I was going to call NPG this morning first thing (as a volunteer, to see what could be reasonably done to avert a public battle - our own museum/gallery liaison volunteers can really, really do without a public battle fouling up their ongoing efforts) but was awake all night with a sick child and so I just got up ... has anyone here called yet, as a volunteer? I know Physchim62, who did a lot to get the American Chemical Society working with us, was going to call. Has anyone else?
(I don't hold out much hope for this - the NPG's position has been completely consistent and completely uncooperative for many years.. But it's always worth asking.)
It's reasonably important to avoid discussing the possible legal case, for Dcoetzee's sake, *but* the NPG's lawyers have effectively written a press release read by ten thousand Wikimedians and a million Slashdot readers, that clearly does directly and personally affect a lot of them. I bet it's been more widely read than any intentional press release of theirs has been.
Ideal outcome: PD everything, they welcome a team of our photographers in.
Plausible good outcome: We put up the hi-res images with notes that they are PD in the US but the NPG claims copyright in Europe and releases them under CC-by-sa, and full credit is requested in either case. (Copyleft is not as ideal as PD, but it's plenty good enough for us.) We issue press releases lauding the NPG to the skies and say nice things about them forever.
Another plausible good outcome: They welcome a team of our photographers in. Careful supervision, etc. Then we can do stuff like infrared shots as well (which can show interesting things about a painting's restoration history).
Awful outcome: great big legal battle.
Bad outcome: mainstream press about this at all, really. The NPG probably doesn't see it that way.
Any other possible outcomes to list?
Additional data point: the NPG has removed the hi-res versions. Thus, the Wikimedia copies are the *only* copies currently available.
This makes it actually culturally important for us to keep them up!
- d.