If we forget about politics and who-did-what, what is the common grounds between "us" and "them"? To me it seems like they want us to use their material, but that they are scared to let go of a possible income. This seems fairly similar to the Galleri NOR -case.
Would it be possible for us to define an acceptable resolution that is also acceptable for them? They have a lot more material available and to me the whole thing seems to be less than optimum for both parties. They want to get the material known, but also have the option to sell high resolution versions. We want to illustrate articles, but have no need to sell our copies, neither do we need highres versions - we infact downsample the versions.
John
2009/7/17 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
If we forget about politics and who-did-what, what is the common grounds between "us" and "them"? To me it seems like they want us to use their material, but that they are scared to let go of a possible income. This seems fairly similar to the Galleri NOR -case. Would it be possible for us to define an acceptable resolution that is also acceptable for them? They have a lot more material available and to me the whole thing seems to be less than optimum for both parties. They want to get the material known, but also have the option to sell high resolution versions. We want to illustrate articles, but have no need to sell our copies, neither do we need highres versions - we infact downsample the versions.
This is in fact an apposite question - Erik has said WMF's in negotiation with the NPG:
"Quick note: The National Portrait Gallery contacted us to see if we can find a compromise regarding the images in question, and we’ve entered good faith discussions with them. Feel free to point this out in relevant places."
That's a *really good thing*, because a lawsuit would be stupid for both of us. And working with people is always better than working against them.
(The real problem, IMO, is funding - that governments tell galleries they have to make money from exploiting the works in their possession. This was barely workable last century, and is increasingly untenable in this one. This will require working with ministries of culture.)
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
- d.
2009/7/17 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
Some kind of joint fundraiser to pay for complete digitalization in return for the NPG dropping their copyright claims perhaps. But that simply leaves us with the same problem with say the national maritime museum.
The release low res images as PD approach won't work in this case. We know the hi res stuff is PD in the US so have no real incentive not to use them (and if we don't others will).
geni wrote:
2009/7/17 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
Some kind of joint fundraiser to pay for complete digitalization in return for the NPG dropping their copyright claims perhaps.
That would be a great outcome, and I would put some money helping the digitalization of their work if the NPG dropps their copyright claims.
But that simply leaves us with the same problem with say the national maritime museum.
The release low res images as PD approach won't work in this case. We know the hi res stuff is PD in the US so have no real incentive not to use them (and if we don't others will).
Regards,
Yann
2009/7/17 Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net:
geni wrote:
2009/7/17 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
Some kind of joint fundraiser to pay for complete digitalization in return for the NPG dropping their copyright claims perhaps.
That would be a great outcome, and I would put some money helping the digitalization of their work if the NPG dropps their copyright claims.
Not really. Remember there are a bunch of other collections. Many will be looking to use the NPG's business model. National maritime museum, Imperial war museum, British library, Various national archives. Can't afford to buy them all off.
2009/7/17 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Not really. Remember there are a bunch of other collections. Many will be looking to use the NPG's business model. National maritime museum, Imperial war museum, British library, Various national archives. Can't afford to buy them all off.
It's worth noting that governments often expressly tell their galleries to be more "businesslike" and expressly require them to squeeze every penny from the (public domain) works they own. And to hell with the mission statement.
So it'll be the usual mix of gentle one-at-a-time persuasion, luring people in, working under the radar, shifting paradigms, changing the culture, warping reality to a better shape, speaking softly and the occasional burst of action. Nothing we're not used to.
- d.
Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable.
John
David Gerard wrote:
2009/7/17 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Not really. Remember there are a bunch of other collections. Many will be looking to use the NPG's business model. National maritime museum, Imperial war museum, British library, Various national archives. Can't afford to buy them all off.
It's worth noting that governments often expressly tell their galleries to be more "businesslike" and expressly require them to squeeze every penny from the (public domain) works they own. And to hell with the mission statement.
So it'll be the usual mix of gentle one-at-a-time persuasion, luring people in, working under the radar, shifting paradigms, changing the culture, warping reality to a better shape, speaking softly and the occasional burst of action. Nothing we're not used to.
- d.
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2009/7/18 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable.
John
We do not have the capacity to raise sufficient funds to make it a worthwhile business model.
geni wrote:
2009/7/18 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable.
John
We do not have the capacity to raise sufficient funds to make it a worthwhile business model.
How do you know that?
Yann
2009/7/18 Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net:
geni wrote:
2009/7/18 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable.
We do not have the capacity to raise sufficient funds to make it a worthwhile business model.
How do you know that?
Not out of our pockets directly, anyway.
But helping them lobby for better funding from sources other than copyright claims on public domain works is absolutely in our interest as well as theirs. If we can set up such a program, we could plausibly help do something very financially efficient in terms of what we'd put into it. We already have lots of volunteers who would be very keen to help any way they can with such programs.
- d.
2009/7/18 Yann Forget yann@forget-me.net:
geni wrote:
2009/7/18 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable.
John
We do not have the capacity to raise sufficient funds to make it a worthwhile business model.
How do you know that?
Yann
Our fund raiseing capacity is a few million $ a year. The NPG have spent over $1 million and they have one of the smaller UK collections.
2009/7/18 John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no:
Sorry, I don't follow you on this one. If the existing business model don't work and it should be changed, then work with them to change it and make the alternate options viable.
That's what I mean - this issue goes way beyond NPG into how arts institutions are funded and sustained, which is why the NPG or people therein may believe they're really fighting for their lives and we threaten that. And if the NPG doesn't think that, other galleries may think that. And they may be right, if their funding's really bad.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
That's what I mean - this issue goes way beyond NPG into how arts institutions are funded and sustained, which is why the NPG or people therein may believe they're really fighting for their lives and we threaten that. And if the NPG doesn't think that, other galleries may think that. And they may be right, if their funding's really bad.
The only goal worth pursuing is lobbying UK to change their copyright law. Anything else is small fry.
Ciao Henning
2009/7/17 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/7/17 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
What does Bridgeman vs. Corel have to do with it? We're talking about a UK legal threat.
2009/7/17 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/7/17 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/7/17 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
What does Bridgeman vs. Corel have to do with it? We're talking about a UK legal threat.
Against a US resident and citizen using a website hosted in the US and owned by a US non profit. Bridgeman vs. Corel is the reason other US sites will do the same.
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/7/17 geni geniice@gmail.com:
2009/7/17 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
Nothing. Wikimedia are not the only group that knows about Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.
What does Bridgeman vs. Corel have to do with it? We're talking about a UK legal threat.
We're dealing with a corner case cross-border legal threat.
David Gerard wrote:
(The real problem, IMO, is funding - that governments tell galleries they have to make money from exploiting the works in their possession.
Ah, but do governments really say this? I think it's museum people who want to "play business" because business is glamorous and state-owned administration is dull and grey. I don't think governments originally came up with this idea.
Someone should do research and cite sources. Wikipedia's article on museums, or the history of museums, should have a section about this annoying trend. I guess museum journals of the recent decades should have articles that can be cited as sources.
2009/7/18 Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se:
Ah, but do governments really say this? I think it's museum people who want to "play business" because business is glamorous and state-owned administration is dull and grey. I don't think governments originally came up with this idea.
I have been told this by Wikimedians who used to work in and with such institutions. Governments told them to be "more businesslike", this attracted the people you describe.
Someone should do research and cite sources. Wikipedia's article on museums, or the history of museums, should have a section about this annoying trend. I guess museum journals of the recent decades should have articles that can be cited as sources.
I wonder if anyone's written about this without being sued ...
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
I have been told this by Wikimedians who used to work in and with such institutions. Governments told them to be "more businesslike", this attracted the people you describe.
If there was a document originating from elected politicians, telling public *schools* to be more "businesslike", that would cause public outrage, at least in Sweden.
So can we find the sources where this kind of encouragement is directed towards public museums? We need document numbers and dates, to trace how the trend has spread between countries. Annual reports from some larger museums should be a good starting point. Our allies could be individual experienced museum people, archivists and librarians, who disagree with current policy.
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 5:26 PM, John at Darkstarvacuum@jeb.no wrote:
If we forget about politics and who-did-what, what is the common grounds between "us" and "them"? To me it seems like they want us to use their material, but that they are scared to let go of a possible income. This seems fairly similar to the Galleri NOR -case.
Would it be possible for us to define an acceptable resolution that is also acceptable for them? They have a lot more material available and to me the whole thing seems to be less than optimum for both parties. They want to get the material known, but also have the option to sell high resolution versions. We want to illustrate articles, but have no need to sell our copies, neither do we need highres versions - we infact downsample the versions.
Downsampling inline on the articles, yes, but a lot of people do click all the way through to see larger images. If it wasn't useful to people to see the larger images then they wouldn't have been online in the first place.
It's also worth noting that the large image we have are actually small... and not especially suitable for careful examination or making actual size prints. For those purposes the NPG most likely has images with about 100x the number of pixels, at least if they are using a large format scan-back like everyone else.
I've been in museums which provided loupes on cantilevers for examining the works. As I recall the NPG in London will loan you a magnifying glass for a couple of dollars.
I'm not saying this to argue that there can't be a reasonable arrangement— only contradicting the position that there is some lower resolution which is just as good. The resolution of diminishing returns would be something significantly larger than what we have today. So agreements have to be on the basis of mutual benefit, rather than on sufficiency as I really doubt there is some middle spot that the involved parties can agree is completely sufficient.
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 5:37 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
So: what would everyone here like to see in a compromise, that addresses the concerns of all sides? What makes the NPG happier and more secure, and will fly with WMF and with the Wikimedia community?
An ideal resolution would:
Provide the public with the greatest access to the works which can be agreed on. Access both quantity, quality, and broadness of character. (I.e. Broadness: Decorating my cubical in historic works of art is something both the NPG and the WMF should support and endorse, and arguably it in both of our charters although a bit slantwise)
Maximize the probability of the information contained in the artwork surviving. (If the NPG has a severe fire, will the highest resolution digital copies be destroyed along with the paintings themselves? The digital medium has some wonderful properties for historical that are usually lost when extensive control is exerted)
Would take advantage of the parties strengths. (Wikimedia's enormous amount of traffic, the Wikimedia communities ability to synthesize meaningful education works from raw material, and Wikipedia's ability to place the works in a larger intellectual context, and the NPG's large collection of historical artefacts, their established efforts to digitize and contextualize those works in a set of narrower but more detailed contexts).
Would respect the parties mutual requirements:
Would not impose DRM on the Wikimedia projects as has been suggested by the NPG (a violation of the content licensing).
(*) Would not make the Wikimedia Foundation or its community of user appear to endorse or support the assertion of copyright on exacting reproductions of clearly public domain works. Wikimedia (as far as I can tell) and many of its users believes that it would be a significant harm to the public and a blow to the fundamental nature of copyright if that kind of loophole were allowed to exist.
For the NPG, I'm not sure what their requirements are: The FOI request reflected only ~15k/yr in online licensing income, and at least some portion of that must come from the licensing of works which are entirely under copyright still. We could certainly find some ways to help make up that amount. But it would seem to me that their online program must already be operating at a loss. More information about their goals is clearly required.
We could probably find people to sponsor or perform a substantial amount of digitization work and leave the NPG to their own images, if the access were permitted. I expect that the NPG is quite happy (and already easily funded) for doing their own doing their own digitization and enjoy the level of quality control that it provides. I'm doubtful that we could offer anything attractive to them on this matter.
To meet (*) I suspect there may also need to be a degree of dealing with "the cats out of the bag" on the current images. Even if there was an agreement to use an alternative copy of some sort, we couldn't stop users from continuing to upload the images we already have without adopting the NPG's interpretation of the law and accepting the applicability of UK law to US contributors and Wikimedia itself. (As well as accepting the UK as a copyright litigation haven). So I'm pretty confident that any agreement would likely need to be a forward moving one. Difficult when everyone has a sour taste.
2009/7/17 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
(*) Would not make the Wikimedia Foundation or its community of user appear to endorse or support the assertion of copyright on exacting reproductions of clearly public domain works. Wikimedia (as far as I can tell) and many of its users believes that it would be a significant harm to the public and a blow to the fundamental nature of copyright if that kind of loophole were allowed to exist.
I can imagine an NPG copyright tag that carefully states their claims without endorsing them:
"This image is public domain in the US, as a plain reproduction of a public domain work. The National Portrait Gallery asserts copyright over this scan in the UK and licenses said scan under [copyleft licence]."
That would pass muster for Commons just fine, though many would be annoyed and consider it was a sellout not to push the public domain question.
- d.
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 6:29 PM, David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2009/7/17 Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com:
(*) Would not make the Wikimedia Foundation or its community of user appear to endorse or support the assertion of copyright on exacting reproductions of clearly public domain works. Wikimedia (as far as I can tell) and many of its users believes that it would be a significant harm to the public and a blow to the fundamental nature of copyright if that kind of loophole were allowed to exist.
I can imagine an NPG copyright tag that carefully states their claims without endorsing them:
"This image is public domain in the US, as a plain reproduction of a public domain work. The National Portrait Gallery asserts copyright over this scan in the UK and licenses said scan under [copyleft licence]."
That would pass muster for Commons just fine, though many would be annoyed and consider it was a sellout not to push the public domain question.
It would probably have to go as far as the full NPOV "but X-Y-Z-respectable-notable-parties think this is would be a ruinous perversion of copyright, and not true even in the UK."
(Consider: The Wikimedia communities are generally pretty diligent about actually following copyright, in my experience even more so than many commercial organizations much less online communities. Our communities will even behave more strictly than is required by law if we see some greater social purpose. Collectively we've taken the position we have because we have reason to believe the claims are both invalid and are socially harmful.)
It's a pretty broad and complicated matter with ramifications far outside this particular instance. I surely don't want people coming back and telling me that slavish reproductions of PD art are copyrightable in the UK according to Wikipedia. Nor will the NPG want people claiming Wikipedia says their claims are bunk.
Perhaps we can work out a scrupulously neutral statement which will satisfy both parties. I doubt this will happen unless both parties feel like they MUST come to an agreement. At it stands I think think that it's clear that agreement must actually be reached.
As far as the sellout thing goes— consider that we already avoid accepting a lot of 'fair use' that we could legally get away with in the interest of expanding the base of of freely licensed works. You're point about copyleft is a good one though, generally a copyleft grant would completely satisfy our user community (as well as the foundation's formally stated mission). (There are more than a few things which are probably PD which we allow folks to assert copyleft licenses over; some of *my* SVGs probably fall into that bucket)
But has this gotten so much attention that even that wouldn't be enough? I think probably so. Moreover, it's not clear enough that we could honestly negotiate it. I.e. the NPG could agree to it, but if the wider community doesn't like the arrangement and creates a lot of noise everyone involved would look like fools. Though, I'm prone to being too cynical at times.
We've seemed to have had reasonably good luck elsewhere getting access to public domain art unencumbered by special requirements. We'd be short-sighted if we accept an unreasonably conciliatory compromise in this one case. I think we need to negotiate with the full expectation that whatever we permit here may be demanded in all future cases, even by non-museums, and even by those who would have previously asked for no special treatment. (Again, this is why the copyleft point is interesting— as we already accept copylefted works, I just have no clue how to reconcile it with the enormous amount of attention this has had so far plus the desire to not accept the validity of magically-not-PD trick)
On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Thomas Daltonthomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
What does Bridgeman vs. Corel have to do with it? We're talking about a UK legal threat.
I think Geni is making a cat's out of the bag argument. Regardless of the degree of validity of the claim in the UK a completely reasonable response to UK civil action against someone in the US is "Good luck collecting on that!".
A lot of people already have these images already.
Getting clearly illegal content off the internet is already almost impossible. But something that appears to be clearly legal, in the US of all places,? Good luck with that.
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