The public catalog foundation has been busy digitising the nation's art. All those paintings held by government institutions and local councils. Pretty nice. Their website is here:
and the paintings can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/
Some very nice stuff there.
Unfortunately they claim copyright. My favorite example is this. It's a Fayum mummy portrait about 1700 years old:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/portrait-of-a-lady-31089
And yet if we open up the meta data:
"Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum / Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation This image is copyrighted."
The artist for this painting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-launching-of-hms-royal...
died 1873 and yet we open up the meta data and
"Copyright Hampshire County Council Museums Service / Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation . This image is copyrighted."
The rest of the text runs:
The Public Catalogue Foundation is committed to respecting the intellectual property rights of others. The copyright in paintings and images reproduced by the Public Catalogue Foundation belong to a variety of organisations and individuals including the collections that own the paintings and third party rights holders. Permitted Use of This Image: This image and data related to the image may be reproduced for non-commercial research and private study purposes. For ALL other uses other than those outlined above, including commercial uses, users should contact, in the first instance, the contributing collection using the contact information provided on the Your Paintings website. Where the underlying painting is in copyright, further permissions will also be needed. Protection of Image Copyright: This image is protected with a secure invisible digital watermark that allows the Public Catalogue Foundation to identify unauthorized use of the image. Further Information: Any queries should be addressed to copyrightofficer@thepcf.org.uk
Lovey. We could just ignore this and let the Americans take care of matters but it might be smarter to stage an intervention before we get NPG mark 2.