On 07/12/06, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
Hello there,
I came across this picture: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Magna_Carta.jpg while wandering around Commons.
The accredited source is the UK National Archives and as far as I understand this page: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/legal/copyright.htm Reproductions of images on the website are not permitted without acquitting a fee.
However, I am not familiar with public domain policy stuff in the UK, it could be that there are twists I don't know about, so I am asking for some enlightenment as to whether this image should stay or go.
Bear in mind that we're not talking a copy of the text here (it's clearly too small to read), and we're not talking a copy of "an artwork", a creative artistic piece - this is a picture of a physical artifact, plain and simple, and I don't see any reason that the photograph itself shouldn't retain copyright.
Generally speaking, in the UK, you generally get copyright over a photograph if there are creative or skilled elements in the making of it - most things above an automatic photobooth, in fact. It's entirely debatable how far that applies to "archive" images which are sort-of intended as slavish copies and do require a lot of skilled work to create, but it's a digression from the point here.
This is an image that, to my mind, can be copyrighted same as any other. We're just being mislead by the fact it's of a textual artifact.