BUS had no interest whatsoever in going after individuals posting selfies etc., and would indeed consider it inappropriate. His organisation's interest is in getting some compensation from the big internet players.
This frankly makes economic sense – quite apart from the morality of the matter (someone posting online a selfie taken in a public place is clearly not doing anything morally wrong), trying to get money from individual posters online would cost far more money than the whole effort was worth. It would be completely impracticable.
The postcard exemption exists for a similar reason, according to the court judgment (section 15): negligible commercial value, and the sheer impracticality of operating a payment scheme. Google, Facebook and Wikimedia however are a different matter. The payments BUS hopes for are roughly analogous to the payments Google makes to musicians whose music is hosted on YouTube.
[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ATheSwedishSupremeCo... [2] http://www.nyteknik.se/digitalisering/hd-ger-konstnarer-ratt-mot-wikimedia-6...
On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 7:00 PM, Johan Jönsson brevlistor@gmail.com wrote:
2016-04-06 18:05 GMT+02:00 Castelo Branco michelcastelobranco@gmail.com:
The decision specifically and repeatedly states that the commercial aspect is irrelevant, as such a database "typically has a not insignificant commercial value" – whether the images in this particular case are or can be used commercially or not. See paragraphs 21 and 23.
//Johan Jönsson
Note that "not insignificant" = significant. The decision points exactly that the commercial aspect is relevant, and the artists should have participation on it. "The court finds that the artists are entitled to that value"[1], this is what the decision says, at least according to The Guardian. I couldn't understand the original decision, even if i have had access to it. What is found in these paragraphs you've mentioned?
In these paragraphs (and I think I meant 20 and 23, though 21 is also relevant – sorry) you find the courts argument that the commercial or lack of commercial aspect is irrelevant and that the scale is what matters. The decision is rather explicit on this point (e.g. "Huruvida förfogandet sker i kommersiellt syfte saknar betydelse"). The quote you refer to is regarding the fact that we're talking about a commercial scale: It's not about the specific ability to reuse content from this database, but the court argues that at a certain size, there's an inherent potential commercial value that the artists are entitled to. This argument is not made in the context of free licenses or others being able to reuse the content, but refers to the scope of offentligkonst.se.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, so there's always a chance I could be mistaken, but I have read both the article you refer to and the decision and while there's nothing wrong with the former, as a newspaper article, it's still a shorter article about ten pages of legal text regarding a fairly intricate piece of copyright law. I would strongly advise against doing legal interpretation without having access to the decision in question, or a good translation thereof, because there are definitely aspects the newspaper article doesn't touch.
//Johan Jönsson
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