On 14 September 2017 at 08:21, Nick Poole Nick.Poole@cilip.org.uk wrote:
Indeed, and congratulations to Lucy and the team on securing this progress with Tullie House. I do think it is important to acknowledge progress as much as it is to keep pushing for better practice.
Yes, Lucy's reaching out worked and I'm grateful for that effort.
However, as far as I'm aware, nothing was planned, and indeed nothing has happened for a few years now, to address institutional copyfraud in the UK, despite some of the most globally famous cases occurring in this country, such as the National Portrait Gallery.[1] Shamefully, even standard texts that professionals refer to for UK IP law, incorrectly treat "sweat of the brow" as being definitive, rather than it being legally untested and hypothetical.
With this in mind, are we content that we are doing everything we can as a community to make it easier for museums to do the right thing than to default to a risk-averse legacy practice?
With regard to community, the previous UK GLAM-wiki network that started the global movement around the time I was the UK national GLAM coordinator has gradually evaporated, but has left behind assets like the Outreach wiki. The GLAM community is gradually becoming directed by the WMF, which considering recent events with some chapters, I think is actually a good thing both in terms of funding, longevity and reputation. If you are looking for case studies and material to provide to institutions then get in touch with Sadads[2], though as the chapter has produced materials and reports in the past, including advice for institutions wanting to provide better open access, the starting point should be the CEO reviewing existing assets with her staff.
Without volunteers prepared to invest weeks of their time creating more materials and planning meetings with GLAMs, WMUK must rely on its full time staff to do most of this work. If educating or simply prompting GLAMs on their open access strategies by truly managing relationships, rather than just sending out leaflets, is not in the coming annual plan, perhaps the WMUK trustees should have a chat with the CEO about how to move this forward and for the chapter to become seen as a reliable institution to turn to for advice, rather than leaving it to the tertiary education bodies which have been leading UK improvements to, and interpretation of, Open Access or avoiding copyfraud.
Museums/GLAMs are going to stay risk averse with their collections. If we presume this will stay true for the foreseeable future, then "risk averse" needs to include avoiding the reputational risk of copyfraud as a more urgent issue than saving some money by never bothering correctly to assess the copyright status of media and artefacts. If we take two obvious case studies familiar to WMUK:
(A) The British Museum is a leader in open access, making its main database open to the public online several years ago and supporting the Portable Antiquities Scheme database (PAS) which has an excellent licensing strategy for content and photographs, so that reuse on our projects is actually encouraged.[3] The main database has understandable licensing restrictions, primarily because artefact photographs and catalogue text were produced long before current expectations for open licensing existed. Right now is an excellent time for WMUK to refresh its contacts at the BM as there is an opportunity to influence planned changes to the way this works. The Tullie House case is a good starting point to ensure that the BM changes its loan procedures to never have restrictions on photography for ancient artefacts that cannot be damaged by being photographed, and ensure than no receiving institution does anything which even looks like copyfraud.
(B) The Imperial War museum the best case study of how not to do it in the UK. In the last two years the IWM has systematically watermarked all their 500,000+ online images and videos, even though the vast majority of their collection is public domain. Their archive was created by the Government and has the single purpose of being held in trust for the benefit of the public, so their odd approach of damaging the images with watermarks and falsely claiming all media as being their commercial copyright, even public domain media taken from other archives, to ensure that they can cash in and use the archive as a retail outlet, is not just bizarre, but blatant and deliberate copyfraud. Yes, they have been a hobby-horse of mine for a few years now, but we have no better counter-example and their approach has actually got worse in the last 4 years. I doubt their current management team care much about anyone making public statements about their copyfraud, so the only hope of changing their misuse of public domain material would be to foster contacts on the IWM board of trustees. As an independent volunteer I'm free to write to the trustees to make a case, in a way that the chapter never would; given my understanding of their recent managerial changes/issues and organizational challenges, I suspect that harder approach may be more effective than spending another four years trying soft soap.
P.S. Nick, while you are here, at your next meeting could you ask your CEO to ensure that all emails from chapter domain addresses are properly archived. If there is a PR, legal, or financial incident and, say, a journalist is making claims about the chapter, you should be able to definitively refer to your records, which legally includes chapter emails.
Cheers, Fae
Links 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Founda... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Astinson_(WMF) 3. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae/Project_list/PAS